Effective Use of Business Intelligence

¶ … strategic role for CMP Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence (BI) Importance of knowledge management and the purpose of BI Make recommendations on improvements that can be made at CMP in terms of knowledge management. Explain how the forecasts in your Excel spreadsheet can assist Michael with BI. Porter's Five Forces Model Analysis of buyer and supplier power for CMP using Porter's Five Forces Model. Analysis of rivalry, entry barriers, and threat of substitute products Recommendations on strategies for CMP to combat competition.

Website Success Explain why measuring web traffic is not a good indicator of website success. Recommendations on ways to improve CMP's website to enhance financial success. Social Media Which social media tools would you recommend for CMP and why? Barriers CMP may encounter when trying to use this medium for marketing and selling their products. Recommend changes that should be made to the way CMP operates so that an investment in social media is a success. 8 5. Mobile Customers 5.1 Ways in which CMP could embrace mCommerce for wireless marketing and sales. 8 6.

Security 6.1 The potential internal and/or external threats to security 9 6.2 Recommend ways to secure this data from the threats 10 Part B 10 Graph A 10 Graph B. 11 References 13 Part A 1: Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence (BI) 1.1: Importance of knowledge management and the purpose of BI Knowledge management is considered a tool for the enhancement of business processes and hence helpful in achievement of organizational goals. Knowledge management helps increase productivity and efficiency by means of knowledge sharing which helps individuals acquire knowledge for skill improvement.

Knowledge dissemination through training programs also helps in skill development. The development of individual skill increases efficiency and production that gives the organization a competitive edge in the market. Knowledge management identifies the employees with specific skill sets, it is possible for to distribute work and responsibilities to specialists. Increased efficiency through knowledge sharing means reduced delivery time and more quality control (Debowski, 2006). Knowledge management also helps reducing costs by reduction on the time for employees to seek appropriate and effective knowledge.

Speed of response is increased due to a direct fall out of the knowledge management process. Such reduction in time reduces over all costs for the company in production as well as in skill development. Knowledge management processes reduce mistakes resulting in cost saving and quality improvement The process that takes the help of technology for analyzing data and presenting actionable information that provides helpful options and alternative to corporate executives, business managers and other end users to make informed business decisions.

Data used in business intelligence is can be collected both from within the organization or from outside. Business intelligence can help corporate and other business organizations to accelerate and improve decision making, help optimize internal business processes and enhance operational efficiency thereby creating ways for greater revenue generation and gaining competitive advantages. Business Intelligence also helps companies to understand market trends and identify shortcoming in the business processes (Sauter and Sauter, 2010).

The current situation at CMP At the multi-million dollar mixed product firm CMP there is a clear dearth of adequate information flow. Most of the business information about the company like sales trends, distributor information, promotional information, etc., is not available to a wide range of people. Only a handful of people have access to the information. There is no proper documentation about the information. Therefore even as the firm does well by way of mouth promotions, there is no concerted business strategy based on informed choices.

People in general at CMP do not have access to information and hence there is a general lack of new ideas and out of the box thinking that could have enhanced the revenues of the company and helped the company to grow faster. 1.2 Make recommendations on improvements that can be made at CMP in terms of knowledge management. The recommendations are: Proper documentation of all relevant business information including sales trends, distributor information, promotional information, etc.

Availability of the information to everyone except sensitive business information concerning strategy Options for gathering more information from everyone at the CMP Regular interactions with people at the company to encourage increasing te informaiotn basket Tools for analysis of the information should be made available and used by people who are capable Use of the analyzed data for making business decisions 1.3 Explain how the forecasts in your Excel spreadsheet can assist Michael with BI. Using the forecast in graph A and Graph B.

It can be concluded that the CMP needs to prepare itself for the rise in demand in three categories in the current fiscal year. The company should make adequate arrangement to meet the demand. On the other hand, the company should look into the reasons why the demand for yogurt is expected to go down and seek strategies to increase the demand Graph B. clearly shows the except for butter/cheese products, demand for all products would increase in the next year compared to the present year.

Therefore the company must make adequate arrangements and preparations in all departments including supply chain, production and packaging an, logistics and distribution, to prepare to meet the hike in demand. The company should investigate why the demand for yogurt is expected to fall next year and take corrective steps to mitigate the problem. 2. Porter's Five Forces Model: 2.1 Analysis of buyer and supplier power for CMP using Porter's Five Forces Model. Buyer Power: The buyer is more influential with respect to CMP compared to other similar companies.

This is so because the entire business of the company depends on the word of mouth of customers and the good will that has been created in the market. Given the projects for the coming years, the customers' views are important. Any change in the taste of the customer can adversely affect the company (Warner, 2010) Supplier Power: the company is a multi-million dollar established company and hence it has would not have any dearth of suppliers.

Since the company is doing well revenue wise, therefore it can dictate terms to the suppliers. In this case the suppliers do not enjoy much of an influence on the company. However given the expected increase in demand in the rest of the year and the next year, the company would require to deal intelligently with the suppliers to be able to adequately meet the demand.

2.2 Analysis of rivalry, entry barriers, and threat of substitute products Rivalry: Milk products are consumer food items and hence there is stiff competition in the segment Entry Barriers: the entry barriers are quite very high as there is a ready customer base and supply of the raw materials is plenty. The processing and packaging of the milk products however are technology intensive and capital intensive and hence there are high entry level barriers despite the abundance of customers and suppliers of raw materials (Warner, 2010).

2.3 Recommendations on strategies for CMP to combat competition. As is evident from the graphs, there is expected rise in demand for most of the products of the company. It is recommended that the company must make strategies to meet the demand. CMP should ensure adequate supplies in line with the expected demand for every two-month period. Production facilities must be evaluated to ascertain that it meets the demand requirements. Similarly warehousing facilities and transport logistics are prepared to take the additional demand.

These can be tallied with the expected demands and suitable reinforcements and adjustments are made to the various supporting business processes. The role of the information system is critical in this. The management can make adequate calculations and take decision about the adjustments and enhancements necessary for the various departments to support the expected demand rise based on the analysis of the sale information shown in the graph. All the departments concerned need to have a clear idea and well communicated directions from the management (MacKay, 2011). 3.

Website Success: 3.1 Explain why measuring web traffic is not a good indicator of website success. The measuring of web traffic alone is not enough to indicate website success and needs to be combined with other information like: Tracking of number of visitors by hour, day, month, etc.

The geographic location of visitors The referral sites of the visitors The the web page visitors enter the site on which is always the home page The number of pages viewed and the time spent on the website The rate of bouncing of visitors who come ot the site and immediately leave it again without clicking further.

This indicates that the website might not be user friendly The pages where visitors leave the site could mean the type of information they wanted to view or did not like The type of traffic -- whether direct or indirect and The conversion rates (Rognerud, n.d.) To measure the success of any website the above information are necessary and can provide a lot of information about the visitor's likes and dislikes and the type of information that the visitors were looking for (Rognerud, n.d.).

3.2 Recommendations on ways to improve CMP's website to enhance financial success. CMP should use the above mentioned points to track and understand the nature of traffic flow into the website and make changes accordingly. The changes can relate to more product options, more product health relation information, direct ordering options, direct contact options, options to place queries or complaints, etc. 4.

Social Media 4.1 Which social media tools would you recommend for CMP and why? Social media is very powerful and every other company utilizes the power of social media to reach out to customers. CMP should use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other interactive social media. The primary target population for marketing through social media should be the parents in the age group of 25 to 40.

This is so because milk and milk products are primarily consumed by children and the parents are the ones who buy them hence reaching out to the parents are important. Moreover, the milk products like cheese and yogurt have common appeal and hence spate strategies should be formulated to target the general population also. 4.2 Barriers CMP may encounter when trying to use this medium for marketing and selling their products.

The primary barrier that CMP is likely to face in this is the lack of documented information that it could use in the marketing effort through social media. Moreover there seems to be no specialized teams that can conduct these marketing campaigns and no promotional strategy is in place to utilize the social media. Also since there is no flow of information, people engaged in the marketing campaign in the social media would not have access to the requisite company information even if it were documented.

Also there has been no analysis of the customers and the identification of the regions and geographic areas for the campaign according to the rise or fall in demand and hence no proper strategy can be created without such information. 4.3 Recommend changes that should be made to the way CMP operates so that an investment in social media is a success. CMP should create a complete focus on increasing of promotional activity in the first place.

It should gather and create a data base of information which can be shared within the organization. The company should also use business intelligence tools and website analytics to pin point target segments and market regions to form a strategy for the promotional campaigns. If necessary, CMP should engage a professional social media handling agency to conduct the campaign on their behalf. 5. Mobile Customers: 5.1 Ways in which CMP could embrace mCommerce for wireless marketing and sales.

The ways in which CMP can embrace mCommerce using mobile are: Create a mobile friendly website so that the website can be viewed on mobiles Engage in sms and text alerts and reminder to.