Business intelligence is a pretty strong buzz word right now, and for good reason. So many companies are jumping on the bandwagon, investing funds into BI because it can provide unique business insights that drive efficiencies, speedier decision-making, and mobility, among other benefits.
This is particularly true for the retail sector, where operations such as inventory management, staffing, order management, scheduling, and supply chain management are all more accurate, more timely and easier to accomplish with robust business intelligence tools.
But one recent news article I read about Starbucks investing heavily in BI gave me a double take. Everything about Starbucks use of BI made sense to me:
There are plenty of BI tools that help retailers track things like inventory, sales and staff schedules, but the technology Starbucks is testing from MicroStrategy also lets managers take actions–such as ordering supplies–in the same application
Except that I was shocked – and quite impressed – to read that they have encourage such a broad percentage of their work force to utilize the BI tools.
Starbucks has been using MicroStrategy technology since 2005, and approximately 40,000 of its employees access the BI tools.
Why? Because the company wants all of its store managers to be able to interact directly with supply chain and HR systems on mobile devices.
Read more about how they’re defining the mobile and tablet-based environment to support exception-based reporting and richer analytics: Starbucks BI Test: Can Managers Beat Heatwave?
