Business Intelligence Support System-Best Opportunity for Professional Services Group to use CRM, SCM and ERP platforms to support Laboratory Resource Management (LRM)
...nt of lab resources as needed to maintain and manage both internal and external project schedules · the date and time of the laboratory experiment · the name of the person in charge of the laboratory session Currently, PS has four (4) switches allocated for the above purpose. It is obvious that PS ability to service new accounts supplied through new sales and marketing depends to a large extent on how these limited resources are managed on day-to-day basis. Given that PS has over two dozen customers or so in its portfolio to manage; it is prudent that Laboratory Resource Management (LRM) be a focal point for business improvement during the fiscal year 2005. In a broader context, LRM is an integral part of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). In the past, PS has deployed several ERP packages hoping to track for example, the time spent on each billable project and the resources committed to a specific project. These fit-for-all ERP solution packages lack in the overall capability to integrate all the data and provide a cohesive data mining insight seriously desired to aid in radical change management (Luo and Strong, 2004). Section 3 Best Practices Proposed Business Intelligence (BI) technology provides a mechanism for business users to track, understand, and manage information within an organization (Timo, 2003). BI is required to unleash the full capability of an ERP system. The Business Intelligence Support System (BISS) includes the LRM, the PS personnel as well as the Customers. Each of the actors has a well-defined role. The LRM makes exchange of data between heterogeneous systems possible. Using client-server architecture with Internet interface, PS personnel as well as customers can easily access laboratory resources from several remote sites. Source: Accenture (2001) Resources can be scheduled with precision to consider other dependencies. One can easily see when a particular task is completed, what tools were needed to accomplish them as in the case of transferring knowledge and lesson learned after a project has completed. Tools facilitating communication is always on. Customer requests are logged and retrieved as needed. Project managers can take a holistic view of an entire project and make recommendations based on the data available in a repository. The next segment of the BISS to consider is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Customer Relationship Management Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is used for managing customer inquires and complaints. This module will track how each contact was made by fax, e-mail, phone, etc and the severity of the issue and actions taken toward the resolution. There are also several reports including customer history, open issues by severity and a summary report. Attain customer profitability; increase the effectiveness of your customer relationship management (CRM) business processes; improve customer satisfaction—these are all excellent CRM goals. But achieving these goals can be challenging, especially if an organization is not strategically aligned to succeed. If CRM is not fully integrated into the BI goals, it will simple become a patchwork of applications that are difficult to maintain and support. The next segment of BISS to consider is the Supply Chain Management (SCM) system. Supply Chain Management Today’s supply chain is anything but simple. It is, in literal terms, not a “chain” at all, but an incredibly complex, dynamic, data-driven network of inter-relationships among dozens, hundreds, or thousands of suppliers, customers, and partners. It spans a multitude of interdependent functions, and a myriad of metrics associated with each function. It puts a premium on characteristics that are being redefined by e-business: · Collaboration: Communication on timely information among supply chain analysts, managers, suppliers, and customers. · Flexibility: Information and resources to meet challenges and seize opportunities. · Agility: Provides the ability to swiftly respond to changing market conditions. · Visibility: Provides instant access to information driving supply chain operations and performance. As defined by the Supply-Chain Council (SCC), supply chain management encompasses supply and demand, sourcing raw materials and parts, manufacturing and assembly, warehousing and inventory tracking, order entry and order management, distribution across channels, and delivery to customer. The council distills these functions into a model of five basic management processes: plan, source, make, deliver, and return. Query, Reporting, and Analysis Query, reporting, and analysis (QRA) tools include query and reporting and multidimensional analysis tools. Query and reporting tools are designed specifically to support ad hoc data access and report building. Multidimensional analysis or online analytical processing (OLAP) tools provide a data management environment with multiple aspects; they are typically used for modeling business problems and analyzing business data based on multiple dimensions such as time, region, organizational or product hierarchy, and others. Data Mining Software Data mining (DM) software uses such technologies as regression, neural networks, rule induction, and clustering to discover relationships in data and make predictions that are hidden, not apparent, or too complex to be extracted with QRA tools. These technologies are frequently associated with statistical analysis. BusinessObjects™ Solution for BISS Managers need a consolidated view of their key enterprise metrics and performance indicators in order to make intelligent decisions. The Business Objects enterprise analytic applications suite, as part of BusinessObjects™ Enterprise 6, can provide an organization with the most comprehensive approach to analytics on the market today. Business Intelligence (BI) tools market experienced yet another year of healthy growth in 2003. With a 5% increase BI tools reached $3.9 billion in worldwide software revenue. The demand and interest in BI tools remains strong as organizations look to leverage their investment in transaction processing software by deploying software that helps them in accessing, analyzing and delivering information to internal and external constituents. BI tools’ functionality ranges from development and deployment of production reports and ad-hoc query and analysis tools to management dashboards and advanced data mining tools. Covering a spectrum from static, tabular reports to highly interactive dashboards with new data visualization techniques, BI tools have become a vital IT component for supporting organizational decision making processes. BusinessObjects Support Features for CRM Implementation Customer Intelligence is a comprehensive solution that lets you connect strategic and operational goals with an application that evaluates, monitors, and improves your CRM performance. Customer Intelligence gives your executives and managers a common view into marketing, sales, and service performance. And by providing visibility into your customer base, Customer Intelligence empowers users with real-time dashboards, alerts, and powerful business analysis for proactive responses to shifting market trends. Best of all, the application is driven by an industry leading business intelligence (BI) framework that includes sophisticated customer segmentation tracking and trending engines, and embedded CRM domain knowledge. BusinessObjects Support Features for SCM Implementation In order to be successful, a supply chain must be flexible, responsive, and reliable. With BusinessObjects™ Supply Chain Intelligence, one can evaluate, monitor, and improve the supply chain performance and efficiency. As part of an enterprise analytic application suite, Supply Chain Intelligence will help to gain visibility over a constantly changing operation as one continuously plan the sourcing, manufacturing, delivery, and returns. At the same time, it will provide hundreds of pre-built analytics that can answer thousands of key business questions and help one gain deeper business insight. Supply Chain Intelligence adheres to the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) framework from the Supply Chain Council, a leading industry trade association. This framework provides critical key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarks and best-practice methodologies to help in the analysis of the ever-changing dynamics between availability, cost, working capital, and demand. BusinessObjects Supply Chain Intelligence contains five integrated modules—Plan Analytics, Source Analytics, Make Analytics, Deliver Analytics, Return Analytics—and provides: · Comprehensive analysis across the supply chain · Analysis from sourcing to manufacturing, delivery, and return · A flexible build-and-buy approach Key Features of the BISS (Saliah, 2000) Tracking allows one to follow the progress of a work activity. This includes integrated information on how resources flow Data Entry is for entering and reporting test results. Permissions can be granted to each user to view, enter, validate or approve results. Data Entry allows the laboratory to enter, approve and report results with peer review. There are a dozen canned reports included. Scheduling and Stability is used to automatically log in samples for routine collection. Resources can be automatically scheduled as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual events. Sample bottle labels and work-lists can automatically be generated in advance of a sampling event. The Stability functionality allows users to perform stability studies on various products with automatic notification for “pull” dates. QA/QC module allows one to graph results and create control charts for data that has been entered into BISS“. One can easily select the data to plot using criteria such as test, sample number, analyst, etc. It is just as easy to select the samples used to generate the control limits. Electronic Data Transfer allows direct electronic transfer of data from the instrument via a variety of formats such as .xls, .csv, text (ASCII) and others. It can be configured to scan directories to import multiple files or import data for multiple runs by file or directory. When multiple runs are imported, users can select the data to import. ATL has a library of over 250 instruments previously integrated with its LIMS. Chemical Inventory allows you to track supplies and vendors. You can receive and make supplies, reconcile them, and update the supplies used in sample analysis. Users are warned when running low on supplies. Users can also track lot numbers, vendor information and expiration dates. Resource Management is for managing instrument calibrations and repairs as well as personnel training certificates. Users can view employee’s training records by employee, certification or test. Expiration dates are also recorded. If an instrument is out of calibration the LIMS can be set to disallow data input from the instrument that is out ...