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BI Case study #1

You are working for a sporting goods retail company. Overall sales have been declining for the last threeuarters and management is very concerned. !ach retail store has its own individual databases that keep

track of sales for specific items. "owever at the overall management level only sales figures for eachstore are reported. $anagement has asked you to prepare reports by sale items %such as specific brand &and model Y of running shoes' and by categories of sale items %such as all running shoes' so that they canmake accurate decisions on which product lines to drop to reduce overall inventory costs. (s a BIspecialist or as a part of a development team you will need to develop a procedure to e)tract data fromeach individual database reconcile data formats and types aggregate all data into a data repository anddevelop ueries based on management re uests. You will communicate and work closely withmanagement representatives to ensure that the created data repository and reports meet their needs. *hisusually involves a series of back and forth discussion during which both sides ask and answer uestions.You have to develop a good understanding of the business concerns and be able to frame them intotechnical re uirements for the BI pro+ect. You also need to educate management regarding possibilitiesand constraints of the technology as it translates into business applications. ,epending on your level of

responsibilities you will develop or contribute to the development of a realistic estimate of timeresources and cost to achieve the intended goal. Once the pro+ect is launched you will develop fullspecifications develop and test subsystems and integrate into final product. *hroughout the development

process you will conduct a series of increasingly rigorous technical functional and user tests. Based onthe results of these tests you can e)pect revision of technical specifications and overall system and unitdesign along with pro+ect timeline resources and cost revisions. Of particular importance will be a focuson user needs and re uirements business applications and easy-to-use user interface. Your BI team may

be also invoked in developing and delivering training to managers and other stakeholders in using thenew system.

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BI Case study #

You are working for a large hospital. !)pensive e uipment is often shared between units and movedthroughout the hospital facilities. One of the concerns e)pressed by medical professionals and managersin the organi/ation is the difficulty of tracking specific pieces of e uipment. (s a result more units are

purchased to make sure that at least one of them is always available when needed. 0rom efficiency perspective there is no data to track usage of specific e uipment. *he BI team you are a party of has beenasked to work with the technology infrastructure team to make recommendations on an 0I, % adio-0re uency Identification' based system that will enable to track to location and daily usage of everyindividual piece of e uipment. *he focus of your team will be to specify the data management part of theoverall system. You will need to educate yourself on 0I, technology options and available systems andspecifically on the type of data and software systems that best interface with 0I, units. You willresearch what other healthcare organi/ations have implemented 0I, systems and with what results. Youwill need to interface closely with the I* group as well as users to understand and take into account the

constraints and re uirements from both the infrastructure and the application sides. You will need toresearch solutions and meet with potential vendors to discuss advantages and limitations of each potentialsolution. You will need to understand the types and fre uency of reports that users and management willre uire to optimi/e operations. 0uture plans for possible system capacity and functionality e)pansionswill be taken into consideration in the selection process. Once the research is completed you willcontribute to the development of an overall proposal to upper management that presents selected systemoptions with associated technology features %presented from the user perspective' strengths andlimitations of each option estimated cost of design and2or buy testing implementation and maintenance.You may have to conduct further research to answer targeted management uestions such as vendorsupport and reliability.