SAC for Enabling “Single Version of Truth”

Rapid business growth of ABC Inc. coupled with them aggressively acquiring companies and lines of businesses across the globe has resulted in a huge diversity of information and systems. The problem is this data is spread across a variety of different systems and software: data stored in various ERP systems, CRMs, databases, and Excel spreadsheets. With data spread across multiple systems, getting information and drawing insights is an arduous task, which can lead to the inability to integrate data sources, culminating into a lack of trust in corporate data. Reporting/analyzing across multiple systems or data sources remains ABC Inc.’s biggest challenge. Questionable data quality and compromised reporting accuracy result in significant time and effort invested in reconciliation of information while traceability poses an equally major challenge. It is normal to engage an analyst for reconciling and creating a consensual version of the report, anywhere between two and four hours, depending on how responsive the legacy ERP system is and the data manipulation in Excel. Suggestion: introduce a current high-level system architecture diagram. Decision support therefore consumes disproportionate attention and decision-makers often lack confidence in the results. Improved data quality, allowing users to trust the data for decision-making, is paramount for ABC Inc. In present times, business units are running reports and pulling their own data, triggering multiple versions of the truth within the business; the other main challenge is around just the sheer time and productivity lost.