Leverage SAC to Create “All-in-One” Analytics Platform”

Being a large global enterprise, ABC Inc. has multiple business functions cutting across Lines of Business. Each of these business functions works independently with their own set of tools. This has resulted in multiple tools being used across locations and business functions for the same or similar decision-making processes. Multiplicity of Systems compound the problem of data Redundancy – scattered across silos and systems within the enterprise IT landscape. The challenge becomes graver due to the requirement of disparate data sources used by support business functions like strategy and business planning. For example, planners within the organization would be using a specific tool for their day-to-day activities. Their reference or base dataset would be curated solely for their purpose. There would be data scientists who use external data sources. A single set of curated data is specific to a purpose and seldom gets reused. The Enterprise Datawarehouse has over the years grown exponentially on which smaller data marts have been built, mostly with a lot of data redundancy. This data has come at the cost of increased storage and processing capability. ABC Inc. currently has an Enterprise Data Warehouse; however, business users tend to build their own sets of data locally or across shared drives. Not only does this lead to data discrepancies, but also divergencies in decisions across business functions. For instance, when top leadership wants to review actual vs. planned, there are regular instances of discrepancies due to diverse datasets. Different solutions and technologies for decision support also lack standardization in terms of references; for instance, there are differences in calculation of KPI or their definitions across units within the same line of business.