The meaning of BI

The value of the construction of BI system, it may be worthless, it may also be worth tens of millions of, it depends on us all good. "Therefore, the harvest of BI system construction, after all, is still different from the enterprise, and then the root of the enterprise's culture, and business people, especially management is very relevant."

The significance of business intelligence system construction in garment enterprises

In recent years, apparel industry enterprises have been active or passive exposure to business intelligence (BI) system, there are no lack of successful construction system, but the application of the system is not ideal situation is also very common, which, enterprises and manufacturers do not combine with the actual, the formulation of appropriate system construction goals and expectations is an important reason. Looking at the equivalent of a BI system to report delivery, the high-level people think that the BI system is omnipotent, which is biased. The author concerns the construction of BI system of apparel industry some time, but also with many enterprises to communicate, has been exploring, learn from the financial, telecommunications and other industry construction experience, combined to the distinctive industry characteristics of the apparel industry, BI system can give the current stage of the majority of domestic apparel enterprises, bring what value. This article will be a discussion and sharing.

First look at some of the benefits that the BI system generally has. In general, this is the benefit of technology.

When it comes to BI systems, it's inevitable to talk about the integration of multiple source systems. In general, the more data sources that a BI system integrates, the more it embodies the benefits of data center, data integration, and the elimination of information silos. And in the clothing industry, many times a project, can not be well planned for multi-system integration, which is related to cost factors, but also with the clothing industry itself business system is not much also related. Many times are integrated into an ERP or invoicing system, plus a financial system. Remote because of some number of construction vendors, interface problems, reluctant to involve the financial system, which led to the business results of core data in the BI missing, the importance of decreasing. Even more data comes from a single system, in which case the value of the BI system is explained to the customer, and the difference between the business and the persuasion is reduced. But in the present, the situation is also improving. Combined with a number of enterprise cases, I think the apparel industry bi system, can be involved, or may be able to produce certain analytical application value of some data sources, for example for reference:

ERP, or invoicing system;

Retail system (POS);

E-commerce related systems;

ordering system;

financial system;

VIP management, etc. or CRM system, if any;

Production systems, warehousing systems, RFID systems, etc.;

Passenger count, attendance and other ancillary systems;

spreadsheet data, this part is very important, is an extremely key supplement;

Incidentally, these systems, two common problems, one is that coding standardization is not done well, and the second is that data quality is generally poor, in the apparel industry is more serious.

When it comes to the integration of multiple source systems, it can be thought that the current hot concept of "big data" has invaded the apparel industry. I think because of a variety of data missing too much, the data diversity is not ideal, in the near future, the garment industry enterprises will be with the real big data missed.

In addition to integration, there are several general and fundamental benefits to the BI system. Including accuracy, timeliness and consistency. These advantages are now well known to many enterprises. Can be interpreted from a literal point of view.

Combined to the industry construction, accuracy and timeliness can be considered as the advantages of information system processing data, consistency is based on the enterprise-level data view of the uniform index of the rule and calculation rules. In the current management of apparel enterprises, the same index is different from the Department of the statistical results, is quite common.

Through these characteristics, can improve the efficiency of enterprise data operation, but also can save a lot of human resources, also is the cost. There are ditch through an enterprise, which specializes in statistical analysis of data related to the work of twenty or thirty people, in this case, if the BI system can be successfully built, the harvest will be considerable.

Furthermore, the system provides a solid foundation for building rapid response retail management or supply chain management, and strengthening the monitoring in the event of a large amount of data and even massive data processing ability for garment enterprises.

In recent years, the clothing industry management, gradually from the extensive management to fine management change, and fine management must be based on data, the degree of increase in data richness, it is possible to provide more appropriate support for decision-making.

For example, the women's brand of a commodity season 300, to the color of about 1000 SKC, 300 terminals, assuming that the weekly unit granularity for follow-up, the entire life cycle of this season data is already quite complex, and then rely on the business personnel Manual operation, not only statistical calculation is more difficult, It also increases the difficulty of diagnosing and locating problems due to increased information. Thus, the actual operation will shed some of the granularity, may be abandoned terminal to achieve regional, city-level, or historical weeks of some data, such as the rate of sold out and keep up to date. From this point of view, combined with the BI system, the commodity operation, terminal operation of the refinement level can be a good help.

In addition to the technical benefits described earlier, apparel companies can reap great benefits from a management perspective by building BI systems, and this improvement or enhancement is also the most valuable and meaningful result of a business intelligence system.

I always believe that the construction of the BI system in the apparel industry, from the content perspective, from the business perspective, can have two directions worth to carry out. The first is to build and construct an analytical application system that conforms to the enterprise's own condition, and the other is to locate the problem from the point of view of the core control and predict the risk.

The first is to analyze the construction of the application system, give an example to illustrate its importance. Once in an enterprise, its operations director is from Adidas, the merchandise director is from Ayase, they each brought a set in the home himself quite familiar with the report, to the new company's subordinates to achieve, in the middle, even a process of adaptation and conversion did not, to know, this company is a menswear enterprise. In fact, this situation is not uncommon in apparel companies. They all have one thing in common, that is, there is no analytical application system that fits the business model and management characteristics of the enterprise, they need to form such a system, and constantly improve them, so that it becomes a valuable property of enterprises-knowledge accumulation.

At the same time, in an enterprise, with the change of personnel, management improvement, it can be said that there will always be new reports in the production, in the communication with many business owners, they feel, now is not a report too little, but the report too much, in this case, can also use the BI system to the Enterprise report analysis system to comb and refine.

Analysis system, can be based on a number of ideas to build. For example, according to the subject of the division, according to analysis methods such as contrast, trend, structure to apply the organization. It is also possible to create highly targeted applications in terms of roles and scenarios. For example, for the store-length terminal to fully manage the ancillary applications, auxiliary supervision to ensure that the performance of the relevant data support and analysis applications, or marketing weekly meetings, business meetings such as the weekly meeting scenario data and analysis package, etc., etc., can be well integrated into the Enterprise Analysis application framework system.

The second kind of application is to organize the data and build the application around the core control point of the enterprise. To highlight the problem, assist in locating the cause of the problem, and take appropriate decisions to solve the problem as the main line. The application includes a certain degree of analysis of the flow of ideas, often combined with the management of the cockpit, or kanban applications, and so on some core control KPI as the portal. For example, commodity operation and management, can be sold out of the product rate as the core KPI, supplemented by order execution, gross profit margin and other indicators, do a good job in the season to monitor the operation of the commodity. and marketing line, you can achieve the achievement or gross profit as the core control, can also pay attention to the expansion speed and single-store operation capacity, wholesale agent can also join the order to follow up the implementation of. In addition, based on the financial data, this part of the enterprise operation of the most critical outcome indicators, you can also build the enterprise's overall kanban. From these examples, it can be seen that different enterprises, different business models, different management levels, the application of refinement may also have a large difference. After the construction of the application, the relevant managers can be simple, concise direct positioning to the existing problems in the operation, or direct risk warning to the appropriate equipment, especially for the high level, can make management easier, more intelligent, due to the more highly customized, also more appropriate.

At this point, the author of the garment enterprises in the construction of Business Intelligence (BI) system to do a simple introduction, less involved in the specific application content, but from the technology and management of two aspects of the business can be obtained from the benefits. As the application of data mining technology in the garment industry is less and not widely available, this article has not included it, but I believe it will be more and more valuable in the future.

Finally, a statement by a garment business executive at a BI mobilization meeting was made to end. Once, at the end of a bi system in-house training and mobilisation, a senior director of the client said: "The value of the building of BI systems is likely to be worthless and potentially worth tens of millions of, as we all use it." "Therefore, the harvest of BI system construction, after all, is still different from the enterprise, and then the root of the enterprise's culture, and business people, especially management is very relevant."

The meaning of BI