Tech Talk: Wading Through Too Much Data? Try a Modern Performance Management Solution

BY: Chris Nelson – Director of Product Strategy, HighJump Software

If you’re like many beer distributors, you probably have an excess of information being gathered from the various stages of the supply chain—from purchase orders to the brewery to the delivery to the retailer. You may have a favorite report you glance at to make sure everything is operating as it should, but could you be missing potentially useful data? How do you begin to sort it out? And who has the time to analyze it so that it can actually begin to benefit your business?

We hear lots of buzz words in the industry today related to tools and solutions to help solve this “data overload” problem. Terms such as “performance management” and “operational analysis” are often used to describe the analysis of data within your business. But few people have the time to figure out how to use the tools or access the data. The good news is that technology is available to help with this daunting task. Having the tools to gather, format and analyze information is nothing new. But the technology and tools to quickly and easily access the right information and make it obvious what should be done to improve the operation have vastly improved in recent years.

Here are three key characteristics to look for in a performance management solution to provide real value to your organization:

Will it be easy for me to use? How easily can the user interact with the application? Apple of course is the example often mentioned for this area. The iPod, iPhone and now iPad have brought about changes in the user interface and resulting user experience as we engage with technology. Quite simply, it has to be easy to use and learn. This same philosophy is working its way into software applications used in the beer distribution business. Simple, obvious choices with the robustness of many options make applications relevant and useful, yet easy to learn. Often this is being done with colors, graphical dashboards and touch-screen technologies which all make an application easy to use.

Does it offer pre-defined metrics? At one point in the evolution of software, the mantra was to provide customers with tools which could do anything. These tools would be very powerful since customers could use them to access pretty much any data from any database. The problem with this strategy was the tools were so powerful and complex that customers often threw up their hands in frustration and never used them. Performance management applications equipped with a number of metrics, reports, or information already configured in a manner which means something to a user makes the system easier to learn and use, and gets the user up and running with useful data quickly. Of course, users can add, delete and change the information if they know how to use the tool. Yet, it is the pre-defined information which makes a solution useful and valuable to a user right from the beginning. In the world of beer distribution, this means having information which is very specific to not only the industry, but often to a specific role. An example would be the warehouse manager or purchasing manager having the days on hand of inventory – perhaps with an automated alert to tell you if the quantity fell below a certain level.

Will I be looking at timely information? This one may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many businesses look at reports from last week or last month only to realize they should have made a change last week or last month. Not making the change may have cost their company thousands of dollars in lost revenue or wasted costs. Real-time or very close to real-time information is critical and basically expected from technology solutions today.

Another important detail is being able to have the pre-defined metrics and information pushed to you instead of having to check a report. This is where today’s technologies can really shine and add value. The information can be pushed to you via automated reporting, dashboards or even alerts based on specific criteria. You no longer have to proactively seek out the right information, it is sent directly to you – often across a variety of mediums, such as via e-mail, phone or an LCD panel with a dashboard.

There is certainly no shortage of software providers which can offer one or two of these characteristics, but the best modern solutions integrate all three into a truly valuable, industry-specific performance management solution for your business.

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