Business Intelligence at Canadian Tire

Business Intelligence at Canadian Tire The overall purpose of Business Intelligence systems and software is to manage and analyze data in a manner that would support effective decision making. The BI initiative could help Canadian Tire to manage and analyze its data in a way that would allow the company to consolidate and integrate some of its information systems. The information provided in the case indicates that CTC is operating and supporting many different operation systems, mainframes, hardware platforms, database management systems, production applications and desktop-based application and tools. Consolidating and integrating some of these systems would assist CTC not only in managing data more effectively, but also in cutting costs on the maintenance and management of its information systems. This is true of any information system that has room for consolidation and integration improvements. For instance, in the reading “The Quest for Customer Focus”, Continental Airlines was able consolidate its previous 85 to 90 database systems into just a 2 database systems. Merging the databases helped Continental improve its information system by creating a consensus between the data analysis with regard to matters such as who the most valued customers are. Integrating their information systems also helped Continental to eliminate costly problems such as customers being able to get more than one flight voucher for bumped flights, because gate agents and telephone agents were unable to determine if the customer had already been compensated using the previous system. The case mentioned 10 common challenges of business information implementation: “budget constraints, data quality, understanding and managing user expectations, culture change, time required to implement, data integration, education and training, ROI justification, business rules analysis, and management sponsorship” (Haggety &Meister, Pg. 6). In the case of CTC, we believe that most important