BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence

Ferrari North America Inc.

Ferrari North America is a subsidiary of the Italian based automotive company. It is owned by Fiat and based in Englewood, NJ.

Rikad Model

Applying the RIKAD Model to the Ferrari NA shows that the primary business needs of this subsidiary of Ferrari is to support the distribution of automobiles and sales all over North and South America. Moreover, their business needs revolve around the after-sales support, performing essential functions of warranty administration, technical and sales training, customer service and marketing (IDC, 2008).

Ferrari NA has re-organized its business strategy as a planned action to re-evaluate its primary decision making processes for technology architecture. It identified its key areas for initial concern including ease of use and flexibility with minimal or no training (IDC, 2008).

In addition, Ferrari NA discovered the significant flaws in its data management. These include its methods to extract data manually from the transactional applications of the company. This influenced its time efficiency and precision, affecting the company's growth. For this purpose, it implemented new approaches to allow its users to carry out ad-hoc queries and gain access to pre-formatted reports. This was the step ahead for Ferrari NA to seek Business Intelligence (IDC, 2008).

Dikar Model

Applying the DIKAAR model to Ferrari NA shows that the major data management methods included the extraction of data from the applications used for transactions into static reports. The common practice was to export this data for manipulation and format to spreadsheets. This was recognized as time-consuming and prone to errors that hampered the work efficiency of employees. With regard to information delivery, this practice resulted in latency of the process involving decision makers and caused further problems in the ad-hoc analysis. In addition, this practice demanded the use of sophisticated software retooling efforts to view data by new dimensions in the IT department (IDC, 2008).

This scenario presented the limited IT resources of the company, which required an inexpensive tool to be performed. Ferrari NA needed the development of ad-hoc query system including its interpretation, supporting their budget based on structured reports (IDC, 2008). For this purpose, Ferrari NA reached out for business intelligence. It developed more sophisticated technology driven methods that boosted its business operations.

Business Intelligence Implementation

The IT department of Ferrari, NA needed a means by which all of their regional offices, suppliers, and dealers could track and monitor auto and parts inventory (Stolte and Jewett et al., 2011).

Technical

The technical implementation of business intelligence was by the Tableau Software. They first faced the challenge of extracting data from the operational applications of Ferrari NA that was based on IBM DB2 database software. For this purpose, a new product from Hit Software was used for hourly replications of the source tables into a Microsoft SQL based server operational data store. The Tableau Software for business intelligence was then implemented. This method eliminated the need of traditional data warehousing. The primary target of Ferrari NA is to manage the automobiles ...