Home

Empowering Knowledge Workers in Your Organization

The confluence of data access, end-user authoring tools and best practices yields knowledge workers who are empowered to use the information resources of their organization to move the business forward. Imagine an environment in which knowledge workers throughout the enterprise can integrate their Microsoft Office documents seamlessly with the central data warehouse, author their own content and share not only their findings, but their methods and acumen with peers and management – all without burdening IT.

Knowledge Worker Empowerment in Action

The following is a short case study about a company that successfully empowered its Knowledge Workers through the application of appropriate technology. This organization is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of toys.

The Problem

This organization sells a huge variety of products across several large retailers. The toy industry is very volatile, with constant shifts in product sales trends and even category definitions. This organization wanted the ability to let end users create and share data driven PowerPoint presentations that reflected common product definitions across more than 20,000 SKUs and allowed the users to define hierarchies on-the-fly to accurately reflect each retailer’s business. Using the retailers point of sale (POS) data, this organization also wanted to create a single, integrated data warehouse that allowed end-users to view a ‘total universe’ as well as the granular data for each retail partner.

The Solution

Using XP3, this organization automated the data loading, integration and segmentation process. This process included:

  • Automatically loading data from all POS providers
  • Automatically assigning product and time period attributes based on the internal structure in the organization’s global reporting system
  • Automatically creating an integrated source of data by aligning products, time periods and measures across the data provided by each retail provider
  • Providing access across the enterprise to a robust set of data on an open, industry-standard platform

 

XP3 was distributed to Knowledge Workers throughout the organization and end-users were trained and empowered to:

  • Author best-in-class sales and marketing analysis decks directly in Microsoft Office
  • Provide management and retail partners with real fair-share numbers based on an integrated view of the POS data
  • Create and drill into dynamic data hierarchies based on a common set of attributes, directly in Microsoft Office
  • Distribute and present dynamic, data-driven presentations complete with intelligent findings, Excel charts and tables and geographic maps in both a connected and off-line state

The Result

Originally rolled out in the United States, this system was deployed across Europe and Asia to empower Knowledge Workers throughout the global organization. End users are able to better leverage the enterprise data by effectively presenting it to customers, partners and management in a familiar Microsoft Office environment. And it was freed up to address the next strategic initiative!