Internationalization of the Company

Information is important to a manager because it allows them to make business decisions. I’ll use my work as an example. I work in a materials group that plans inventory for our distribution centers. It’s important for me to have metrics on all areas of the supply chain to help me understand where opportunities exist to improve performance. One of the harder concepts for me to grasp as I moved into roles where I had responsibility to improve process is, I don’t have the resources to solve every problem now. I need information systems to help me understand what my biggest opportunities are for improvement so I can prioritize those over less urgent opportunities. If my information is not organized, readily available, easy to access, available on multiple mediums, actionable, and accurate then I may not be making the correct decisions.

At my company, platforms like tableau have revolutionized the way we access our data and turn it into information. Previously we used Microsoft Access to query data to pull reports, but it was slow and usually done at the individual level instead of by a department/group responsible for information systems. The data was not always accurate and not easy to access. It made it difficult to, quickly, reposition priorities based on what is happening in the business or to even identify what the opportunities are. Now we have dedicated groups responsible for our information systems. For business metrics, tableau is the common medium to view information. The groups responsible for managing our information systems create the dashboards for us. This helps make sure the data is being used correctly across business units accessing the same data sources.

Supply chain management involves input from many different groups such as operations, purchasing, marketing and sales. One of the unintended or unthought of outcomes of making our data easier to access is that it allows other groups (sales, marketing, etc) to access our data and make decisions off it. To get to this point or information system teams had to create dashboards for our metrics that also allowed us to drill down to the problem. If our ability to fulfill an order, which we call availability, drops then we need to be able to find out why. What supplier is it, what part(s), how big is the material impact, and what’s the financial impact. We work with hundreds of suppliers and don’t have the ability to assign a dedicated resource to manage the supplier’s performance. Having information that is scalable depending on who or what the problem is makes sure our information is relevant across hierarchal levels.