Table of Contents

List of Figures............................................................................................................................i

List of Tables............................................................................................................................ii

Introduction..............................................................................................................................3

Company Overview..................................................................................................................4

Business Process.......................................................................................................................5

Core Processes within Zara................................................................................................7

Support Processes...................................................................................................................8

Support Processes within Zara...............................................................................................8

Data Modelling.......................................................................................................................13

The Manufacturing Process Data Flow Diagram.................................................................14

Human Resources Process Data Flow Diagram...................................................................14

Finance Process Data Flow Diagram...................................................................................15

Data Classification.................................................................................................................16

Unstructured Data................................................................................................................17

Differences between Structured, Semi-structured and Unstructured Data..........................18

References...............................................................................................................................22

H.D.S. Enura Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence i

Introduction
In a world dominated by data, it is more important than ever for firms to understand how to
extract every drop of value from the vast amount of digital information available to them.
According to a survey from IDG Research, most (85%) of business leaders believe Big Data can
help make better, more-informed decisions, greatly improve the conduct of their business, and
they are not wrong (Better Buys, 2015). By enabling you to understand the data-sets related to
specific goals, strategies, and initiatives in your corporation, you can identify trends or patterns
that will greatly help you improve a number of corporation key fields. This concept is called
business intelligence.

In other words, Business intelligence (BI) refers to collecting and analyzing data to generate
information which improves business processes. The importance of business intelligence is
growing at the same rate as data, which is becoming less understandable to the average human
mind. So, without utilizing it to your advantage, you will soon be left behind due we live in a
world full of digital data.
Even so, despite the digital data power in decision making and improving business competence,
it is just beneficial if you know how to handle it rightly. This is where current business
intelligence concepts come in. Business intelligence concepts will help firms gain a wealth of
insights, predict the future of business, conduct measurement more accurately, reduce data
flowing and enable robust data visualizations.
In this assignment, the author will cover the significance of BI concepts in the modern era.
Moreover, will apply these various concepts to a specific of his choice to get a vivid idea on the
study. By completing this assignment, the reader will gain a lot of valuable knowledge about BI
and its various concepts. In addition, how business intelligence could save firms from losing the
upper hand in the market.
With these points in mind, let's start the report with a brief overview of author's chose's firm. A
company of the major industries booming around the world at the moment is the garment
industry. So, the author will focus on the apparel firm and its business operations and how he can
apply business intelligence concepts at that industry.

2
Task 1
1.1 Background details of the organization.
Company Overview

Zara is a Spanish clothing brand and one of the largest international fashion companies. It
belongs to Inditex, one of the world’s largest distribution groups, founded by Amancio Ortega in
1975 (Inditex, 2020). The firm is famous for its fashionable clothes for men, women, youth as
well as children's clothing (Zara Kids); they are high quality but affordable. The Spanish clothing
brand, it is possible that the amalgamation of all of these qualities has allowed Zara, to become
the perfect fashion brand for everyone. Not surprisingly, Zara, which was originally a small store
in Spain, is now the largest retailer in the world and its founder is 4th richest man in the world.
The roles and responsibilities used of the firm operate in an accurate and effective manner in the
desired options. this make it among the leading names in the fast fashion world. The brand has
grown rapidly in terms of market size, global presence, sales and revenue. our firm's speed in
keeping pace with the rapid change that has become changing in short periods of its place has
made it one of the most successful and capable brands for customers ’desires, the size of its
market also increased.

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Fig 1: The ZARA Company logo is chosen
Today, Zara has nearly 2259 stores in 96 countries around the world, the leading brand in market
is famous for converting product ideas into fast products (Wikipedia, 2021). Zara's success secret
has been largely due to the way has followed street fashion with changing times. i.e. the product
idea on the table takes the form of a finished product and reaches to their stores in a short period
of time not exceeding two weeks. In most cases, clothes are delivered within 48 hours. Zara
produces over 450 million items a year. which made it a pioneer in the field of competition with
other stores that It takes six months to bring to the new market.

1.2 Identify and explain different business processes and supporting processes models used
at the selected organization with examples.

Business Process
A business process is a series of repeatable steps taken by a team or business to achieve a type of
business purpose: managing deliveries, assembling products, incorporating employees, and so
on. The key side of a business process is repeatability: the process is not a matter of time. The
main advantage of business processes is that they improve your business. On the other hand,
through an organized business process the manager knows exactly what needs to be done step by
step. This, in turn, makes your business more efficient (Amit, 2021).

Clearer responsibilities: everyone knows the task they're supposed to be on. So, you wouldn't
have employees working on the same mission, for example, or a mission that is left unfinished
because no one thought it was their or your work (Amit, 2021).
Fewer mistakes: Everyone is conscious of his duty, and there is less room for human error.
Higher Productivity: By properly communicating tasks throughout the corporation, your
employees will end up being more productive, as less time is spent on organizational problems.
Lower costs - As productivity increases, personnel will have a much better 'output', as they
spend less time on useless work and more on really important missions (Amit, 2021).

4
This is the major concept of a business process. There are Three Broad Types of Business
Processes. It is as follows:
 Core Processes
 Support Processes
 Management Processes

We'll look at the core business process and support to the business operations of Zara
Clothing Company and also discussing about it in this report.

Core Processes
Generally, an essence business process is defined as the minimum individual missions that needs
to be performed to provide a consistent certain level in production, irregardless of software,
hardware, or performance (Comidor, 2017). When a major operation is performed, everything
can be added to let it more efficient, but nothing can be eliminated. When the major business
process indicates that certain missions must be performed in sequence, this should be reflected in
the execution. Likewise, any specific formula or step correlated with a mission must also be
reflected in the execution. The core business process can consist of the following subcategories:
(Comidor, 2017)

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  Marketing
 Sales
 Logistics – Product Delivery
 Operations
 Customer Support

Core Processes within Zara

At clothing brand Zara, their core business process is to sell a new design of clothing often.
During their business model, they target to contribute to the sustainable development of society
and which environment with which people interact. Their core BP is of great value, as it gives
Fig 2: Operational Business Processes at a Company

clients an exclusive fashion choice by providing a faster turnover of new inventory from other
fashion retailers. At Zara, they mainly depend on design, manufacture and sales (ZARA’S CASE
STUDY, 2017).
The Zara brand consists of an active core business process, it occupies the design and fashion
market readily. as previously mentioned, Zara depend on design and most of the time they
produce new fashion designs and concepts within a week. Whilst other retailers focus on
promotions and marketing, core business process of Zara focuses on client turnover and sales
(Ghemawat and Dailey, 2003). Due to its immense popularity, the Zara brand seldom do any
marketing or promotion. Zara clothing brand thrives on the flexible and resilient business model.
Because of these key points, Zara as an apparel brand has the top rank and it really works for the
firm.

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 Fig 3: Operating Model Components of Zara

Support Processes

Support processes are all operations whose sole objective is to ensure the functioning of the core
operations (main processes) and the functioning of the firm itself, due they support core
processes, they provide the commercial resources in the quality and quantity needed, ensuring
the quality of resource supplies or support services and covering the overall efficient operation of
the organization (Management mania, 2019).
For example, support operations include:

• HRM

• Financial Management processes

• Building and property management, maintenance, cleaning and facilities management.

• IT processes

• Procurement, sourcing processes

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 • Vendor Management processes

• Routine operation and operational processes, organization management.

• Risk Management processes

• Security Management processes

• Quality Management processes

• Corporate Governance processes

Here the reader teaches about the supporting business process, and in the report next part, will be
focus on the supporting business process in the picked firm Zara. due Zara has one of the best
core business models, it isn't a standalone model. The core business model; process is so
successful due it gets all the needed support from the other process.

Supporting Processes within Zara

At Zara, to support the key business process, they are already using the supporting business
processes. Here is a list of the support process they use to get the work done. Zara Corporation
expand by supporting both manual and automated business processes. If the process is manual, it
is accomplished without the aid of automation or assistive technology. If it is automated, then
technical assistance has been put in place that helps the users to carry out the process in a more
accurate, standardized or improvement manner (Caro, 2010). So, will take a look at some of
Zara's supporting business processes.

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The support processes mentioned above are some of the major operations within Zara Apparel
Corporation. The manufacturing support process includes the product assemblage process & the
corporation's quality assurance process. This process is significant, as it actually works as a core
process within the corporation at times. Likewise, Likewise, finance and human resources also
play a major role within Zara Apparel Corporation (ahallak, 2015).

Management Processes
Whether they are core or support operations, processes are requiring planning and coordination,
monitoring and control. Management processes also contain measuring overall results and
dealing with opportunities and threats that may help or harm the company business. Whereas, it
is up to management to ensure which regulatory compliance needs are met and that financial
objectives and budgets are met. Even though the management processes do not generate income
directly, they improve income generation and ensure the business continued survival as a whole
(Sonia, 2021)
A well-operated supply chain has becoming an increasingly critical element for firms to possess.
in orderly to properly analysis the supply chain for ZARA, to verify the keys to success, certain
aspects as design and Production, Procurement, Information Systems, Inventory Management,
Centralized Logistics and Distribution, Low marketing / advertising cost should be explained, it
will reveal how ZARA's ability to produce high quality products, at competitive prices,
compared to its competitors (Basu, 2008).

Manufacturing Support

Manufacturing is the products production to use or sale using labor, machines and tools,
chemical and biological processing, or formulation, and is the essence of secondary industry

9
(Wikipedia, 2021). Zara Apparel Corporation thrives on the manufacturing process due it is one
of the key support operations in the building (ahallak, 2015). Zara's engineering team is
experimenting with various kinds of manufacturing processes to produce the most efficient
clothes. As for the laborers of Zara, clothing is one of the key features of human societies, and
they consider it the motivation as while creating these luxurious clothes. The types of clothing
which are wear depend on the kind's body, size, social considerations and geographic. The flow
chart below shows a discussion on garment manufacturing process series at Zara corporation
(GradesFixer, 2019).

Fig 4: Manufacturing Process Flow Chart

HR Supporting Process

HRM is the process of hire, selection and orientation, staff participation, employee performance
evaluation, training and development, determination of salary and benefits, employee’s

10
motivation and keeping good relations with staffs and their unions, ensuring personnel safety,
social protection and health measures accordance with labor legislation in the country
(GradesFixer, 2019). While considering the hiring process in Zara Apparel Corporation, they
have a strict manner of recruiting individuals due they are purposing to get the employees best
sample from all over the world. Although Zara is featured, all outlets have one method of hiring
individuals. The flowchart below will give a detailed idea of the recruitment process within Zara
Apparel Corporation (ahallak, 2015).

Fig 5: Human Resource Management Flow Chart

Financing Supporting Process financial support process

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The road to maintain a firm's business degree is accounting, but finances resources give the life
for business. Few decisions are ever made without input from the participation managers in
financial, as finance is critical. At considering a Zara Apparel Corporation, finance is a must in
nearly each business decision on the firm's processes. From planning, budgeting, cash flow
management to risk-management, costs and capital-structure, in Zara all the necessities are
carried out by the financial section. To get a vivid idea about the flow of financing position in a
firm, this is illustrated through the flowchart with necessary acts below, In relation to the
billing/invoice process in the financial sector within Zara Apparel Corporation. Through the
flowchart below, can gain a vivid idea of the financial support process in Zara Corporation.

Fig 6: Finance Management Flow Chart

1.3 Explanation above data which used by various process models.

Data Modelling
Data modeling is a process used to define and analyze available data requirements needed to
support business operations as portion of corporations' corresponding information systems, it is
an integral part of the planning phase of any analytics deployment or business intelligence
project (Talend ,2021). As an eventually, the data modeling process involves professional data
designers who work carefully in the corporation with stakeholders, and with potential users of
the information system as well. Consequently, the data which was used in the three process
models mentioned above will be discussing in this section of the report.
The three key supporting models in Zara are manufacturing, human resources, and finance.
These three processes utilize much of data in order to get the task done rightly. So, let's take a
vivid idea of what data will be utilizing for these operations. Moreover, it is convenient to use

12
dataflow diagrams to display the data that has been utilized in the supporting forms mentioned
above.

The Manufacturing Process Data Flow Diagram

The reader can get a vivid idea of the process through the diagram below, which shows Zara's
manufacturing process. All necessary data to complete the process has been added.

Fig 7: Data Flow Diagram of Manufacturing Process

Human Resources Process Data Flow Diagram

The reader can get a vivid idea of the process through the diagram below, which shows Zara's
Human Resources. All necessary data to complete the process has been added.

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 Fig 8: Data Flow Diagram of HR Management

Finance Process Data Flow Diagram

The reader can get a vivid idea of the process through the diagram below, which shows Zara's
Finance process. All necessary data to complete the process has been added.

14
 s

Fig 9: Data Flow Diagram Finance Process

1.4 Differentiation between data classification based on the selected organization in terms
of structured, semi structured and unstructured.

Data Classification
Data classification is defined broadly as the organizing data process into related categories so
that it can be utilized and protected more effective. At a basic level, the classification process
makes it easy to site and retrieve data. Data classification is especially significant for a
corporation to improve risk management, compliance, data security (Aggarwal, 2015).
The Zara brand grows on data due they collect so much valuable data about competitors and
staffs. Zara has a wide range of ports, and it's significant to get useful data and evolve around
one major protocol, as well to ease of relevant data analyzing, Zara mainly divides the data into
three key categories (2012books).
 Structured Data
 Semi-Structured Data

15
  Unstructured Data

For the Zara apparel brand process this classification is very vital in multiple methods. For
example, hiring employees are done by the human resources department. They consider various
resumes and resumes when hiring individuals (TechTarget, 2019).
All info about a person in a CV including their educational details, work experience, personal
interests, address, etc. In docx file or pdf format, size in kb's. This data can be easily retrieved
and analyzed as it is very small-sized data. But in this digital era with the advent of new
technologies, there has been a massive spike in the size of data. Thus, to store relevant
information, that is a good idea to have a clear knowledge of data classifications (TechTarget,
2019).

For vividly understand this part of the assignment, will take a closer look at those three key parts
of data classifications. In finally, in order to have a better idea, is illustrated by a comparison
chart of these data.

Structured Data
Structured data is data which adheres to a predefined data model and thus facilitates its analysis.
The structured data corresponds to a tabular format with the relationship among the various rows
and columns, usual examples about structured data are Excel files, or SQL databases. Either of
them has structured, sortable rows and columns (Framework, 2020).

Fig 10: Illustration of Data Classification

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Structured data relies on a data model presence, which is a model for how data is stored,
processed, and accessed. as of the data model, each field is separate and can be accessed
separately or together, with data from other fields. This is making the structured data more
powerful: it is possible to fast add data from different locations at the database (Framework,
2020). Structured data is the most "traditional" form of data storage. Due early versions of
Database Management Systems (IDBMSI) could store, process and access structured data.

Unstructured Data
Unstructured data is information which doesn't have a predefined data model or isn't structured in
a predefined path. The unstructured information usually contains text. However, it can contain
data also like dates, numbers, and facts. This results at irregularities and ambiguities which make
the difficulty for understanding the utilize of traditional programs on data stored in organized
databases. Also, unstructured data's common examples include audio and video, and non-SQL
databases (Framework, 2020).
The storage and processing capacity of unstructured data has increased dramatically in these
years, thanks to the many new technologies and tools available in the market which can store
specialized sorts of unstructured data. For example, MongoDB; is optimized for document
storage. Otherwise, Apache Giraph is optimized to store relationships among nodes
(Venkatraman, 2016)
The capacity to analyze unstructured data is specific importance in the context of big data, as
much of the data in organizations is not structured. Think of images, videos or PDF documents.
Think of photos, videos, or PDF documents. The capacity to extract the value of unstructured
data is one of the main drivers of the rapid growth of big data.

Semi – Structured Data

Semi-structured data is, as its name suggests, it's a mixture of both structured and unstructured
data, but does not conform to the formal structure of data models associated with relational
databases or other forms of spreadsheets, but does contain tags or other to separate semantic
elements and apply it. Records and fields hierarchies. In data for that, it is also known as a self-
descriptive structure. Examples of semi-structured data include JSON and XML are semi-
structured data models (Framework, 2020).

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This third category (among structured and unstructured data) the reason for its existence is that
analyzing semi-structured data is much easier than unstructured data. Many big data solutions
and tools have the ability to "read" and manipulate JSON or XML. This reduces the complexity
of analyzing structured data over unstructured data (Framework, 2020).

Differences between Structured, Semi-structured and Unstructured Data

The first thing to know isn't all data are created equal. It means that the data generated of social
media applications is completely various from the data generated by point of sale or supply chain
systems (Sint and Stroka, 2019).
Moreover, some data are structured or semi-structured, but most are unstructured. And this data
is collected, processed and analysed depends on its format.
To clear things up, let's compare the distinct differences between structured, semi-structured and
unstructured data according to Sint and Stroka.

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 Table 2: Classification between different data types

As is known, Zara flourish on data. The above variations can be really efficient when
distinguishing various data when collecting information in a firm. Data classification in Zara
consists of classifying and organizing data to improve analyze and decision making.

With Zara Apparel Corporation for example, classifying or disaggregating data based on
business significance and frequency of utilize could be significant to business process
definitions. Classification of data on the basis of compliance and regulation can be portion of a
risk management program. The data profiling relies heavily on data types and collections with
similar content, a certain type of data classification is so required in a customer (MDM) software

19
is the client hierarchy (Mark and Dalton, 2015). For an example, management of customer
hierarchy involves managing client data relationships to represent organizational structures for a
corporation. One else classification (in MDM of products, as example) is product classification,
which is essential for organizing products for a variety of purposes (Mark and Dalton, 2015).
With a Business Intelligence (BI) perspective in branding Zara, hierarchical data organization is
primary. This supply a better understanding of market and industry division. The volume of
underlying data can be very heavy. Profiling this data hierarchically is a basic first step in
providing the best meaning of the information. The results can be applied to market campaigns,
cross sales and incentive sales (Mark and Dalton, 2015).

By an operational point of view at Zara Apparel, managing the hierarchy is also essential to
improvement basic data management efforts. Several industries, like sales, may have a direct
interest in institution of the line in order to divide the area and secure sales commissions.

It is doubtful that a single hierarchical representation of each data entity would meet the needs of
all LOBs within any large corporation. Multiple representations are not uncommon but do add to
the cost of a project. Maintaining a single hierarchy can be so difficult as it is. As various
perspectives grow, firms risk compromising the key reason they were involved in the MDM
project in the first place: Agreed presentation of master data via the entire corporation. Finding
the good and right balance is the key (Mark and Dalton, 2015).

Often a multi-domain MDM repository has relational relationships (for example, a client has
multiple addresses or accounts, an asset is linked to a specific account, etc.). These kinds of
relationships are inherent in the warehouse structure and conceptually differ from hierarchy
management. Moreover, the MDM repository may not support hierarchy management. This may
not present a problem with implementation, as some companies choose to perform hierarchy
management outside of the multi-domain MDM operational center, and within an analytical
environment. Expert guidance is usually useful to advise on the best approach (Mark and Dalton,
2015).

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 Finally, the reader can clearly see why and how data is so significant to the brand and the
firm. Since the Zara apparel brand is a Leader Corporate Brand in the fashion garment market,
the above data rankings play a big role. it's will help the firm to run smoothly and it can reduce
issues related to various issues pointing to the data. Additionally, data segmentation can help
Zara corporate maintain standards and compete with its competitors much effectively. To here,
the reader can have a vivid idea by reading this of report part on data classification and the
variations between data types and what is the significance of data classification. * *

21
2.2 What are the business intelligence tools commonly used in selected organization? Justify
with specific examples of the key features of business intelligence functionality. Business
Intelligence Tools Business Intelligence (BI) tools are tools that use a set of methodologies and
technologies to prepare, present and help analyze data. Through this process, data is transformed
into actionable business information that helps decision makers and end users make decisions
based on more efficient data (Financesonline.com, 2019). The set of methodologies and
technologies used by business intelligence varies greatly depending on the purpose of the
solution. Some tools focus on data preparation and may include elements such as the extraction,
transformation, loading (ETL) layer to better organize and use the data. Some tools focus on
broader business use and can also focus on combining data to help companies make
organizational decisions based on information from disparate departmental systems. Some tools
focus more on self-service capabilities and end-user experience. And some tools focus on
enabling the analysis of other applications, focus on what is called "Integrated BI" or "Embedded
Analysis" and include a wide range of additional features that facilitate integration into other
applications existing systems (Technologyadvice.com, 2019). In simple words, Business
intelligence tools are all about helping you understand trends and deriving insights from your
data so that you can make tactical and strategic business decisions, plus BI tools help
organizations to improve their decision making & social collaboration. It provides the means for
efficient reporting, thorough analysis of data, statistics & analytics. Hence, in this section the
author will be talking about the BI tools which are commonly used by the Zara franchise, and the
key features and functionalities of those BI tools. By reading this section, the reader can a gain
knowledge on most common BI tools and its’ features. Figure 16 - Illustration of BI tool features
H. D. S. Enura Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 40 Use of BI Tools in Zara Zara
has used management information systems (MIS) and has advanced in many areas. This resulted
in great success for the company. This included the Business Intelligence (BI) application that
involves technologies, collection practices, integration and presentation applications, and
commercial information analysis. Business intelligence focuses on promoting better business
decision making (Technologyadvice.com, 2019). BI describes a set of information about
concepts and methods for better business decision making. This is achieved through the use of a
fact-based support system. Intelligence systems are data-based and are sometimes used in
information systems for managers. Predictive views on business operations can be provided

22
through the use of BI systems. Predictive views on business operations can be provided through
the use of BI systems since historical and current data is collected in a database that compares
the performance of other companies in the same sector (Financesonline.com, 2019). In Zara's
franchise, they use two main business intelligence tools/software to maintain the workload.
Which are; • Dematic BI Tool - Supply Chain Management & Logistics • TradeGecko BI Tool -
Inventory Management Software Business Intelligence Tool Dematic Dematic designs develop
and deliver solutions that optimize your supply chain, improve performance and increase
productivity. They understand the economic drivers of their business and are in tune with the
constantly changing market trends. Its industry-leading automation software and technologies
will allow your organization to meet customer demands, job challenges and asset and space
utilization requirements. With more than 75 years of solid design and delivery experience,
Dematic solutions will strengthen and improve your supply chain and catapult your organization
into the future (Financesonline.com, 2019). Figure 17 - BI Tool Dematic logo H. D. S. Enura
Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 41 Business Intelligence Tool TradeGecko
TradeGecko is empowering retailers and wholesalers to become as fast and efficient as today’s
modern e-Commerce businesses. TradeGecko beautifully fuses inventory management
operations, critical business applications and online commerce to build the central core of
wholesale business operations. TradeGecko is a cloud-based inventory management platform for
retailers and wholesalers that want effortless commerce. Since Zara has a large network and
therefore handles large volumes of data, a corporate information system has been used in the
company. It is usually a type of computer system that involves a business class, which generally
provides a complete, high-volume, data-based service that a large organization can support. With
this system, a technological platform is provided that allows the company to have information
that can be shared at all useful levels of management. Business systems are essential to eliminate
the problem of information fragmentation. This happens when there are many information
systems in a company. The problem is solved by developing a standard data structure
(Technologyadvice.com, 2019). Zara is a great organization. Business systems are housed in
many data centers and include a content management system as the main application. Zara's team
is made up of technology professionals. These include content specialists, network and systems
engineers, Flash developers, database administrators and business administrators, software
developers, quality control managers and IT support technicians. application. All these

23
specialists work together to provide companies with a competitive advantage by allowing them
to react quickly (Technologyadvice.com, 2019). The Zara is devoted to integrating information
technology appropriately into all areas of its operations and activities. The range of services and
resources available to its clients is attributed to the commitment of integration of IT properly in
the organization. The client services group in the Zara partners with staff and clients to identify
and meet each group’s technological requirements. This group of technical advisors associates
with departments to execute a roadmap for a team’s technological vision and then defines this
vision within entity projects. Figure 18 - BI Tool TradeGecko logo H. D. S. Enura Indula
(COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 42 Significant support is needed for an invariable
innovation. Zara IT Group is dedicated to community development through technology and
works closely with business partners. The IT group is dedicated to the development of the
community through technology and works closely with business partners. The IT group has the
technical support and tools they need to present new ideas and disseminate them to the general
community. This ensures that customer needs are met. An increasingly advanced technological
infrastructure has allowed the company to develop and maintain a fully integrated
organization/company. The infrastructure has allowed the company to develop and maintain a
fully integrated organization/company. The infrastructure includes a core of systems and tests
designed to produce flexibility and the capacity for innovation and growth (García Aller, 2019).
Zara thrives in an environment of change, experimentation and learning that extends modular
tools, models and platforms that are easy to use and involve all aspects of life in Zara.
Companies that include professional development, administration and operations are created and
developed (Santaolalla, 2019). In Zara, other web solutions with advanced knowledge
management are implemented, which drastically changes the quality and speed of work in
commercial operations. In the explosive growth of the software market, new global growth for
the software market, a new world of connectivity is being realized in Zara. The urgency of the
company, aware of the importance of the corporate portal, has allowed the linking of
information, data, people, and knowledge to provide commercial solutions. Business portals
come from consumer portals such as AltaVista, Yahoo and Lycos (Santaolalla, 2019). The
portals (gateways) show the importance of allowing customers to have a wide range of varied
information on the Web. This has led to more multitasking tasks, receiving information and
verification from various sources, allowing participation in projects that transcend geographical

24
boundaries with this technology, meeting the needs of the community, employees and even
extended, more advanced networks. Zara is perhaps the most devastating and innovative retailer
in the world. With more than 1,000 stores worldwide, Zara has turned the control of clothing
factories into a competitive advantage when making and designing clothes. By making your own
clothes, you can react quickly to different market trends. Zara has managed to build a great
brand, without promotion or advertising, but through information systems and information
technologies (García Aller, 2019). H. D. S. Enura Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence
43 Key Business Intelligence Features Most companies have started their business intelligence
adventure using Excel spreadsheets. Also, at that time, spreadsheets were probably enough to
create dashboards and simple graphics to give management a holistic view of business data, such
as sales, revenue, costs and personnel. There was no exception for the Zara franchise. Before the
company was in full swing, they used Excel spreadsheets (Adair, 2019). But as the company
grows in size and turnover, the data also increases. At that time, Zara discovered that Excel
sheets were locked as the data grew. As a result, updating your control panels has taken longer
and sharing large files has become difficult (Adair, 2019). When Zara reached that point, they
made a great leap by switching to a dedicated analysis solution, such as QlikView, Tableau, SAS
or Dome. These BI tools provide the most common features, including data analysis, data
visualization, ad hoc analysis, panels, ad hoc consultation tools, ad hoc reports, performance
metrics and performance indicators (Izenda, 2019). While some of the above features may sound
similar to the capabilities of an Excel sheet, they differ in some important ways, for example: •
The scale and usability of these functions is much greater in a dedicated BI software platform; BI
tools are capable of handling huge data volumes without errors. • They let you work with
dynamic real-time data and offer a wider range of data visualization options, including heat
maps, sparklines, geographical mapping, and spider charts. • The reporting and dashboard
capabilities of BI solutions are far more interactive than those of MS Excel. • In addition, most of
the common features offered by BI solutions are easy to use and do not require any specialized
IT expertise. Keep the above points in mind. Let’s look at the most important BI features for an
organization as well as for the Zara. The most important business intelligence features include: 1.
Ranking Reports Ranking reports allow you to easily see the best performing and low
performance facets of your business, from products to marketing campaigns and vendors. You
can show classifications in several dimensions and specify several criteria to guide your results

25
(Izenda, 2019). H. D. S. Enura Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 44 2. What-If
Analysis If you want to know how a future decision will affect your business, you can perform
an analysis of "what would happen if" using historical data to predict possible impacts. The
scenario analysis tools give you an objective view of the risks and benefits inherent in each
potential decision and allow you to better plan your future (Izenda, 2019). 3. Executive
Dashboards Executive panels provide executives in your organization with real-time information
about your business in the form of graphs, diagrams, summaries and other informational reports.
They help their business leaders to make smarter, faster and smarter decisions (Adair, 2019). 4.
Interactive Reports Interactive reports allow users to condense the massive amounts of collected
data into a wide variety of possible views. Users can take advantages of features like statistical
analysis and regression to identify trends, anomalies and outliers in the data (Izenda, 2019). 5.
Geospatial Mapping Applications using location intelligence can take your information and
transform it into graphical and cartographic representations, simplifying your geographical data.
At a glance, judging which regions are performing better than others — and which ones need
particular attention — becomes much easier (Eiloart, 2019). 6. Operational Reports At the end of
each day, business intelligence features like these can provide your organization’s executives
with a detailed summary of the daily events, giving them the information, they need to make
critical decisions (Adair, 2019). 7. Pivot Tables Pivot tables can automatically extract important
features from a large and messy data set. They can perform calculations such as sorting, counting
or averaging the data stored in one table and displaying the results summarized in another table.
Pivot tables are essential tools to analyze information and discover hidden trends (Izenda, 2019).
H. D. S. Enura Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 45 8. Ad-Hoc Reports Instead of
burdening your IT department with requests for detailed reports, ad-hoc reports are one of
several important features of BI that let your nontechnical end-users generate their own reports
on the fly. Users can pick and choose the elements that they wish to be included in the report,
emphasizing only those aspects that are relevant to their query (Eiloart, 2019). 9. User-Specific
Security If you need to restrict certain users’ access to particular data sets, your BI tool should
allow you to personalize your BI features and applications to individuals or groups of users.
Some solutions provide user-specific data sources, where a single application pulls from
different sources of data depending on who’s using the application (Adair, 2019). 10. Open
Integration Smart BI platforms will be able to access not only your organization’s own data, but

26
information from email, social media, websites and more. For example, instead of only providing
your internal sales data, your BI platform could accompany that information with reviews and
comments about your products (Eiloart, 2019). The characteristics mentioned above are mainly
used by the Zara organization to conquer the market. Several authorized staff members will use
these functions and analyze the data, mainly their competitors, and will take the necessary
measures to maintain the growth of the company. (Izenda, 2019). The figure below will
emphasize that the characteristics mentioned above are the most sought after by buyers in the last
year of 2018 (Eiloart, 2019). Based on the responses of representatives from more than 600
companies, we have compiled a list of the key features that business intelligence software buyers
are looking for in 2018 (Izenda, 2019). Our respondents represented several different sectors,
from government entities and law firms to guitar retailers and manufacturers of electronic
products for the aerospace industry. Their responses provided us with data on the characteristics
most sought by market players for a business intelligence system (Adair, 2019). H. D. S. Enura
Indula (COL/A-060329) Business Intelligence 46 With so many data formats and applications to
extract, it is important that your BI platform can integrate so many different types of data under
one roof, perfectly combining disparate forms of information in a single database. exploitable
report (Eiloart, 2019). In conclusion, in general, most respondents want basic functions of their
business intelligence software: panels, visualizations and reports. But many buyers have also
expressed interest in more advanced analytical capabilities, for example. Predictive analysis, data
mining, ETL, OLAP and exploration functions (Eiloart, 2019). It seems that buyers' needs are
generally basic or that the gap can be based on awareness. Buyers are more aware of the standard
features of Business Intelligence and may not be familiar with advanced analysis tools, their
features and how the features can help their business in its current state (Eiloart, 2019). A
tendency to prioritize familiarity is evident. When choosing a decision support software, buyers
tend to be interested in the features they know, hoping to streamline the decision-making process
(Eiloart, 2019). This means that buyers should explore the options in greater depth to make
informed decisions about BI software. A complete portrait of the characteristics of the industry
can give the supplier the option to transform the data of one-dimensional information into an
insightful work tool.

27
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