Business Intelligence applied to inventory management: case of a small retail company

• Published in: GeSec : Revista de Gestão e Secretariado 2024-02, Vol.15 (2), p.e3457
• Main Authors: Aguiar, Clara Gouveia, Alcalá, Symone Gomes Soares
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2178-9010; 2178-9010
• DOI: 10.7769/gesec.v15i2.3457

Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of techniques that assist organizations in making data-driven decisions, enabling interactive access to information, often in real-time. In this way, its application provides precise business analyses, contributing to goal tracking, results projection, identification of opportunities, and anticipation of risks. Therefore, the objective of this work is to create a BI solution using data extracted from an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to assist inventory management in a small-scale retail company specializing in party supplies. Factors such as shelf stockouts and inconsistencies between the system and the real environment have driven the development of this project. Facing ineffective inventory management and limited access to strategic information, a BI solution was developed in the company following steps such as problem analysis, data selection, extraction and processing, database modeling, BI implementation, and testing and evaluation. Thus, two focused dashboards were developed, one for the overall inventory report and another for monitoring safety stock. Through these dashboards, it is possible to assess inventory levels and product movement, devise strategies based on historical analyses, and identify the need to issue new purchase orders by product. The achieved results were positive, highlighting significant improvements in inventory management effectiveness and consolidating decision-making processes through quick and interactive access to strategic information.