The Data Challenge

The two critical success factors in the implementation of any advanced planning and optimization system are a sound quantitative model,  and an efficient and reliable scenario data input component.  In most projects,  the input data component is the most time consuming task.

Robust commercial applications will address the ‘mechanical’ aspect of the data component very efficiently.  They will either be part of or link to corporate sources of data and automate the tedious job of importing scenario data.  However, this efficient integration of the application to the corporate IT platform is irrelevant if we are unable to audit the incoming data stream for consistency and then manipulate and transform it to reflect the specific needs of the model and the scenario we are trying to solve.

This ‘logical’ element of the data component will ‘make or break’ a successful implementation and the challenge we face to get it to work fully and correctly can only be achieved by customizing this logic.  The inability of packaged solutions to fully address this need is one of the reasons  the implementation of advanced planning solutions has a history of failures, missed opportunities and poor success rates.

Our customized approach allows us to implement our solutions in any IT environment.  We have been successfully integrating our solutions within SAP and other major ERP platforms, as well as legacy systems.  A typical Technologix implementation obtains its data from a number or sources: the ERP platform, other corporate systems, Excel files and manual input if required.