"In that particular case we showed a quick return," he says, "generating more revenue by making more intelligent decisions on how to run the business. As you do that, everybody begins coming to you with ideas, which only builds more support."

Empowering the User

A quick success can showcase the advantages of BI. But an essential ingredient to getting buy-in is making the results accessible to business unit executives, midlevel managers and frontline salespeople so they feel empowered by the new technology.

For Clif Bar, that meant finding an application that sales representatives could easily use in the field, says Richard Boragno, VP of finance, accounting and IT. It also had to provide them with a simple sales story to help the company build a more intimate relationship with clients.

Working with Clif Bar’s sales reps, Boragno searched for a Web-based BI application they could take to grocery store clients to show how each Clif Bar product was selling, how individual sales tracked over time and how sales per customer broke down in real time. The application had to have a simple interface that had a few easily understood icons. Sales reps couldn’t be fumbling with the application in the field, where they typically had little time in front of clients and no easily accessible tech support. "They had to be able to fully understand it in about a two-hour training session," Boragno says.

He also asked two sales reps to help evaluate the vendors competing for the contract. "You have to look at it through the lens of a sales rep," Boragno says. "You’re trying to solve their pain. To know what you are solving, you need to analyze their symptoms, understand what they need. If it is too complicated to use, it will lead to confusion and distrust" of the IT department’s ability to deliver.

In 2002, on the recommendation of the sales force, for $85,000 Boragno chose to buy the enterprise search application FAST Radar, supplied by FAST. The application provided sales reps with historical and real-time sales for each grocery store outlet Clif Bar supplied. The data allowed reps to show clients how many Clif Bars they were selling over specific time intervals and which were selling the most, allowing Clif Bar to keep those bars on shelves to increase sales for Clif Bar and the grocery store. As a result, Clif Bar reduced its sales forecasting variance from 30 percent to 15 percent. After a decline in sales in 2004, the company rebounded in 2005 with a 25 percent increase in sales, which Boragno attributes partly to the new BI system.