The design of a Budget planning and forecasting system for Europe, Middle East and Africa, was a challenge, not only for the issues involved in data definitions, but also for the logistical management of the data through the review cycle, when many participants would be travelling and working off-line.

Many of the countries we were dealing with did not have consistent data connections for travellers, and we had to take into account an irregular and variable quality of connection. The result was that we had to design a system that transmitted the least possible amount of data from country sales managers to the central hub and back.

We opted for a database system which managed all Product/Pack combinations to allow country/factory managers to set annual budgets and forecasts. Data was then uploaded to a data warehouse based at the Head Office in the UK.

The volume of data was potentially very large, so it was also necessary to create a system that set much of the data up automatically via ‘intelligent’ defaults, so as to avoid too much manual data entry. Then we had to analyse the extent to which the defaults had been changed, to spot whether users were just taking defaults and not interacting with them.

The result was a very robust data management system that worked within the normal budgeting cycles and reviews, and saved the users much time and effort. As a consequence, data accuracy from the users was much better and more complete than ever before.