Achieving a Single Version of the Truth

Here's another example: Management has tasked you with developing a report. Your first step is to look back at prior results, maybe from a season or two ago. How many different versions of the sales, purchase and inventory plans are there? Which ones are the actual and which were prior versions?

Some might say we can do a better job controlling and eliminating versions of plans, which is certainly true and something every company should work toward. Or that if we use only one enterprise system, we can eliminate this dilemma. But that isn’t really the solution; such systems aren’t viable for most companies. Plus, there are multiple data elements that are all valid for whatever processing system is used. There just isn’t a “single version of the truth,” one official set of figures for sales, inventory, plan, history and so forth.