CFO Paradigm · Example company: Cawan's Shoes
Strategy & Analysis

Business Intelligence

What it means

Tools, dashboards, and processes that turn raw data into decisions.

Why it matters

Modern BI moves the org from monthly reports to real-time steering.

How to calculate — with Cawan's Shoes

Cawan's Shoes BI stack + dashboards: • Snowflake data warehouse (2.4TB, 180 sources) + dbt + Looker; $1.9M annual TCO for 12-person data team. • Store dashboard refreshes hourly: sell-through %, size-out-of-stock alerts, staff sales-per-hour. 2,400 store managers log in daily. • Merch dashboard: SKU velocity, weeks-of-supply, markdown risk — flagged 320 slow SKUs last quarter, avoided $4.6M markdown. • Executive dashboard: 12 KPIs on one screen, updated every 4 hours. Measured impact: decision speed for reorders cut from 9 days to 36 hours; forecast accuracy up from 71% to 84%.

What's at stake if you ignore this

No BI = slow decisions and lost markets to data-native competitors.