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Name:	Data game • Shot put vs soccer.JPG 
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Data is used in business to capture events and transactions. I see a business' overall data like a sports game, the players are like capturerers, the ball the transactions and the coaches the report reviewers.

In this data game your business transactions are moved from capturerer to reviewer, usually through an ERP or accounting system.

Many SME businesses have structured their data game to look like shot put. One single athlete standing in one place to exert maximum energy to throw the ball as far as possible (away from him-/herself). The ball flies through the air and plumps down leaving a big hole in the grass. From here it takes a long time and a lot more energy for the next ball to be thrown by the next single athlete.

In soccer on the other hand the ball almost never stops moving. It's kicked from one player to the next and back again. The players are actively engaged, know what the others are doing, and the coaches are focused, watching every move.

You see transactions happen every single minute of every single business hour. Big businesses understand this very well and have structured their data game to look like soccer. Take a moment and think of Pick & Pay. You walk in and select an entire trolley full of products. The cashier rings it up into the ERP system, updates stock and receives cash before you have left the till. Can you say this about your business? Can your capturerers play at that speed?

And the best part about Pick & Pay is that the system is so well put in place that a cashier does not need to be a highly skilled financial expert, which is excellent for shareholders and the economy by means of job creation.

If you have structured your data environment to be like shot put, data is not going to flow quickly and freely and you will find that you need a highly skilled resource/s to do the processing. This makes your data environment slow and expensive...something SME's definitely cannot afford.

At MyBI we help SME businesses using Pastel Partner or Pastel Xpress to structure their data environments to work like soccer.

www.mybi.co.za