In Demand Signal Repository, administrators can limit user access to any of the following:
Organizational and Item hierarchies: users may be restricted to one or more subhierarchies; or may be limited to only viewing aggregate (cross-retailer) data.
Measures: users may be restricted to see only a subset of the available base or calculated measures.
Dashboards and Reports: users may be restricted to only a subset of dashboards and reports.
Access control to hierarchies, measures and dashboards can be controlled on a per-user level, or by user role or group. Depending upon their role, some users may be restricted from accessing the scorecard dashboard. Users may also be restricted from accessing specific reports within the category management dashboard.
User access to data in Demand Signal Repository is dependent upon the legal agreements that the manufacturer has in place with its customers, and internal policies intended to prevent leakage of information to competitors. The access profile differs for each of the major user roles in the system.
Each user role can be tied to a specific dashboard and associated reports with appropriate content and appropriate dimension levels. Demand Signal Repository supports the following user roles:
Customer Account Team
Category Management Team
Supply Chain Management Team
Administrator
The Demand Signal Repository Customer Account team is responsible for reviewing the detailed financial data for its assigned customer (or customers). This includes data of all types – sales, inventory, shipments and receipts. The Customer Account team is also able to review competitor data provided by the customer for the purpose of managing the overall retail category (“category captain” role). However, they are not allowed to see the data from any other customer. Generally, each account team’s access is limited to nodes at or below their assigned customers’ organization level in the organization hierarchy.
It is possible that access may be further restricted in the case of large customers. Users may only be able to see data for a single chain or geographic region; they may also be limited to one or more of the retailer’s departments or item categories.
The Demand Signal Repository Category Management team is responsible for identifying product trends across accounts to determine what products to offer, how to price them and how to promote them. Category managers work in terms of the manufacturer’s item hierarchy, rather than the retailer item hierarchy that the account teams primarily use.
Based upon the data access restrictions in customer legal agreements, category managers may be restricted from seeing detailed data within a particular account. They often may only see aggregate data at chain level. SKU-level accesses to a manufacturer’s own items, rolled up to the chain level, typically would not be restricted. However, category managers usually do not have access to the competitor data provided directly by customers. They typically source competitor data from market data sources (3rd party syndicators) instead.
Depending upon the manufacturer’s internal company policies, category managers may also be restricted from seeing data for classes of product that they are not directly responsible for. This would require their access to be restricted to a subhierarchy (or subhierarchies) in the manufacturer’s item hierarchy.
The Demand Signal Repository Supply Chain Management team is responsible for demand planning and monitoring the supply chain for any inventory issues (for example, overstocks and out-of-stocks). However, supply chain personnel do not typically need access to financial data.
The Demand Signal Repository Administrator is responsible for administering users, controlling access, and other security-related tasks. Administrators are able to freely access data across all hierarchy dimensions.