Snyder’s of Hanover, which sells about 80 million bags of pretzels, snack chips, and organic snack items each year, had its financial department use spreadsheets and manual processes for much of its data gathering and reporting. Hanover’s financial analyst would spend the entire final week of every month collecting spreadsheets from the heads of more than 50 departments worldwide. She would then consolidate and reenter all the data into another spreadsheet, which would serve as the company’s monthly profit-and-loss statement. If a department needed to update its data after submitting the spreadsheet to the main office, the analyst had to return the original spreadsheet and wait for the department to resubmit its data before finally submitting the updated data in the consolidated document. Assess the impact of this situation/problem on business performance and management decision-making. What are the choices of solutions? Which one is the net fit for this problem?

Repeatedly inputting and processing data at a large corporation like Snyders is a source of worry. The contemporary world thinks that gathering data and extracting useful information from it may provide businesses with a competitive edge in the marketplace. Snyders, with fifty divisions dispersed around the globe, must collect a large quantity of data, which must be integrated in order to provide helpful information for the firm. Manually handling such a large amount of data and then processing it without mistakes would take a lot of time and patience. Companies now lose and gain market share on a daily basis, and in order to maintain a competitive advantage, they must keep themselves up to date. Snyders' company performance will undoubtedly be harmed as a result of this operation since data will take time to reach the analyst from various departments in many locations; someone may submit it on time, while someone else may send it three days late, but the analyst will have to wait. It's also possible that the data received from various departments contain errors or omissions that must be corrected before being sent to the analyst. All of this will cause a delay in data processing, and by the time the analyst produces the results, the company may be in a disadvantageous position. If a company's management receives late information, it will be unable to make quick decisions on the adjustments or strategies that need to be implemented, and so opportunities may be lost, severely impacting corporate performance.