Data can also undergo temperature fluctuations: "Cold Data" refers to data archived in databases on hard drives for years, accessed only in exceptional cases. "Hot Data" refers to current data available on in-memory databases for rapid evaluations, dashboards, as well as planning and simulations.

Compliance requirements regarding data archiving, including the traceability of all changes to master and transactional data, can be achieved with data warehouse solutions. The advantage here is that legacy operational systems can also be decommissioned since relevant data from all systems are made available for review and inspection in a central archive.

The focus of analytical solutions is to support corporate planning and management processes and to ensure delivery capability. The following points provide orientation:

1. Consistent Management Concept

A management concept defines the key figures, dimensions, and processes by which a company is managed. These serve as "guardrails" valid for all employees. It is crucial to focus on the key influencing factors and define and document them uniformly across the company.

Particularly important is a seamless process from strategic to financial to operational planning and management. The planning process at each level is the central element for setting objectives, communication, and developing a shared understanding. This ensures that everyone knows what is expected of them in the future – across all organizational units down to individual employees.

2. Integrated, Rolling Planning

Ideally, digital corporate planning consolidates all sub-plans (e.g., sales and distribution planning, investment planning, personnel planning) into a plan balance sheet and profit and loss statement, which can be consolidated into a group result if necessary. Rolling planning regularly adjusts the plan balance sheet to new conditions, keeping planning constantly up-to-date. This ensures that planning and management become continuous activities rather than yearly exercises. The annual budget should remain as a reference to perform variance analyses and take corrective actions for maximum control effectiveness.

3. Fully Integrated Business Intelligence Systems

Thanks to new technologies, decision-makers today can access real-time information in the best possible format and level of detail. From the complexity of large, unstructured datasets arises "Data-to-Wisdom": insights gained from analysis generate knowledge that can provide a competitive advantage. These systems also support processes with workflow functionalities, ensuring each process participant is automatically informed about their required input, method, and deadline.

In-memory data storage enables faster information retrieval. Fully integrated solutions can eliminate redundant data storage, returning to a "Single Point of Truth" and avoiding time-consuming loading processes and associated control and reconciliation tasks.

Management cockpits, digital boardrooms, and dashboards provide highly condensed information in an intuitive, visual format – even voice commands are possible. Using thresholds is recommended to automatically notify responsible parties when defined events occur, targets are met, or requirements fall short.

Adapting management processes accordingly offers numerous opportunities, including implementing compliance requirements optimally during this process.