Data Silos Cause Billion-Dollar Error Which Results in Walgreen CFO Departure

The lack of data sharing and openness between the group writing generic drug contracts and the finance group at Walgreen’s Medicare-related business cost the jobs of Chief Financial Officer Wade Miquelon and pharmacy chief Kermit Crawford.

Among other things, Walgreen had failed to forecast a spike in the price of some generic drugs that it sells as part of annual contracts when it projected a positive forecast earlier this year. When the price spike information was shared, an $8.5 billion forecast for pharmacy unit earnings was cut by $1.1 billion.

This error for Walgreen and its former finance chief highlights how vital it is for a finance division to be in constant communication and share data with the entire enterprise. Walgreen officials have sited the fact that company group writing contracts wasn’t communicating with the finance group as a prime reason for the error.

This emphasizes the absolute need for any sized organization to take advantage of current technology that can open up these data silos so that everyone in the organization has access to all internal as well as relevant external data in powerful dashboard analysis systems in as close to real time as possible.

As the saying goes: "Any decision made without data analysis is simply an assumption."

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