Isn't a BI dashboard enough if it already shows us real-time sales by branch and by SKU?

A BI dashboard is genuinely valuable for understanding what already happened, and most distributors should keep using one for that. The gap appears at the moment of deciding what to do next, especially ahead of a promotion, because a dashboard reports historical patterns rather than projecting how a specific upcoming event will reshape demand. Planning and reporting are complementary, not competing, but a distributor that only has the reporting half will keep discovering the gap at the worst possible moment: the week before a promotion.