New research indicates how greater intelligence can drive increased business performance
The use of BI tools is said to have reached a major crossroads: on one hand, the demands of regulatory compliance, and the trend towards enterprise-wide performance management, are creating significant demand for improved process visibility, integrated financial reporting, customer and supplier analytics, and greater intelligence in enterprise applications. On the other hand, many organizations are struggling to deploy the appropriate tools to meet these requirements, and have difficulty in justifying the value of an increased, strategic investment in BI solutions.
The research suggests that BI should not be seen in this way – as an activity or process in its own right, but as an embedded component of standard business practice. What organizations are now lacking is clear, practical advice in terms of how they move forward from tactical BI to strategic BI.
Understandably senior management will be reluctant to sanction BI investment unless there is a clear return; the most pressing questions therefore, are how to achieve incremental value from deploying BI solutions, and how this value should be measured.
The research concludes that if BI is to move beyond tactical deployments, and companies are to realize the concept of an ‘intelligent’ business, able to generate actionable information in support of business decision making on a broad scale, then considerable work is required to consolidate existing BI applications and standardize on an organization-wide BI platform.
