Business

Business Intelligence for Everyone

Feb. 1, 2006

An increasingly complex and regulated business world is driving the need for greater agility, accountability, and efficiency. Many companies see themselves meeting these needs with increased access to information - about customers, products, and emerging business trends.

Many companies rely on business intelligence (BI) to provide this information. And so the need for the software has never been greater. "Many organizations . . . know enterprise BI is the key to unlocking the full potential of information to enhance worker productivity, optimize processes, and achieve strategic objectives and goals," write Wayne Eckerson and Cindi Howson of The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). According to their recent study, organizations are poised to increase the number of BI users from 18 percent of employees to 39 percent in the next three years.¹ (See the related story, "Do More BI Users Mean More BI Complexity?")

It's not just having more people use BI - companies also need to change the way they work with information. Colin White, founder and president of consultancy BI Research, suggests that a collaborative framework is critical to the success of an operational BI strategy. "Sharing is vital to this new vision of BI, because everyone involved in the process must have full access to information to be able to change the ways that they work."²

Company-wide, collaborative decision-making can improve business performance. What steps do you need to take to make it happen?

Find the right BI technology

Most companies have some form of BI. But these deployments are largely localized at the department level. With the drive toward collaboration on a larger scale, organizations need something more flexible: an enterprise BI system that everyone can use. BI products built on older client-server architectures, or those that rely on plug-ins and other downloads to work, simply can't meet new demands. But BI products built on a single, open, Web-services architectures such as IBM Cognos 8 BI, can.

The IBM Cognos 8 BI architecture integrates easily into the complex mix of data, applications, and platforms that make up most IT infrastructures. IT teams can install and configure the system quickly, allowing people across divisions, functions, and departments to collaborate, track, query, analyze, and report in a short time. This also helps IT teams deliver rapid ROI from their BI investments - savings that can help fund future deployments.

"Cognos business intelligence is a strategic and essential part of our business," says John Hasenzahl, Director of Knowledge Services and Data Management at logistics and transport provider Schneider National. "The new services-oriented architecture across the complete Cognos 8 BI portfolio greatly increases manageability for large-scale enterprise deployments like ours. Cognos BI helps make our associates more efficient and effective."

Address a business need

When BI is relevant to the business, it's more meaningful to people. Companies should align a BI initiative with a business need or strategic goals-such as increasing sales or improving financial controls.

"Cognos 8 BI represents the first time business event management, or BAM, is available within a BI solution," says Gerhard Roux, Head of IT & BPI at South African retailer Woolworths Holdings Ltd. "In this case information is driven by the business need, and is unconstrained by IT."

BI provides the framework that links execution with strategy. Through a single system of interconnected scorecards, reports, analysis, and alerts, everyone sees what their organization is trying to achieve. Everyone knows what they need to do. And everyone can see the results.

In this way, the strategy becomes a business priority at all levels. People are motivated to use the BI system to make informed decisions that support corporate outcomes.

Identify a starting point

Quick wins in strategic areas can help drive BI adoption rates. With their BI base in IT, many companies view sales is the ideal candidate for expansion.

Salespeople are highly motivated to use any system that can help them understand their customers better and win more business. With BI, reps have greater visibility into customer needs and behavior, which can help them identify the most profitable opportunities and close more deals.

Regent Medical, a U.K.-based manufacturer of surgical gloves and barrier protection, rolled out BI through its sales department. Increased efficiencies in their reporting improved sales productivity, saved 600 person-hours, and thousands of dollars. "Our sales force believes the information provided by Cognos gives them a competitive edge. I think the ease of use of the product and the information that they can get on one report is just phenomenal," says Susan Dean, BI Manager at Regent.

BI has since been adopted to support a host of critical business functions at every level at Regent, from the president and the CFO to sales managers and finance professionals.

Partner IT and business users

Many companies have data warehouses or data marts that no one uses. This is usually because IT builds them without first determining business needs. While IT believes their value will be self-evident, users rarely find them meaningful.

To build BI implementations that people want, IT should partner with users to work out a BI strategy and determine specific information requirements. This will ensure IT delivers data in a usable format that has direct relevance to the business.

"Our users have gone from little or no expectations about getting information to expecting more and more from the Cognos environment," says Dean. "It is our goal to never use the word 'no' when asked for information. This has become easier as our Cognos solution has evolved."

Share best practices

Finally, organizations may want to establish a BI Competency Center (BICC) to provide a centralized body of BI knowledge and expertise. The BICC can enforce a consistent set of BI strategies, tools, standards, and best practices to further the successful adoption of BI across the business.

With enterprise-scale BI software, companies have the opportunity to extend the benefits of BI across the organization and achieve a new order of business performance. By following these five key steps, they can ensure it's not an opportunity missed.

Find Out More

Sources

¹ Enterprise Business Intelligence: Strategies and Technologies for Deploying BI on an Enterprise Scale, Wayne W. Eckerson and Cindi Howson, TDWI Report Series, August 2005.

² Business Intelligence: Not Just for Bosses Anymore, Meridith Levinson, CIO Magazine, January 15, 2006.