Business Intelligence Strategy
business intelligence strategy
A Manager’s Guide To Business Intelligence Part One
Business intelligence can mean two completely different things depending on whether you’re looking at it from a technical perspective or a managerial perspective.
For a business intelligence solution to really add value, you need to your key performance indicators, (KPI’s) or business goals. Once you’ve got your business intelligence tools, you need to understand what sort of results you’re hoping to achieve from the data they collect. Business intelligence is all about bridging that gap between the data collected and what your people need to drive the business to improve, once you’ve got the data you need to understand how you can use it to make your organisation more productive and ultimately profitable. This is where most businesses can experience difficulty; you need to make sure the people within your organisation understand the new systems and procedures that come about due to your business intelligence solution.
One of the main challenges with business intelligence is making it work across all the departments within your organisation and the staff within those different departments as you quite often find it exposes the differences between them. The data you’re reporting off at an operational level is very siloed so you have a single set of users and a fairly narrow scope of requirements, so, for example, your finance package will do finance, your sales CRM system will do CRM, they’re very isolated and actually quite stable in they’re functionality, their requirements and the data that goes into them. The problem arises when you compare the data, when you start going across boundaries within your organisation because this usually highlights issues of consistency and management issues around communication. This is the main challenge with business intelligence, you have to pull different people together from different parts of your organisation to overcome users with different requirements, and skill sets, the easiest way to overcome this is to do short deliveries into each department and have an organisational structure with a BI steering committee, this means all the bodies pull together so when there’s any conflict there’s senior management can identify it, resolve it and move on.
To gain real value from a business intelligence solution you need a business intelligence strategy driven from the senior executives. Business intelligence spans different departments within an organisation, so without that overview from the top driving it, the barriers between departments can cause problem when implementing the solution and getting the value across the enterprise. Business intelligence requires many different tools for it to be deployed efficiently and the data it produces can end up in several different formats and styles, this all means that it’s truly cross enterprise and multi skilled which in turn means you’ll need a strategy to drive how you want it rolled out to the right people at the right time and what the purpose is.
The business intelligence maturity model is the mechanism used to gage where your organisation is today in its maturity of business intelligence and highlight where your organisation could potentially go in the future. The maturity model can be very beneficial when trying to calculate the potential benefit of business intelligence.
Business intelligence bridges the gap between the business and the data, which is usually managed by IT, quite often the people delivering the information from IT are not always aligned to what the business is asking for, similarly the business doesn’t always understand the technology, or the capabilities of it. Organisations will often put a middle layer in-between to bridge this gap called business analysts. These business analysts may sit with the IT department or they may sit in the business, but the business analysts are there to help the organisation overcome those communication barriers. Setting up a team to work across the enterprise is what’s called creating a BI centric organisation. This is how you ensure you get the maximum benefit from you business intelligence data.
About the Author
IT Performs business intelligence consultancy improves the way companies measure and manage business, through developed methodologies and frameworks ensuring lower risk and higher quality
Career change: a new job that will make me travel to remote areas?
I am a 31 yo engineer with a Master in management, 4 years of experience (2 of which at management level) but whant to change careers. I want to move into something that will take me out of the mill/factory/office and look for things in remote areas. Maybe a job in business strategy development, development jobs, or business intelligence gathering. What can i do to achieve this or something similar? Perhaps you have other ideas?
Perhaps working for a travel magazine, pharmaceutical organization?
If you are not certified, try to get a Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt Certification, an APICS CPIM or the new CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Specialist) and become an ISO Registrar. It will take some time. Use your own funds so no company has inherent rights over your future. With all of those credentials, and your experience, you may go into consulting. This way you will be in control of where, when and even if you want to work. You may want start to publish about Operations and Materials Management applied to every day life (i.e. Lean manufacturing principles in the kitchen) which will give you exposure and credibility. You may also join the armed forces reserves like I did.
|
|
Leading Conflict the Black Belt Way: Three New Conflict Resolution Strategies for Student Leaders $14.95 … |
|
|
Mechwarrior 3: Pirate’s Moon $29.99 If you’ve crushed the Smoke Jaguars in MechWarrior 3 and still want more, your wish has been granted. The MechWarrior 3: Pirate’s Moon expansion pack kicks the original game up a few notches by adding new BattleMechs, enhanced special effects, and a completely new campaign. The 20 new missions (including night operations) included with the add-on are split into two minicampaigns of 10 missi… |
|
|
Fireball CyberProtection Suite $8.71 Automatically Identifies and Blocks Attacks!Product InformationFireball’s integrated firewall intrusion detection privacy system scanVirtual Private Network (VPN) and parental controls defend you against multiplepoints of attack. Fireball secures you against hackers online criminalstalkers and spammers. By detecting and blocking malicious activity instantlyyour puter is protected from person… |
|
|
AirTight Systems #1 to #3 Complete Training and Implementation Kit $1,299.00 This ten audio CD training set contains the core professional management best practices that will propel your company to new heights and success and take away limiting factors you may not even be aware of today. Big companies literally pay mill-ions of dollars for software to do these things with ERP, BI and Performance Management systems. We do this cost effectively through training and conventio… |
|
|
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 $12.45 In today’s fast-paced world of competitive workplaces and turbulent economic conditions, each of us is searching for effective tools that can help us to manage, adapt, and strike out ahead of the pack. By now, emotional intelligence (EQ) needs little introductionâit’s no secret that EQ is critical to your success. But knowing what EQ is and knowing how to use it to improve your life are… |
|
|
How to Become Smarter $0.99 This book describes techniques for improving mental abilities. Some of the things it can help you to achieve include the following: Depending on circumstances, use different lifestyles that improve one or another mental function.Experience euphoria without drugs and come up with new ideas, when needed.Slow down and prevent yourself from making rash, impulsive decisions, when necessary.Sharpen your… |
|
|
How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life $4.95 http://69.131.42.194/showpic.php?image=9781595620033.jpg… |
|
|
Intelligence And Strategy $359.54 This book is in Used condition |
|
|
Business Intelligence Strategy; A Practical Guide for Achieving BI Excellence $15.23 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Advances in Applied Business Strategy: Intelligence Analysis & Its Applications, Pt. B $76.54 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Business Intelligence Strategy : A Practical Guide for Achieving BI Excellence $15.55 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Advances in Applied Business Strategy: Business Intelligence Theory, Principles, Practices & Uses, Pt. A $76.54 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Intelligence and Strategy : Selected Essays $49.68 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Intelligence And Strategy: Selected Essays $183.3 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
War, Strategy and Intelligence $183.3 No Synopsis Available |
|
|
Business Intelligence $80.07 No Synopsis Available |
