Linking business intelligence with business results gives workers out in the field better tools to drive day-to-day operations and customers better ways to make informed purchases.
Operationalizing Business Intelligence - Intelligence Trend Sweeps Through Enterprises
Brian Kilcourse, managing partner for RSR Research, agrees
that this "operationalization" of BI is one of the most impactful
intelligence trends sweeping through enterprises at the moment. He says he’s
seen lots of anecdotal evidence of how a shift to better embed BI within
operations gives workers out in the field better tools to drive day-to-day
operations or customers better ways to make informed purchases.
“We’re seeing a lot of companies injecting actionable
information into operational processes in just-in-time fashion,” Kilcourse
says.
For example, in one case study Kilcourse analyzed, he
witnessed Virgin Megastores offer its store managers a strong way to improve
sales. BI systems there were integrated with up-to-the-minute in-store sales so
that managers could see how hit titles were selling in comparison to other hits
with similar sales. The intelligence match-up compared the first few days of
release of one title with other releases that had similar sales starts and gave
managers the ability to project outward. It also offered actionable analysis
that enabled workers to pair up other overstocked albums with hot sellers in
endcaps to move otherwise stationary products.
Even though Virgin closed its retail stores for other
reasons entirely, Kilcourse says this application of operational BI is too good
to go ignored.
“They were basically doing a kind of a product mashup on the
sales floor in more or less real time based on the signals they're getting from
sales as they're occurring,” he says. “So they're basically doing shelf resets
based on the fact that one title is flying off the shelves and they want the
other one to fly with it.”
Kilcourse says that these sorts of initiatives help
organizations better adopt a sense-and-respond type of mentality. He also
believes that better embedding BI into operations provides very good back-end
benefits.
“One of the big values of it is that the operational systems
or the processes can then deliver back some information to the business
intelligence system that says, ‘This is what happened after you responded.’”
edwPosted on: 07-14-09 | By: larryconsolidating multiple bi applications using a data cleansing tool may solve that problem. i think the issue though is deeper routed - maybe along the lines of additional costs to cleans the data, the time needed to building consensus and agreement among key stakeholders surrounding common data defenitions. I see this as the challenge of SAAS, not multiple applications, though that is certainly a consideration too.
Embedding BI into Operational Apps may not be good for productivityPosted on: 07-08-09 | By: VinAlthough i understand that the moves by the ERP vendors to acquire BI vendors and embed BI capabilities into their apps may seem altruistic--however the risk is, that it will expose customers to the risk of vendor standardization pressure across the enterprise.
Now one ERP vendor might fit the business requirements of the finance organization, or even the IT organization--but does that vendor automatically create the best products for the Field Force or Sales forces department? Do they really create the best marketing automation or CRM software for the organization? Customers will be forced to standardize on a vendor's application stack, which may or may not be the best choice for all users.
The reason why ERP vendors are so keen to acquire and integrate BI vendors is the huge growth opportunity it provides to tap into competitive accounts. BI is their stranglehold to support their standardization push--and customers need to be aware and BEWARE.
Best of breed application environments (despite extra licensing costs), reap great rewards in terms of productivity by business users. The solution is not to buy embedded analytics, but to purchase BI with an application independent BI vendor, and ensure that it can integrate across your ERP and other enterprise application data sources effectively.
