SMARTER STRATEGIES

Operationalizing Business Intelligence

Ericka Chickowski | Date: 07-08-09 | Comments

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.

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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.��