Introduction

Every manager wants reports, be they customized or interactive or compiled from previous reports. Typically, the more important the manager, the more reports he or she wants and needs. But what managers really want are reports that are “right” for them, and they often prevail on the IT department to continue tweaking reports until that elusive goal of “right” is met. However, nobody in the IT department wants to spend time programming them, asking whether the reports will ever be “right.”

That’s the vicious back-and-forth that bedevils so many companies, so many managers, and so many IT departments. Business intelligence, or BI, all too often misses the mark, promising much but delivering little. But it doesn’t have to, as this IT Strategy Guide explains. There are techniques, tactics and technologies which can help IT refocus their enterprise BI efforts, satisfying top management – and reducing the burden on your staff. We’ll explain to you how to start by cleaning up your data… and then, what to do from there.

Let’s say you’ve solved the BI puzzle. Your executives have the data they need, and your IT staff is relaxed and taking long lunches. Now what? How does BI truly help the business? The paradox is that classic BI, by its very nature, is backwards-looking and provides visibility into historic performance through data mining. Yet the real benefit comes when you empower your managers with predictive analytics. We’ll explain how to use your past performances to build tools that make forward-looking forecasts.

If what we’re describing sounds expensive, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. Did you know that there are powerful open-source BI systems available? We’ll introduce you to BIRT, the open-source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools platform produced by the Eclipse Foundation.

The project’s founders say, “We don’t expect you to adopt it simply because it’s open; we expect that you will choose it because it’s better.” It’s worth a close look.

BI solutions for ordinary workers – not just top managers – also bear examination. New tools, embedded in enterprise applications such as CRM or ERP systems, distribute the power of data mining and analytics throughout the enterprise. We’ll explain how delivering timely information to frontline workers, such as through customized dashboards, can improve efficiency and even boost customer satisfaction.

At the end of the day, BI is truly about giving executives and top managers timely information about how the business is doing, to enable them to make more informed decisions. We’ll close this IT Strategy Guide by showing how Corporate Performance Management technology unlocks your organization’s key business indicators – and what it takes to get the job done.

—Alan Zeichick

 

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