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Business Intelligence Tools Tips
Recognizing The Need For Business Intelligence
Executives that are new to the wonders of business intelligence products often wonder why their current IT systems and staff can’t perform the same functions as those offered by BI vendors. The answer is simply that the diversity of data repository formats and standards require substantial development in order for current technology to be applied in a performance management setting.
Adapting legacy systems to be able to access all of the vast repositories found in today’s enterprises would require “reinventing the wheel." Additionally, the required development effort, if attempted, would be far beyond the capability of even the most capable of IT departments. Cobbling together that magnitude a system in order to achieve a small level of performance management is simply too complex an undertaking and would not make economic sense.
The key to BI success lies in the ability for the executive/manager to link into the data through advanced query and reporting tools like dashboards and scorecards. These capabilities, with a scope beyond the norm, generate the impetus for the use of BI product modules for budgeting software that lead to enhanced decision-making.
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Cognos Tip: The Elements Of An Effective Business Intelligence Software System
Cognos.com Tip: Development of a corporate performance management capability using a business intelligence tool can be complex and resource intensive. In order to make the right decisions when selecting the vendor and software that will, arguably, change the company forever, understanding the basic elements that should be included is valuable. According to a 2006 white paper from the vendor Cognos, there are five key elements incorporated into their product suite:
·Scorecarding - Link initiatives and projects to strategy with metrics and strategy maps. Use the same scorecard metrics to drive enterprise planning software for integrated performance management.
·Analysis - Explore and analyze large volumes of data covering all dimensions of the business, whether stored in OLAP or dimensionally aware relational sources.
·Reporting - Create any type of report, for any user, with any data.
·Dashboards - Deliver Web-based dashboards with information from different data sources in a single visual report. Provide an at-a-glance snapshot of the business.
·Business event management - Business event management goes beyond the basic notification functionality provided in other products to automate the decision-making process, launch business processes, and integrate with Business Process Management (BPM). Where human intervention is required, through decision-process automation, event management notifies the people who are accountable and provides the relevant information they need to resolve the issue.
Many vendors offer similar business intelligence tool groupings, both integrated (like Cognos) and tool-by-tool. Careful research will lead the procurement team in the enterprise planning necessary to acquire an effective system.
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Another Way To Test Run BI For Your Business
Business intelligence can be characterized as the software-based automation of a huge collection of best practices drawn from all corners of the business world.These techniques are differentiated from traditional data retrieval and manipulation in that they cut across all functional business areas and serve all potential users in the enterprise.If you are trying to decide whether to recommend that your company invest in a BI system, try a manual test run for one familiar business function.
After researching the various offerings of a number of BI vendors, apply the principles you’ve learned to a typical, everyday problem.If you zero in on a particularly knotty, yet common task set that significantly impacts your effectiveness, your manual data retrieval, manipulation, analysis, reporting and decision-making steps can produce a glimpse of why BI may be right for you and your business.
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Cognos Tip: Automated Telephony Tools For Retail Management Software
Cognos.com Tip: The auto dialer was a revolutionary retail support tool introduced, to some people’s dismay, in the 1980’s. The predictive dialer has now, apparently replaced it for many larger enterprises. The auto dialer robotically dials telephone numbers for waiting retail agents. The predictive dialer, on the other hand, is a form of retail management software and employs analytical techniques to predict the availability of sales agents and the anticipated target consumer.
Most powerfully to the bi user, the predictive dialer monitors the calls and detects how the calls are answered. This frees sales personnel to only deal with live calls. In doing so, it ignores unanswered calls, busy signals, and automated devices or answering machines. This provides another source of data for the integrated bi system to exploit and for managers and executives to intelligently query.
As a result, a predictive dialer may significantly increase effective time for a sales agent to impact sales performance, and optimally, the bottom line. Thus, another BI techniques can help lead the using organization on the path to performance management.
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Company Size And BI
Is size an issue for business intelligence implementation?The answer is not clear and obvious, yet a couple of thoughts on the subject bear consideration:
·One analyst estimates that companies using BI spend roughly 10 percent of their IT budget on BI.One view might be to evaluate your IT budget compared to the price of the BI capability you are shopping for.If 10 percent of your IT spending is less than that minimum BI cost, then don’t invest.
·Another consideration is to look at what kind of business you are.If you are data intensive (e.g. retail or multi-site), then BI might be right for you at an earlier stage than if you are a manufacturer or service provider.
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Cognos Tip: BI On A Shoestring Budget
Cognos.com Tip: Are you a small businessperson and you're wondering how to start using business intelligence products and techniques? You may realize your company is a few increments of sales growth away from being able to start investing in this wonderful technology. Don’t despair, there may be some ways to embrace some incremental BI capabilities on a shoestring.
·CRM – Customer Relationship Management is most definitely a BI tool. However, there are numerous systems on the market that allow you to perform a subset of CRM functions. Start to use tools to build your data repository and when you grow into formalized BI, you’re part of the way there.
·High-end digital copier business capture systems - Most copier manufacturers are aligned with vendors (eCopy of Nashua, NH, for example) that offer software solutions that can be added to certain higher-end copier products to permit the copier to serve as a source of input of paper documentation into databases, spreadsheets, archives and other data repositories. As in the case of the contact management applications, a capability like this will get a small company on the way to achieving a level of transparency of data and, subsequently, the ability to access data electronically, make better decisions, and to strive for an entry-level of performance management.
·All-in-one home office printers - Let’s say you can’t justify a sophisticated copier with document capture ability. The answer may lie with your HP, Brother, or Lexmark multi-function laser or inkjet printer. These devices are amazing entry-level data handling machines and with their integrated fax, scan, copy, and print ability, provide a modicum of information handling technology that the clever small businessperson can cobble into data repositories, dashboards, scorecards, and the like, so that you too, can apply the principals of BI in advance of a major investment in formalized BI software.
