Converting BI Focus From Decision Support And Reporting Functions To Operational Reporting Processes

An article in CIO Magazine by Meredith Levinson makes note of a typical BI problem area. Levinson writes that most CIOs look upon BI as a reporting and decision support tool for senior management. The general consensus seems to be that the old way of doing business was bad, the new way is certainly better, but it is still not optimal. The answer, she offers, lies in exploiting process, not product, reporting product, that is. Levinson further mentions one expert’s observation that most businesses using BI don’t understand their business processes well enough to make a proper effort to improve them. Providing reports, scorecards and decision support tools appears, from this article’s perspective, to fall short of the needed functionality to really improve a company’s performance. Spending more time understanding the key operational functions and processes will illuminate flawed structures and components and point to corrective action leading to high level corporate performance. This is eminently better than following the crowd and using BI merely to monitor what is happening.