BI And Technology Development

Many large enterprises, and some smaller technology intensive ones as well, have developed intellectual properties (IP) over the course of decades of product and technology development efforts. One can easily envision an executive in one of these companies sitting at his dashboard, wondering if there is any way to leverage that IP into revenue using the IT/BI capabilities he can muster. Here’s how it might be realized.

The underlying technologies and innovations contained in the IP may or may not represent viable opportunity. Manual analysis will probably not be helpful for evaluating the IP, since the property may be very esoteric or represent a small segment of a larger development effort. The blinders of "been there, done that" will most likely preclude non-biased interpretations of value from the engineering or marketing departments. However, deep within the sales and market reports are reams of data, applicable to your enterprise’s business that may shed light on its true value and merit to the organization.

If one were to query the data repository for both the IP and sales, then analyze that resultant information using KPIs and balanced scorecard metrics, an effective business intelligence system, such as Cognos 8, should deliver valuable insights to the executive to aid in determining whether to apply the IP to a new initiative, reserve it for competitive reasons, or to dispose of the property. Whatever the decision, the result of the process will add to the bottom line, and thus, to a higher level of performance management.