techslog

November 13, 2006 (Computerworld) -- SAN FRANCISCO -- Business intelligence technology is evolving from a tactical tool to a strategic asset as many companies look to it to help bolster enterprise operations, according to a panel of users at the Business Objects SA user conference here last week.

But making that shift requires user buy-in and an ability to offer BI capabilities to growing numbers of workers, the panel members agreed.

Jim Young, director of the information services group at Allstate Insurance Co. in Northbrook, Ill., said his company is looking to expand its use of BI to employees who work directly with customers.

About 33,000 Allstate workers already use BI tools from Business Objects to detect and analyze fraud, determine prices, process claims and manage the insurer’s adjuster workforce, he said.

Now, Allstate is working to incorporate BI data into the business processes of employees who communicate with customers through telephone or online call centers or in person, Young said.

“We’ve got the data, [and] we need to mine that data and get it into the hands of people who can make some good decisions about how to cross-sell our products,” he said. “Historically, we have done a great job of implementing BI somewhat tactically. Now, the opportunity is to start to bring together data from all the disparate parts of the company.”

Allstate gained user buy-in for its new BI plan after putting together a “road show” to let key IT and business users know how it would work.

“We needed to make sure there weren’t other initiatives going on in the company that would be derailed by our project,” Young said. “We started to bring in key contacts from different development groups and negotiate timelines.”

Douglas Chambers, administrator of the Office of IT Applications in the Georgia Department of Transportation in Atlanta, said 200 workers and managers at the agency are currently using Business Objects dashboards to monitor ongoing projects.

During the first part of 2007, the department will roll out the dashboards to an additional 2,500 users, he added.

“The dashboards allow upper management to drill down and see if a project is in trouble,” Chambers said. “They can see exactly what is holding that project up. [The BI tools] have made the folks at the DOT much more aware of how ... they directly affect those projects being delivered.”

Jonathan Rothman, director of data management at Emergency Medical Associates in Livingston, N.J., said the group practice of 250 emergency room physicians invested in BI tools after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The company uses the tools to identify potential disease outbreaks based on the symptoms of patients who come into hospital emergency rooms where members of the group practice. “Without BI, we couldn’t have done it,” Rothman said.

Nicholas Berg, senior manager of global business intelligence at Seagate Technology LLC in Scotts Valley, Calif., said his company now has three separate global production versions of Business Objects software in place — including a system used at Maxtor Corp. prior to its acquisition by Seagate in May.

The company plans to replace the separate versions and run the new Release 2 of Business Objects XI throughout the company sometime next year, he said.

Berg did suggest that Business Objects add guided analy?sis tools in a future version of the BI tool set. Such tools suggest solutions for problems that the BI software discovers — an important feature for companies such as Seagate, whose user base includes power users and novices.

“We need tools [for] that user who doesn’t know what the next step is ... to be able to guide them through to some recommended actions,” Berg said.
BI article