techslog

While we all can now articulate the value of BI tools in an enterprise, the main users or areas it was employed tended to be in the Finance arena, as well as at the Executive level. The benefits were so profound that BI trickled down into customer service, sales, suppliers etc, but generally it has not been found in the entire enterprise. Adding users across the enterprise is vast- from integration with their applications, to information issues, and frankly the cost.
But as we have seen most advanced enterprises are well beyond the financial only BI use, and have already rolled it out in HR, CRM and most other areas. However they are still struggling to achieve a seamless, integrated environment where all these areas are rolled up into a single corporate dashboard or scorecard.
At SAS we called this “One version of the Truth”. The ability to see the enterprise from one set of data rolled together, and then of course, the next step would be to drill into the data and cross analyze. Seemed like a dream.
Well apparently Optimize magazine polled CIO’s and this “dream” is coming together by bits and pieces over the next two years. BI is expanding beyond the technically savvy users, as the application is getting more user friendly and the pay off’s more apparent. Many business are planning to expand use of BI applications outside the finance, sales and marketing departments. The idea is that spreading the technology will allow more data sharing and collaboration throughout the value chain.
While this is all a wonderful dream, having been there to try to help some maverick companies achieve this goal, please check to make sure the data you are sharing and collaborating is “clean”. While this step might sound so basic, companies tend to feel this step might be avoided, and it tends to be smaller groups who feel they have a handle on their data. Wrong.
The Optimize survey is very helpful to learn about this topic, and the impediments that remain from this “One version of the truth”.