IS YOUR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 'ACTIVE'?

Business Intelligence has been around for decades but it's role is constantly evolving.  At one time the production of a scorecard or set of traffic lights was enough to excite senior managers starved of data analytics.  Increasingly the scope of Business Intelligence has moved towards real-time delivery of fine-grained operational analytics where the production of newsworthy content has become embedded into the operational systems that serves the source data up.

The activity of taking data from multiple sources and building a new suite of 'data cubes' is gradually being overshadowed by BIG DATA possibilities to harvest data on the fly and provide much richer, much more useful insights because the content is fresher and users have more versatile and intuitive tools to ask the questions THEY want to ask - instead of being served up preset report views.

In the last few years we have seen SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE becoming vogue as senior managers seek to socialize performance analysis and reporting; and have more middle-managers, industry partners and members of staff benefit from business performance and activity insights.  This has been encouraged by mobile working and mobile devices that make business intelligence tools more accessible no-matter where people work.

There is another stage on the evolution of BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE that's emerging.  Business managers are coming to realize that 'knowing what you already know' and fashioning it into pretty dashboards isn't the greatest use of BI technology.  What really makes a difference is when managers can answer NEW QUESTIONS and even CREATE QUESTIONS.  But what good is that if you don't have the means to ACT on your learning?  All too frequently, the lessons learned from Business Intelligence result in more additions to the long-tail of demand for new or enhanced applications that can be used to support improved processes, or completely new methods, platforms and processes required to support growth initiatives.

This is where platforms like Encanvas, Spotfire, Jackbe and Outlooksoft really excel becuase they provide companies with federated BI together with the tools to build or improve information systems to meet changing requirements for information.  Few processes thrive without IT to support them these days - and that means no BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE system is complete without the wherewithal to ADAPT information systems as the result of the learning phase.

I think in the next decade we're going to see data visualization tools that are characterized as 'BI' becoming shelf-ware unless they start to embrace the capabilities of agile platforms to build and shape information systems in support of the long-tail of applications demand in the enterprise (and beyond it) without the frictional costs of IT that buyers have to live with today.  What customers really need are not systems that just tell them new news and then don't have any follow-through to enable them to do anything about it.  What they need are ACTIVE Business Intelligence platforms that can LEARN, then APPLY fine-grained, event-driven business insights.

I.

What drives public sector IT buyers?

IDC has authored an interesting article on the buying drivers of public sector IT decision makers.  In their summary they state:

!Western European governments have entered a time of structural volatility that will prompt IT and non-IT executives to look for a better balance between the low cost of ownership of IT solutions at a time of severe budget constraints and the ability to deliver value to business-specific processes and programs. It is in these situations that more detailed segmentations can help ICT suppliers differentiate their go-to-market strategies to gain market share."

Visit the site here: http://www.idc-gi.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=GIPP03V

Another Blue Ocean Example

It's great to see business people turning business management concepts into reality.

In this case Executive Vice-Chairman A. Vellayan of the Murugappa Group happened upon the Blue Ocean book and tit caught his imagination.  As the head of strategy for the group he decided to put some of the concepts into practice.

A great story!

Read it here.

I.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/how-a-blue-ocean-strategy-helped-the-murugappa-group/article4341023.ece

10 Colors That Increase Sales, and Why | Business 2 Community

10 Colors That Increase Sales, and Why | Business 2 Community:

I really like this article.  Any marketer needs to know how colour impacts on readers and Brian tells this story very well.

Enjoy!

I.

BIG TALENT: THE NEXT BIG STEP IN TALENT AGILITY (White Paper)

‘Big Data’ is the latest buzzword in IT. It suggests a collection of data so large and complex that it becomes difficult if not impossible to process using traditional database management tools and applications.  So-called ‘big data’ is the consequence of massive data growth resulting from the globalization of data through the Internet and the paucity of data now being made available via the Internet.  It is both an opportunity and a challenge:

• An opportunity because it has the potential to be a source of fresh insights that individuals and organizations have never been able to source by themselves (perhaps due to the economic costs of data acquisition or simply because they've not previously had access to the data assets). Much of the value of big data comes from harvesting insights that are either richer in quality or content as the result of their source, or are valuable when other ingredients are added.  For example, traffic information can be made more useful when aggregated with road works plans and the movements of major logistics and trucking companies.  This single page view of multiple data-sets builds a richer, more complete perspective on a topic.
• A challenge because big data exists beyond the boundaries of the enterprise and therefore the traditional tools and methods used to manage the security, governance, processing and analysis of small amounts of data simply don’t serve the new needs.

So what lessons can the talent management sector learn from the BIG DATA paradigm – what does it mean to HR strategists, and why do we think at the Workspend Institute that BIG TALENT is the next big step in talent agility?

In this White Paper sponsored by the Workspend Institute, and co-authored with Manoj Agarwal, President  and CEO of US Tech Solutions Inc., we debate the next big trend in workforce agility.

I hope you find it insightful!

I.

White Paper 'BIG TALENT' Manoj Agarwal and Ian Tomlin, The Workspend Institute