CONCRETE STEPS TO PERFORMANCE INTELLIGENCE
The goal of Insight 07 is to help you towards performance excellence in your organization. Here are four concrete steps to take you on that journey.
Initiative 1: Succeed Every BI Project
BI is about much more than just technology - but technology helps. Organizations must take advantage of the latest full-spectrum technologies available to spread the benefits of better information to more users, such as text analysis, intelligent search, data visualization, BI on demand, and information on demand.
Initiative 2: Implement an Information Infrastructure
After several key successful projects are in place, successful companies start creating a complete, end-to-end BI infrastructure, that supports the business and control activities of the organizations, and eliminates the "knowledge shadows" throughout the enterprise.
Employees can easily access information from all data sources, including databases, emails, and documents. They can then integrate the data across multiple business units, systems, and processes, to get a holistic view. Employees will have the confidence and ability to act, with powerful, guided analysis tools, easy sharing and collaboration with other users, and directly link into operational activities.
An information infrastructure supports a single, secure, coherent version of the truth across the organization - no more arguments about where data comes from, how it's defined or when it was last updated.
In particular, an information infrastructure has following elements:
- A systematic approach to monitoring and improving data quality (rather than ad-hoc fixing of numbers).
- Simpler data access for a broader range of users, including greater investment in training and best practice.
- An emphasis on collaboration and discussion around data.
- Actionable information, by embedding BI directly into operational systems, at the point of decision.
- A flexible mix of on-premise and on-demand implementations according to the needs of different groups.
This information infrastructure approach puts the right framework in place for a culture of information use and fact-based decision-making. It fosters a virtuous spiral of increasing numbers of employees accessing, analyzing, and sharing data and improving operational performance.
Supporting this information infrastructure typically requires both organizational and technology changes. Some form of BI competency center is essential, tasked with the optimal use of information across the organization as whole. One key task of the BI competency center is to standardize the BI products used, favoring systems that have the openness, breadth, and integrated approach to support the variety of environments and profiles that exist throughout the organization.
Initiative 3: Align Information Use With Corporate Strategy
Having a good information infrastructure isn't enough. If enterprise BI is only "part of the plumbing", it won't get the resources required to thrive over the longer term. To achieve performance excellence, there has to be a strong link between the information systems and the strategic directions of the company.
In most organizations, there are two types of systems: bottom-up reports and dashboards that track the performance of different processes and business units, and top-down budgeting systems that effectively control the implementation of strategic initiatives. And there's typically a huge gap between them.
Bridging the gap between IT and Finance is crucial to a systematic approach to linking strategy to execution, and financial and strategic planning systems are essential pieces of the performance excellence puzzle. Today's CFOs need a consistent, end-to-end view of financial performance and processes, including strategic planning, fast close, statutory reporting, and profitability analysis. Leaders throughout the organization need easy access to budget, cost, and profitability numbers to optimize the business.
IT has to work collaboratively with the finance function to tie the financial systems more tightly to operational systems through integrated financial and non-financial key performance indicators, enhanced business reporting, and scorecards.
There has to be a closed-loop solution approach to the definition of strategy, the execution of the budgets, and the analysis of performance across all business systems. By using a performance excellence approach, organizations can maximize the potential of each process and every individual.
Initiative 4: Connect to the Outside World
Performance excellence is about more than just your organization. To be successful, every organization has to work closely with their business ecosystem partners to improve performance quality along the whole supply chain. Sharing information with customers, partners, and suppliers is one of the most powerful ways to unleash the value of your information assets.
Conclusion
In real-life, these four steps overlap. After initial project success, organizations typically reach out in several directions at the same time, incrementally expanding the reach of information to more people in the organization, to the executive and finance teams, and to customers. Wherever you are today, these four steps can take you closer to performance excellence in the future.
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More Conference Coverage
- October 18 - Concrete Steps to Performance Intelligence
- October 17 - The Power of Collective Intelligence
- October 16 - Crystal Reports 2008
- October 16 - Today's Top Stories
- October 16 - Towards Performance Excellence
- October 15 - Integrating BI 2.0
- October 12 - Countdown to the Insight User Conference
- October 12 - Business Objects Goes Green at Insight 2007
For more Insight conference details, visit Business Objects Americas 07 User Conference event site.
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 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS Donald MacCormick is the chief transformation officer at Business Objects. He’s responsible for all product messaging and is also heavily involved in the development of overall product strategy. More about Donald. |
 TIMO ELLIOTT Timo Elliott joined Business Objects in 1991 as employee #8. He plays a key part in Business Objects strategy and positioning and is a passionate advocate of the power of BI. Read Timo's Blog |