Pervasive business intelligence: enhancing key performance indicators

Business intelligence is on the move. Industry analyst IDC projects that the market for BI tools will grow from approximately $3.7 billion in 2002 to $4.5 billion by 2007. BI is not only on the move, it also is evolving from traditional BI to pervasive BI PBI-, which empowers everyone in the organization, at all levels, with analytics, alerts and feedback mechanisms. It s a new paradigm with potentially enormous benefits - and far-reaching cultural implications.

On the benefits side, PBI promises to: More effectively leverage the strengths of the whole organization by giving every employee the power to contribute to and enhance key performance indicators KPIs- that have been set by management. Increase sustainable competitive advantage by helping to transform every employee into an organization of one who is able to make the right decisions at the right time in step with company and customer objectives. Improve operational efficiency by uncovering new best practices and driving those practices from the bottom up as well as the top down. Pervasive business intelligence is BI for the rest of organization. It s the ability to take relevant information that is usually reported up to management and push it down to users. At the various organizational levels, the data is presented so that people see only what is most relevant to their day-to-day tasks, broken out into vertical silos, with expectations and performance clearly identified. Culturally, the success of PBI depends upon the belief that the ability of employees to meet the goals and KPIs set by management is good for the entire enterprise, and that individuals can contribute more than they do today with less hands-on management oversight. PBI makes use of the fact that people at the individual level know their jobs best, they can deal with circumstances themselves and they can come up with improvements at their own level. Another critical success factor is right timing the PBI data so that it is in sync with business processes. People will not pay attention to data that seems out of sync with what they are trying to do. As with traditional BI, it is important to develop metrics properly linked to business processes. Also, PBI becomes increasingly more accurate and powerful as the metrics evolve. However, individuals must analyze the metrics, discover their shortcomings and improve them accordingly. Further, PBI affords an unprecedented mechanism to effect change in the organization. By embedding metrics for behavior throughout the organization s work processes and rewarding people for the right behavior, the organization s senior leadership team has a powerful instrument for change at their fingertips. Instead of just the steering wheel, they can control the whole change engine. From the CEO to the newest individual contributor, everyone can work smarter when business intelligence is pervasive. Whether you believe PBI is a true leap beyond BI or merely a natural evolution of existing BI systems, its time is fast arriving as companies rush to adopt traditional BI solutions. PBI has the potential to take these companies to the next level. Early adopters are already on board and achieving real results with PBI, which means many more companies are sure to follow. Source and full article: www.dmreview.coma>