Business intelligence as untapped opportunity

Information lies at the heart of good decision-making. Often used primarily by executives and business analysts, business intelligence (BI) products are pervading organisations, especially as the people in them increasingly demand more information more quickly.

Organisations need to take control of information flow to use it more effectively internally as well as to facilitate partner and customer transactions. However, businesses often hold data in different systems, including ERP, CRM, databases, legacy applications and mainframes.

We estimate that most organisations access less than 20 per cent of all their business-critical information. Moreover, less than 10 per cent of their staff can access that information. The channel should grab this opportunity.

Once the foundations have been established, why not get customers using analytics to create predictive BI?

The idea that BI tools can boost the bottom line has become widely accepted. However, we believe that these tools are mainly being used merely to assess current or past business performance.

BI’s full value will surface when it can make companies proactive problem-solvers. The aim of predictive BI is to reduce the time between identifying a business issue and making a decision.

The challenge is to identify leading indicators outside a company’s four walls and link them to lagging indicators, such as margins.

From a channel perspective, the ability to help customers recognise these indicators and implement solutions will add value.

As barriers to information access lower, and technologies emerge that expand the capabilities of BI within the enterprise, so its value will increase. What’s more, industry analysts and vendors are making big plays around BI.

Peter Walker is country manager at Information Builders