Improving Business Intelligence

Business intelligence matters more than ever, as enterprises need to make critical decisions to improve their business outcomes.

In a challenging economy, it is no surprise that business intelligence (BI) remains the top priority for CIOs in their quest to add value to the business, as executives realize that the availability of timely intelligence can separate the winners from the losers. However, many customers who depend on business intelligence to drive critical business decisions say that they are not getting the full value from their investments, because the information is too fragmented, they can’t get it quickly enough and they are unable to get the right intelligence to the right people in the enterprise to capitalize on a new wave of business opportunities.

The underlying cause is the fact that BI platforms and methodologies have not kept up with the rapid evolution of business opportunities that depend on effective decision making for success. Traditional approaches to business data management were devised for delivery of functional reports, based on historical data, to a small set of executive decision makers. Businesses today need to get a consistent view of business data, and need to be able to share the data across organizational boundaries for applications such as supply chain management and demand forecasting. They also need to bring decision making much closer to the point of value to enable a much wider range of users to extract maximum value from every interaction with customers.

Finally, in many vertical industries, the emergence of business ecosystems spanning public and private sectors creates the possibility to serve a new class of consumer needs through the exchange of relevant information in a timely fashion. In some cases, the business model of key players in the ecosystem inherently depends on the value and timeliness of the information exchanged.

As these business opportunities mature, the gap between the potential value of business intelligence and the value delivered by the current generation of solutions grows wider and wider. Hewlett Packard recommends that BI strategists adopt a three-pronged approach to bridge the gap between potential business outcomes and realized business outcomes:

Connect intelligence across boundaries to enable enterprise-wide performance management, support the integration of mergers and acquisition and provide full visibility into the supply chain. Evidence of success is when customers get a consistent view of their business data across the connected entities. To achieve this goal, they must go beyond basic data integration and implement enterprise-wide information governance and master data management initiatives, complemented by the adoption of standards for information exchanges across enterprises.

Connect front office decisions with back office operations to enable a much broader range of users to perform activities that require timely access to information, such as demand forecasting, risk management and customer management. Success means being able to support complex decisions at business speed. To achieve this goal, large amounts of data need to be made available within different contexts, and analytics need to be embedded into business processes for rapid delivery to people and applications.

Connect the business to new opportunities spawned by the emergence of dynamic business ecosystems spanning public and private sectors, and powered by the cloud. This new wave of opportunities requires the systemic exchange of business information to serve a new class of consumer needs. In this context, service orientation becomes the design principle for information architectures, supporting a range of delivery options for shared data services and knowledge capture.

As an early user of cutting-edge BI solutions, HP applies its deep understanding of this domain to help customers master the complexity of their environment and realize the full value of their investments. HP has assembled a portfolio of services and technologies to support the customer’s journey, including discovery workshops and maturity assessments that explore all three vectors of successful BI implementations (business, information and technology).