More on Business Intelligence

All organizations, whether business, government, charitable, or otherwise; have limited resources for performing their missions. Companies are forced to make do with what they have — all the time. You can’t put a Nobel laureate in every position, and you can’t pour unlimited dollars into an endless quest to make all your factories and offices more efficient.

The most precious resource is time. The marketplace is in constant motion, and companies must not only move correctly, they must move quickly. Otherwise competitors will fill any available vacuum in the market, resources will get used up, and your organization will inexorably wither away.

Businessintelligences entire raison d’être (that’s French for “shade of lipstick” — just kidding) is as an ally at those inflection points throughout the life of a business where a decision is required. Business intelligence is a flexible resource that can work at various organizational levels and various times — these, for example:

·         A sales manager is deliberating over which prospects the account executives should focus on in the final-quarter profitability push;

·         An automotive firm’s research-and-development team is deciding which features to include in next year’s sedan; and,

·         The fraud department is deciding on changes to customer loyalty programs that will root out fraud without sacrificing customer satisfaction.

The decisions can be strategic or tactical, grand or humble. But they represent two roads diverging in a yellow wood: Considered in the aggregate, the roads taken and those not taken represent the separation between successful and unsuccessful companies. Better decisions, with the help of business intelligence, can make all the difference.