Johannesburg, 12 Jun 2009
Business intelligence (BI) has certainly made its mark on most organisations operating within the South African business environment over the past few years, and has reached a new level of importance for decision-makers.
This is due to the fact that BI is maturing locally and as such, is offering organisations benefits that are key to remaining competitive in such a volatile market. However, investing in such a solution requires spending, and with the economic crisis placing pressures on organisations across the board, is a BI solution the right technology to invest in?
The answer - a simple yes!
When understood and implemented correctly, a BI solution offers an organisation more than just integrating data, but rather the ability to turn information into a useful asset, from identifying and reacting to problems, to anticipating opportunities within and outside the organisation - all factors that are essential to remaining innovative and abreast of market conditions, especially during tougher economic times.
Additionally, a BI solution can help an organisation determine areas within the business that are not performing, as well as where problems lie and provide the necessary information to the relevant parties involved, ensuring company roles can be properly implemented and managed.
This is known as role-based BI (RBI). Through this identification, companies are better able to implement corrective measures as soon as problems are identified, offering a quick turnaround - an aspect that is key to any innovative and dynamic business model, not to mention cost optimisation, business efficiency and customer satisfaction and retention.
RBI within an organisation sits on top of the business process, offering an analysis of the process data over time, comparing it to best practices and other standards that have been established. It notifies the appropriate individuals within the organisation about any variance in time for them to be able to make adjustments to correct the problem. This concept within BI can be seen as the difference between making an educated guess when a problem occurs versus the correct decision based on having access to the right information. Making the right informed decision is important for any organisation at any time, but is especially crucial now as valuable time and money cannot be wasted fixing unnecessary problems when economic belts are already tightened.
Taking the above into account, it is obvious that with a correctly implemented BI model, a clear return-on-investment can be seen in this technology for the organisation - something all business owners and decision-makers want to see in their business models today. It is also evident that BI is a concept that should not be ignored and should not go unrecognised within any organisation - big or small, especially during tougher economic times.
Although times are tough and cutting back on costs need to take place across most companies, it is important to remember that the economic climate will turn, and when it does, businesses should be ready to go full steam ahead and BI will allow them to do just that. It's about spending to save now and for the future, and about investing in the right technology for your business. Investing in a technology solution that offers you the ability to achieve this is surely worth it - don't you think?
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