BI becomes a priority

By Siyabonga Africa for SAP
The Forum, Bryanston, 26 Feb 2009

SAP SA strategic initiatives director Simon Carpenter is adamant that business intelligence (BI) is more important than ever in the current economic climate.

Speaking yesterday at ITWeb's BI event at The Forum, in Bryanston, Carpenter referred to several studies, including a Gartner report, which point to BI as being the most valued asset for companies in 2009.

“Right now, most CIOs are looking for an information management strategy and they're asking themselves questions, such as how they can govern and manage data, while reducing the costs and complexity of managing multiple data silos.”

Carpenter said CFOs and CEOs should set the following priorities in order to succeed with their BI strategies: achieving greater business insight, ensuring full compliance at lowest cost, controlling and managing operational risks, and ensuring compliance across the enterprise.

Going enterprise

Carpenter emphasised compliance and control as being important in the current economic climate to regulate the information created within organisations.

He highlighted the problems with today's companies as being high costs in maintaining information, low trust by both managers and key decision-makers, the low adoption of BI, and gut decisions being made because of the deconstruct in the communication channels.

“The best way for businesses to deal with the current scenario is to take an enterprise approach in the way they implement their BI.”

He explained this would entail consolidating a company's information into a single platform, which will serve the different needs of users in the organisation and is a cohesive system which will reduce the cost of running the IT shop in the long run.

Carpenter added that other benefits include enhancing collaboration throughout the organisation, increasing compliance and control measures, and improving the company's agility and flexibility, which are critical for success.

Opening up

Also at the conference, PBT Group CEO Martin Rennhackkamp said the number one goal for business managers in these tough economic times is to develop enterprise-wide BI solutions that fit into the company's business strategy.

“Data governance is one of the important ways in which you can make BI strategic across the organisation.”

He added that if one looks at data governance frameworks, there is not a single aspect which is not related to BI. Companies can use data governance to improve what they deliver in the data space, Rennhackkamp noted.