The Business Intelligence Guide

Organizations of all types and sizes need to effectively manage business performance. This is especially so in today’s complex, highly regulated and dynamic business environment. Business managers must improve both their decision making, and the speed of execution.

After hefty investments in making information available to the entire enterprise through content management systems and portals, few business users actively used such material in a logical fashion to support decisions. The subjective decision still ruled.

Business intelligence capability addresses this weakness, providing users with a logical view of information in the context of the work they encounter on a daily basis.

True Performance Management goes far beyond traditional “Intelligent Enterprises.”

Key metrics [KPI's] at all levels monitor how the enterprise and its business units are performing against strategy. KPI's are derived from analytical models developed to measure the impact of financial and operational decisions on overall strategy achievement.

Businesses are struggling with the challenges of:

• External Forces - Shareholder, Competition, Compliance, Public Scrutiny
• Internal Forces - Cost, Innovation, Adapability, Shared Services, Efficiency
• Goal Focus - Continuous Improvement, Faster Adaption, Business Alignment, Balanced Performance, Corporate Focus
• Execution - Many data silos, What actions to take, Too much information, Priorities
• Complexity - Annual Review Process, SEC Filings, IFRS, Market Updates, Budgets & Forecasts, Unplanned Obstacles, Rewards, Organizational Restructure, Information Systems, Matrix Management, Corporate Performance, Strategy Maps & Scorecards, Dashboards

A Performance Management Roadmap helps organisations move towards a sustainable platform underpinned with a core set of operating metrics across all services and all locations.

Its a continual journey, which aims to gradually improve the effectiveness and adaptability to a changing market for the organization over time. Over time, business managers and users will move from traditional uses of historical information to a more real time, predictive environment, constantly optimizing the investment in resources.

The roadmap:

1. Acts as a map forward
2. Covers all dimensions of Performance Management
3. Drives collaboration between the front line and back office processes.

PM Characteristics

There are five characteristics of companies which master Performance Management:

1. Information-based decisions making is a core part of the corporate culture— constantly emphasized and communicated.
2. Analytics is used to drive a step by step change in business outcomes, in partnership with customers and suppliers, and is managed at an enterprise level
3. Executives and business users alike, use analytical capabilities
4. Seize opportunities to generate information, creating a “discover and learn” culture
5. Integrate quantitative analytical and intelligence capabilities into business processes.

Change Management

The Roadmap challenges are largely cultural, untangling ingrained political relationships to free all users to access information from all parts of the enterprise. Breaking down silos of data can threaten the dominance of some managers, but is essential to achieve.

Performance Management programs must however, ensure that managers retain the ability to manage their own performance while allowing free and rapid distribution of shared information.

A Performance Management program must be seen as a long term program, with costs, planning and control visible to stakeholders.

Decision making must be supported at all levels, not just at executive level. Analytics can be used by over 90 percent of the organisation in defining actions which need to be taken.

When organization leaders can become masters in Performance Management they go beyond being mere users of business intelligence to become BI Coaches of Intelligence Enterprises.

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