Operational Business Intelligence
BI has traditionally been the software tool of choice for executives doing business planning: figuring out what to do by looking at historical data. Answering questions such as, what were the sales like in each territory this past year, how many widgets came out of each plant, etc. The traditional BI solution provided the important base for strategic decision making and for setting the performance targets to support the strategy. For business review sessions, the BI software tells the executive if the targets were hit or missed, by how much, and the data could be used to further analyze the reasons behind each success or failure.
The trend now is to put BI software to work in a tactical role. This is near real time BI: comparing and combining transactional data with information from the data warehouse to make faster fact based decisions. It is no longer necessary to rely on gut instincts or to try to extrapolate from experience. Take for example, the staffing a software support call centre. With the release of a new product, historical data will show an increase in call volume in the weeks following the release. However, for the release of a brand new product (as opposed to an upgrade version of an existing product) or the release of a product into a new, unknown market, accurate historical data does not exist. With near real time data, any assumptions made can be adjusted quickly enough to meet the business goals. If call volume is higher than expected, then line managers can decide to get more staff trained sooner to support the new product. The sooner this decision is made, than the better the odds are of meeting the strategic performance targets for serving customers. Better still, if the decision is based on real information, executive support for the manager’s decision will likely be stronger.
This tactical, operations orientated BI is supported by three other information technology trends:
1. The need for a quicker ROI on all IT projects.
2. The IT infrastructure is in place to support a company wide roll-out (for example, broadband connections to remote locations).
3. BI can be delivered via email, a web browser or on a mobile device, all of which are ubiquitous and familiar to non-technical staff.
From a IT architecture perspective, how to deliver operational BI must be carefully considered so as not to impact the transactional systems. The major vendors in the BI space all have products to support operational BI, for example, Cognos Now! or Business Objects XI. Using open source BI is an interesting alternative, both for reducing costs and for potentially better integration into an exisiting application framework.
Related Posts:
How to Get Started with Operational Business Intelligence
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