The ITWeb BI 2008 Conference will take place on 26 and 27 February. The two-day conference is aimed at IT and business professionals who are involved in and want to improve their organisations' business intelligence (BI) initiatives.
The 15 presentations and three case studies focus on BI in action and cater for companies starting to explore BI, as well as for those wanting to expand their existing programmes.
Some of the 20 speakers participating in the conference include Alan Brickett, business data architect for Premier Foods; Angela Ferguson, BI manager of Investec; Van Zyl Kruger, principal consultant of PBT Group; and Sanet Kock, director of BI & HealthNet, MediKredit Integrated Healthcare Solutions.
Brickett, in his presentation "The BI journey", details technologies and practices used by Premier Foods to generate BI data from 2000 through to 2007. He looks at some of the technical issues and the transition from master data in source systems to the data admin requirement, as well as the need for proper master data management (MDM) control, applications and processes.
In addition, Brickett discusses how IT supports the technology for BI and MDM, and the role of the business BI team and the Business Intelligence Competency centre.
Investec is in the process of implementing a phased approach to BI, after having gone through the rigorous process of defining what information is required, how it will be retrieved, who would have access to it and how the users should be prepared for the new tool. Ferguson will speak about Investec's experience in her presentation: "The penny drops".
Kruger will discuss: "Open source BI: What are the advantages and risks?" He will look at the advantages and risks of open source BI by examining some case studies and views of OSBI implementations. In his presentation, Kruger will introduce the open source concept and some of the leaders in the OSBI environment.
"The current hypercompetitive business environment demands ongoing innovation and transformation as an organisational competence, to ensure sustained competitiveness in relation to both local and global market demands," says Kock. She will discuss the MediKredit BI experience, in: "The known, the unknown and the unexpected."
The three case studies all titled "BI in action" will be presented by Alan Marais, BI specialist at Clicks; Johann Muller, manager applications and information architecture at Anglo Platinum; and Judy Rogan, head of MIS at Stanlib.
Participants in the 2008 BI survey will have the opportunity to add their views to survey results, and will receive a copy of the annual survey results report.
Related link:
Business Intelligence Conference
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