An intelligent business option to boost performance in 2006

2006 brings new projects, new budgets, new deadlines and new challenges. The primary issue for staff, managers and executives is to understand their position in the business and the targets they need to set to achieve departmental, as well as a company-wide, goals. It is a time when the effectiveness of organisational business intelligence (BI) and information strategies are tested and scrutinised.

"Each division, department or service line needs to harmonise its strategies along a shared timeline if organisational goals are to be met," says Gary Cook, CEO of LeaderBoard, a developer of visual intelligence solutions. "With many financial year-ends looming in the first quarter of 2006, the people and operational plans needed to reach set mileposts must be assessed. To do so, managers and executives must aggregate myriad reports and scorecards generated throughout 2005. A considerable task.

"The speed and ease with which users can access relevant data is an accurate measure of the effectiveness of the BI and information strategy within an organisation," says Cook. "At an `excellent` rating, a BI and information strategy will allow users at almost any level to reach all required information in a few clicks. For information managers, achieving this raises the spectre of generating hundreds of reports and sub-reports to meet the requirements of various employees. Contrary to popular belief, this does not require investment in a heavyweight enterprise-wide BI solution.

"Proven best practice is to start implementing an information management system in the area where the greatest wins can be achieved and then to steadily sophisticate the report system - which can then be automated and shared according to employee roles and responsibilities," says Cook. "A dashboard, dashboard portal or standard KPI indicator can begin to solve the information dilemma, creating order and accessibility to enable real-time performance assessment and timeous strategic or tactical adjustment. "

A fully blown, enterprise-sized BI solution provides historical data that can be sliced and diced, researched and manipulated. Cost and time are limiting factors, however. Organisations will spend millions of rands for the initial design, software and implementation but, by the time the roll-out is completed and staff members are beginning to use the solution, the company may have changed structure. A dashboard, in comparison, has a fixed design and layout tailored to specific users. A dashboard portal would, for example, consist of a number of dashboards that have been tweaked to suit the needs of various users - at a glance. Dashboards can and do make use of information collected by enterprise applications, BI systems and data marts, as well as reports generated in various formats by top-level staff.

"The first step to ease information access is to clearly identify the information required, ensure accuracy and assign sign-off responsibility, making the information available at set dates in the required format. This information is then imported to a custom-designed or templated dashboard at automated intervals," explains Cook.

To prevent duplication, standard dashboard reports for departments or operational areas such as sales, HR and marketing can be designed. Views can also be tailored to suit operational, mid- and executive-level staff.

"A project of this nature has to be led from the top down with management and executives supporting and enabling the project," emphasises Cook. "The aim is to create a layer of business information that is accurate and will ensure all business role players are `on the same page`.

"It is an easy solution with which to quickly empower staff," he adds. "While access can be limited through report authorisation, the dashboard application itself is Windows- and browser-based and requires no specialised training or licensing to use."

In terms of return on investment, Cook notes: "There is almost no way to quantify a return. ROI has to do with what you do with the information."