Business intelligence (BI) is an essential part of performance management, says David McWilliam, MD of Cognos SA.
"Decision-making at every level of an organisation is the most critical factor affecting performance, and decisions are based on the information people have at hand," he told customers and partners at a Cognos briefing yesterday.
Therefore, he said, it was important for that information to be appropriate, reliable, on time and easy to consume. Otherwise, it will have a negative impact on decision-making.
However, McWilliam said the creation of an effective decision-making system required business and IT to work together, which remained a challenge in many organisations because of the communication barrier between business and IT.
McWilliam said the solution was twofold: "First, establish a framework that delivers the right information to decision-makers; then support the decision-making process with a system of integrated core capabilities for managing performance."
According to research commissioned by Cognos, decision-makers need information to manage and improve performance in revenue optimisation, profitability, risk management, asset optimisation and governance.
"This research also lists planning, reporting, analysis and business activity monitoring as top performance management capabilities," McWilliam said, further underlining the importance of BI to the process.
For these reasons, McWilliam said Cognos had identified management, information and performance services as key components of an information framework.
He said Cognos had also opted for a services-oriented architecture as an ideal way for pulling together all these elements across an organisation to deliver successful performance management.
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