One of the key success factors to a Business Intelligent (BI) implementation is to make the facility widely available to staff across the enterprise.
So says Andrew Connold, managing director of Synergy Computing, the Cognos-based Data Warehousing solutions specialists with more than 20 years experience in implementing data management, decision support tools and business intelligence solutions in South Africa.
"It's the pro-active rather than re-active company that is going to win through business downturns and that means arming everyone who can impact the business positively, with appropriate information," he says.
"Unfortunately, traditionally, a lot of information generated by BI tools has been for 'upper-management eyes only' - and typically on a weekly basis in summarised report formats. Such a BI model just doesn't allow key information to percolate down quickly enough for those people who really needed to act upon it."
Connold maintains that if BI is to realise its full return-on-investment (ROI) for the customer, it needs to become an integral part of the business performance management and decision-making processes throughout the organisation. With BI tools used in this way, the responsibility for the achievement of the company strategic objectives and profitability is delegated down to all levels, which enables the company to respond quickly to market and customer changes.
"To achieve such dynamism throughout the organisation, critical performance and other information, as well as analytic results, must be available to all levels of staff who can respond appropriately and timeously to changing situations, not just the already overloaded upper management."
This does not mean that line staff, already buried in e-mails, are now going to have to cope with a plethora of business reports. With Web-enabled BI tools such as Cognos' Impromptu and PowerPlay solutions reports can be distributed on a 'publish and subscribe' basis whereby only those employees who need specified information receive it. In addition, access to sensitive information can be access controlled.
"You have to get the information to the right person at the right time, otherwise there is little point in doing it," concludes Connold.
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Synergy, a 24 year old Business Intelligence Software Solution company, is headquartered in Johannesburg with branches in Cape Town and Durban, is owned by Dale Investments and JLP Properties, two privately held investment companies, with a significant portion of shares being held by staff.
The board is chaired by Robert Engels, a former Executive Vice President of Cognos, who during his 14 years with Cognos saw the company's European operations grow from about 35 people to nearly 500. Synergy Computing's Managing Director, Andrew Connold, the former MD of Plessey Cellular and Deputy Chairman, Dr John Temple, the former CEO of Plessey SA, have both built multiple businesses in SA.
Synergy Computing was recently awarded the Cognos Partner Premier status at the Cognos Conference in November 2001
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