BI top of mind for CIOs

Chief information officers, or CIOs, are tasked with ensuring a company's IT and computer systems are aligned with corporate goals. This is easier said than done, and as the heads of technology within a company, CIOs are big advocates of business intelligence (BI) as it provides them the invaluable insight needed to leverage technology in the best possible way for the enterprise.

The ability to extract value from data has an invaluable impact on the success of a business.

The CIO is right in the middle of this value extraction, and is responsible for providing the most prized information to be used by the company to achieve its goals.

The role of a CIO has been present in the business world for over 30 years. The CIO of today not only faces unprecedented piles of data, but a bevy of hurdles to efficient BI. The real challenge lies in overcoming two key BI impediments.

One of these is the lack of consistent data definitions. There are few effective tools in the market that enable efficient master data management, so to speak. Cleaning up years of metadata indifference is a complex and expensive proposition. CIOs who are able to source and leverage the BI systems to do this efficiently certainly deserve a big round of applause.

The other BI issue that CIOs need to handle is determining the audience of BI. In most cases, BI is invariably consumed by specially trained analysts who are tasked with the 'important reporting' for the benefit of managers, CIOs and other high-level executives. The shrewd CIO will include frontline staff and managers in the audience. Employees who come in contact with clients and customers make countless decisions on a daily basis. The quality of these important decisions can be enhanced if they're based on BI-driven information.

BI always tops the list on a CIO's agenda, providing ample opportunity to overcome both novel and intrinsic BI challenges. It provides access to strategic data and in-depth insight that helps them make better decisions, more quickly. CIOs, like other top-level executives, work in an increasingly accountable environment. Every decision has to be justified with solid reasoning, something which BI offers plenty of.

Entities that are able to foresee and proactively handle potential problems enjoy a sharp competitive edge. Companies need to apply sophisticated statistical techniques to predict and prepare for future events. These techniques require specialist skills, especially with the presence of big data.

This is where the CIO has to shine by harnessing the power of BI and analytics to answer previously unanswerable questions. BI enables the CIO to go beyond simple operational monitoring, and deliver insight that helps with the creation of an effective company strategy.

BI lets the CIO make a colossal contribution to the company. Considering the fact that IT departments inherently have a reputation of an unavoidable burden, BI can transform a CIO's world.

CIOs need to look ahead and focus on getting the maximum value from BI and analytics. According to a recent study conducted by Gartner, less than 30% of potential BI users in a company actually use it. This lower adoption rate is mainly due to slow and hard-to-use BI tools and approaches. This is changing with the consumerisation of BI, which CIOs need to be on top of.

After years of clamouring for widespread adoption, the BI industry is finally making headway. The smartest, successful and rapidly expanding companies across the globe are making the best use of BI. A key factor in this increasing adoption rate is the use of data visualisation tools. Other factors such as mobile apps and cloud computing are also playing an important part.

It's interesting to note, however, that the visual analytics are not a replacement for traditional BI tools. Rather, the consumerised iterations are complementing conventional BI, especially in large organisations.

CIOs need to have an eye out for these user-friendly, easy-to-implement and efficient BI tools that provide their companies with a competitive edge in the face of rapidly evolving market dynamics and a largely uncertain economy.

An integrated BI strategy will definitely result in better performance across the company. However, the improvement will depend on how efficiently and extensively BI is integrated across the company. A smart, company-wide integration involves numerous considerations.

These include:

* Establishing consistency across all BI tools and data stores;
* Creating a common BI platform;
* Linking corporate performance management scorecards to dashboards;
* Focusing BI integration on a specific goal, eg, reducing operational cost;
* Methodically identifying specific areas where BI integration is required;
* Using more than one BI integration approach;
* Utilising enterprise portals; and
* Using real-time processing and business activity monitoring.

The next generation of BI tools and approaches takes the world of analytics to a whole new level. This consumerisation of BI, and its resulting high user-adoption, will certainly help companies increase their BI return on investment.

As with all things efficient, mobility and agility are also great BI qualities. Mobile BI enables users to gain valuable insights on the go, using mobile devices. A mobile workforce that's armed with the power of BI is an efficient workforce. It remains the CIO's job to enable the creation of such teams.

Every decision has to be justified with solid reasoning.

Agile BI is another important approach of using BI, where agile development techniques are used on BI projects to decrease the time-to-value of conventional BI, helping business units swiftly adapt to shifting business needs. The implementation of mobile and agile BI boosts efficiency and productivity while enabling better decisions.

Any CIO who's worth his salt will always look towards the future. Successful companies have forward-thinking technology officers leading their IT resources. Here are some BI trends for 2014 that every top technology officer should be aware of:

* More mobile: There will be a lot more mobile BI users, and more specialised mobile BI applications will emerge in 2014.
* Faster processing: Mainstream predictive analytics will require faster processing capabilities.
* Integration: BI integration will attract huge spending as businesses seek specialists to integrate BI across their departments.
* Social decision-making: A collaborative environment that's conducive to social decision-making will emerge.

The most successful CIOs will be on top of these BI trends. They will utilise services and systems of the best BI providers in the industry to create and maintain a competitive-edge.