The time is ripe with opportunities for companies to become more competitive by implementing a well-thought-out analytics strategy.
This is the opinion of Oliver Oursin, Worldwide Product, Business Intelligence and EMEA Presales Executive - IBM Business Analytics, who was recently in the country to participate in a series of breakfast meetings hosted by Synergy BI.
Synergy BI managing director Christo Bredenkamp caught up with Oursin to enquire about the state of the analytics playing field, and was told that “ROI is probably the most overused word in our industry, but if ever companies had a realistic chance to see their investment fundamentally change their business, it is now”.
Oursin explained: “Bringing the worlds of traditional BI and predictive analytics together gives information users insight into areas they did not have before, and we see many examples of this making a dramatic impact on customer profitability. Very few organisations can afford to walk away from this possibility.”
Turning his focus on financial planning, Oursin said predictive analytics could also help to mitigate risk in the planning cycle, as well as find patterns and identify “what if” scenarios, adding that the acquisition of SPSS has given IBM huge momentum to accelerate its analytics strategy.
“IBM has the most complete solution, from data management to business analytics, including traditional business intelligence, risk and financial performance management,” he said, and predicted that “business analytics is and will remain the top priority of the CIOs”.
Referring to IBM Cognos' latest offering - Cognos Insight - Oursin said it would boost personal productivity by putting users on the road to data discovery.
“Cognos Insight delivers a personal approach to analytics by empowering users to solve individual or workgroup challenges on their own.
“This will give users the agility they need today,” he said.
To find out more about Cognos Insight, contact your local Synergy BI office in these cities:
CT: (021) 481 2700
JHB: (011) 234 7371
DBN: (031) 266 1363
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Synergy BI, comprising 80 people, with offices in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, is increasingly looked to by companies to assist them with the formulation and execution of a comprehensive information delivery strategy.
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