CIOs focus on BI, BPM

Research firm Gartner has released the findings of a survey conducted between September and December 2008, which delivered some expected results, states Network World.

Of the 1 527 CIOs polled, a majority in North America and Europe reported flat IT budgets for the coming year, while slight increases in spending are expected in Latin America and decreases are expected in the Asia/Pacific region.

CIOs indicated business process improvements and business intelligence technology as their top business and technology priorities for 2009, respectively. Gartner analysts attribute CIOs' keen focus on business to a need to work smarter going forward.

Gut decisions are alive and well as a business tool inside today's corporate environments - even with the server farms' worth of enterprise-wide BI, CRM, ERP and supply chain data that companies have amassed over the years, reports CIO.

Accenture surveyed more than 250 executives in July 2008 about their companies' use of and investment in business analytics to remain competitive.

According to recent research, nearly half (40%) of major corporate decisions are based on gut decisions.

Embedding BI into operational processes can help workers make better decisions, but such IT initiatives must be focused on an area that will show a significant ROI and be designed with business users, says Computer World.

That was the message from several enterprise users at IDC's Business Intelligence and Business Process Forum, who have launched projects to infuse business processes with analytics to allow front-line workers to use exception handling to make decisions.

At Capital One Financial, operational BI automation projects have focused on high-level corporate strategy areas such as lean operating initiatives and outsourcing, said David Hummelberg, managing VP. "With BI, the net result of the value proposition is pretty foggy going into it," he said. "That is why ours have been drafted behind a specific business issue."