Although companies both locally and globally are moving toward e-commerce and customer-centric systems, they are not focusing strongly enough drive on the effective consolidation of information.
So says Neil Williams, marketing manager for business intelligence at SAP Africa. "It is now critical for companies to address what their customers are buying and when, what the profitability of their products are, which customers must be retained and how efficient the supply chain is.
"Organisations need tools to collect, store, analyse and present this information in a timely and effective manner. They are realising the need for business intelligence to help with activities such as data mining, statistical analysis and forecasting - but they are not focusing enough attention on just how consolidation of all this information will take place."
Williams maintains that key to any business intelligence strategy is the consideration of which tools to utilise for information consolidation.
"The first wave of data warehouses encountered a number of difficulties, including technical integration and laborious, lengthy implementation. Yet perhaps the biggest obstacle has been gearing the warehouse to the business processes of the user organisation.
"Even today, most systems simply deliver information, but do not provide the means for knowledge workers to act immediately upon the insight they gain - they fail to 'close the loop'," he says.
Williams stresses the need for an integrated approach when purchasing business intelligence tools.
"You must consider how well each one integrates with your current environment and with the other tools you are considering."
He points to a Meta Group study last year which highlights this by concluding: 'In the data warehouse, where co-ordination is everything, best-of-breed could be a formula for disaster. Having tools that are well and deeply integrated with each other is a necessity, not a luxury. You're going to be buying multiple products, and you're going to be the prime systems integrator to bring them together.'
This is where SAP Business Intelligence has delivered as it gives knowledge workers rapid access to data from SAP systems, other enterprise applications or any other external sources. "It opens decision-making processes to important new avenues of timely information and insights," says Williams.
"Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) started the business intelligence process. It allowed organisations a better understanding of their internal business processes, enabling the processes to be simplified and controlled in an efficient manner.
"From here companies realised they needed to collect and collate all the information in a common database, so they could analyse and mine it to the benefit of their companies' strategic goals.
"This makes enterprise software remains a necessity," explains Williams. "It forms one of the most valuable source of information for a company's business intelligence initiatives. Without this information a company will not be able to tie board room level decisions back to procedures on the operational floor."
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