In today's competitive landscape, organisations need to get closer to their customers. And the key to this is in the information they collect on a daily basis, which is repackaged and delivered within a business intelligence environment in a sustainable manner.
This was the message delivered by Bruce Bond-Myatt, national consulting manager at SAS Institute, while speaking on behalf of lead sponsor and key partner Sasuka at the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC) conference held in Sandton this week.
In his workshop entitled "Key steps for implementing a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC)", Bond-Myatt provided an overview on business intelligence and its use, a clear vision of what a BICC is and how organisations can capitalise on their effectiveness.
He also provided evidence of the organisational value of a BICC, the function and responsibilities of a BICC and, finally, the steps to implementing a BICC.
Says Bond-Myatt: "According to a recent survey by Gartner, the key business priorities for CIOs include: strengthening the 'Information Value Chain'; building IT business skills; and getting closer to business. On the flip side, the most important technology priority for them is business intelligence, showing just how important taking control of your organisation's data really is."
In a nutshell, he sums BI up as: getting the right information to the right people at the right time, to support better decision-making and gain competitive advantages.
The only way a BI implementation can survive, according to Bond-Myatt, is when business and IT marry their competencies and strive towards an equal goal, jointly decided on and beneficial to the business. And this is where the BICC comes into practice.
Sam Tsitsi Motsumi, Managing Director of Sasuka, lead sponsor and key public sector partner of SAS Institute, says: "We have a number of BI customers in government that are using the SAS software to great effect. However, should they embrace the notion and adopt a BICC approach to their BI deployment they would triple the results of a system already yielding great benefits for their organisations."
A BICC is a formal organisational structure which is set up as a permanent committee or group, staffed internally from people within both business and IT roles in an organisation. They are assigned defined tasks, roles, responsibilities and processes for the BI initiatives to attain. The end result is that a BICC should support and promote the effective use of business intelligence to drive the business strategy.
"When effectively deployed, a BICC can leverage the investment in your existing BI implementations, making that investment sustainable. It's about ensuring the organisation will continue to benefit from the time, money and resources it has invested in to continuously deliver value with its BI initiatives," ends Bond-Myatt.
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SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at 43 000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world 'The Power to Know'. Visit us at www.sas.com http://www.sas.com/ http://www.sas.com/sa.
Sasuka
Sasuka is a 100% black owned IT company which adheres strictly to the SMME guidelines of South Africa. All of its staff members are from previously disadvantaged groups. Sasuka's primary service offering is delivering business intelligent solutions to add value and create knowledge that will assist clients in making informed decisions. Sasuka's operational strategy is geared towards forming strategic alliances with selected IT companies, to combine different expertise in providing comprehensive IT solutions. This gives rise to the long-term business relationships where Sasuka can draw on the resources of its alliance partners, and vice versa. Visit us at http://www.sasuka.co.za.
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