Based in Cape Town - with offices in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London - PQ Business Intelligence (PQBI) is the divisional centre for BI operations in the PQ Africa group. As market leader - with over 60 specialist consultants and a national support network - PQBI is the largest implementer of the Cognos range of business intelligence applications and Ardent data quality tools in South Africa, servicing the financial, industrial, retail and banking sectors. Since its inception in September 1997, it has produced a track record of a client a month for 28 months. A cornerstone of PQBI`s success has been its policy of partnering with industry leaders, including Microsoft, Informix, and Oracle, with the goal of delivering customer-tailored services in each competency area, from education and training services to comprehensive BI solutions.
PQBI is the only Cognos-accredited BI Lifecycle and BI University (BIU) training centre in the country, with a national 0800 support network in all major centres.
"Business success, and particularly e-business success, depends largely on enabling clients to make the most of the information locked in their enterprise systems," says PQBI divisional manager Gavin Lipshitz. "For us this goes beyond the delivery of basic BI services to a flexible, multidimensional portfolio of solutions tailored to the client`s specific BI needs. This we call enterprise information enablement (EIE)."
EIE separates enterprise data and information analysis into logical tiers, and combines them with PQBI`s portfolio of services in an integrated three-dimensional model. The model can then be used to select the appropriate business solution for each client depending on the level of service or project specialisation required.
"We can`t presume to be everything to everyone, since clients` needs can vary significantly," says Lipshitz. "Instead, with the aim of making our customers more successful through specialised services and products, EIE allows us to evolve our end-to-end BI services to end-to-end information enablement processes from a business-driven perspective."
Based on the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), the essential components of PQBI`s EIE methodology encompass:
A low-risk approach, with
A focus on the business value of the solution, involving
A high level of technical and end-user interaction, with
An emphasis on iterative and incremental design.
"This methodolog subscribes to the Q Data Consulting-endorsed golden rule of delivering a project to spec, in budget, and on time," adds Lipshitz. "This is managed without exception by starting at the core business need and working back through a prototype to the underlying business data. "By thinking big and working incrementally towards a deliverable, we can then take the FastTrack approach to delivering a prototype for the business in five to 10 days," he says. "This helps us maintain consistent and measurable benefits for the client for the duration of the project."
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