It's no secret - business users, analysts and decision-makers often feel they have a hard time getting the information they need for effective decision-making.
And, with the business intelligence (BI) market growing in SA and globally, there is an urgent need for companies to integrate BI into corporate strategy and decision-making if they wish to obtain business value.
These, and other issues addressing the delivery of the right information at the right time, will be addressed by Bruce Bond-Myatt, business strategy consultant at SAS Institute, at the second PricewaterhouseCoopers/Merrill Lynch Technology, Communications and Entertainment Summit taking place on 30 July at the Sandton Convention Centre.
The summit, which takes the form of panel discussions among leaders in IT, telecommunications and media, will focus on the principal factors currently impacting these industries.
SAS Institute is participating in two panel discussions at the summit - one, focusing on business intelligence, and the other addressing enterprise information portals.
"Turning BI into analytical intelligence that delivers predictive and analytic value to a corporation is vital as companies strive to gain better strategic market share and a competitive-edge," says Bond-Myatt. Bond-Myatt will address the audience during the business intelligence breakaway session.
The global demand for ease of access to more and more information will be a core focus of the enterprise information portals (EIP) breakout session and SAS Institute's solution architect, Wouter Germishuys, will participate in this panel discussion.
The EIP is the single interface through which employees can access all underlying systems and data sources in a company. "Today, information can be passed to more people, faster and at a lower cost than ever before, which means that employees need to be more informed about a wider range of issues to stay ahead," says Germishuys. "Therefore, a central repository of information is imperative."
Germishuys points out that a portal needs to be seen as only the means of delivering information and that it is the quality of the content of the information on the portal and how it is used by company, which is vital.
SAS is the industry's leading business intelligence provider. Unlike other software vendors, SAS allows integration of data warehousing, analytics and business intelligence capabilities in ways that make intelligence immediately accessible throughout the enterprise. SAS Institute was recognised in 2001 by IT industry analyst, IDC, as the leading business intelligence vendor by software revenue.
SAS' participation in the Summit panel discussions takes place between 2.15pm and 4.15pm.
For more information about SAS Institute's participation in both the business intelligence and enterprise information portals breakaway sessions at the summit, call Nathalie Ing, partner alliance manager, on (011) 713 3400.
For more information about the PricewaterhouseCoopers/Merrill Lynch Summit, call Werner Lindemann, Principle Consultant, Strategy consulting services: PwC Consulting on (011) 797 5358 / 083 653 1727.
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SAS provides software and services that enable customers to transform data from all areas of their business into intelligence. SAS solutions help organisations make better, more informed decisions and maximise customer, supplier, and organisational relationships. Solutions from SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, are used at more than 38 000 business, government and university sites around the world. Ninety-nine of the top 100 companies on the Fortune 500 - and 90% of the Fortune 500 overall - rely on SAS. For 25 years, SAS has been giving its customers The Power to Know. For more information, visit http://www.sas.com.
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