"Dangerous promises" are being made that enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can also offer business intelligence (BI), but the best that most of these solutions can offer is static reports, not true BI that allows for proactive strategic business planning.
This was the message at the opening day of SAS Forum International, the SAS Institute`s annual business intelligence event, which kicked off in Lisbon yesterday with "leadership with confidence" as a key theme.
SAS founder and CEO Jim Goodnight told about 2 000 delegates in his keynote address that: "Many companies think they do BI, but really only generate static reports off warehoused data."
He stressed the SAS message, "Time to Intelligence", noting that time was crucially important to companies trying to produce forecasts and make proactive business decisions based on disparate data. While he did not discount the need for ERP, he described it as being "very much like plumbing - you need it in your house. But ERP doesn`t do very much in terms of forecasting."
Together with SAS International president Art Cooke, Goodnight outlined the various SAS solutions available and gave the assurance that the latest SAS 9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform went beyond the traditional definition of BI, saying it "offers just about everything a business would need for intelligence".
Goodnight highlighted the business case for using BI and analytics to drive faster, more accurate decision-making in various areas, including customers, IT operations, finances and supply chains.
In line with this, SAS said it would deliver its SAS Forecast Server, which is designed to "turbo-charge" companies` forecasting efficiencies, according to Anne Milley, director of technology marketing at SAS. The new forecasting product features new capabilities such as time series mining to uncover time-related patterns and trends.
It was also announced at the event that Goodnight had been named to the World Economic Forum`s India Steering Committee. SAS said the committee identifies key issues for the annual India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum and Confederation of Indian Industry.
"India has become a key player in the global economy and the summit is an important opportunity to discuss current issues facing the country and to plan for the future," said Goodnight.
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