The only way to unlock true business value from data is to have a very good business intelligence (BI) strategy.
This is the word from Nigel Freddy, MD of TBIS, an IBM-focused subsidiary of the PBT Group. "Any solution you add must unlock value. It should help you make more money and keep your costs down." Whenever a business makes an investment, it should put strategies in place to derive the most value from that new technology, he adds.
"Business value must be tangible and measureable," Freddy notes, stressing that when this happens, it makes is easier for business and IT to work together.
When looking at the biggest happenings in the BI space, most of the trends are being transplanted directly from the US or Europe down to Africa and, according to Freddy, Africa is not always ready to handle this technology.
Rather than blindly following trends, he advises businesses to scrutinise whether or not they can actually derive value from following these trends. "Businesses need to ask what this technology brings to the table," he says, adding that doing sufficient research is essential to get this business value dilemma right.
2014 focus areas
This year, TBIS has outlined several focus areas, says Freddy. The first involves the formulation of a local strategy, framework and methodology for tackling the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act.
"As technology companies, we will look at how the technology and software solutions available in our stacks can assist in implementing this framework," he said, adding that this should be finalised by the end of March.
Because many South African companies don't want their data to go offshore, Freddy highlights BI in the cloud as a strategy to keep things local. "We see BI in the cloud as catering for mid-market companies that do not have the money to build a comprehensive BI competency." The company is also focusing its attention on data visualisation, which Freddy outlined as the data presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format.
Another focus, according to Freddy, is predictive maintenance. In the industrial, mining and manufacturing sectors, predictive maintenance allows companies to predict asset failure and to monitor data being generated by machines in real-time. This method not only reduces maintenance costs and the likelihood of costly downtime, but it also improves the quality of the supply chain and makes optimising your spare parts simpler, he notes.
In addition to this, TBIS is looking to revitalise the mainframe, which Freddy acknowledges may be seen as a somewhat controversial move. By introducing technology that complements the mainframe, the investments that many businesses have already made in mainframe technology can be used to generate value again. "We must not forget the core values that the mainframe gave us many years ago. All we are doing now is trying to get more value out of it."
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