Business intelligence (BI) only brings true value to an organisation when it results in action. This is according to Bill Hoggarth, managing director of SAS SA, leader in business and analytical intelligence.
"Action and intelligence go hand in hand. Companies need to understand that intelligence only ensures sustained competitive advantage when delivered across an enterprise in an actionable manner, to address real business issues," he says.
Hoggarth points out that organisations today face an increasingly demanding, competitive and regulated business environment. Typically, because of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other operating systems, they also capture enormous amounts of data, text and voice information about everything from customers and suppliers to internal processes.
"Somewhere in that vast amount of data lie hidden, the answers to business problems, or pointers to the best course of action. Fortunately, nowadays we can deliver actionable intelligence to the desktop, including reporting, analysis, KPIs, predictors and indicators that help identify likely opportunities and potential areas of concern," he explains.
Hoggarth says that just ten years ago, state of the art BI consisted of ad hoc departmental desk-top analysis. Managers had executive information system (EIS) dashboards, which were typically inflexible and difficult to manage.
"At the same time, ERP systems were emerging and promising enormous intelligence benefits. However, they function exclusively in the operational space, and despite the promises, are unable to provide intelligence delivery across the enterprise.
"Today, with the development of real intelligence solutions, organisations can gain true return on investment (ROI) from their intelligence strategies," says Hoggarth.
Traditionally BI concerned itself with data access and management, as well as reporting.
Intelligence solutions today transform the huge volumes of data, voice and text collected by organisations today into actionable intelligence. They have expanded into forecasting, predictive modelling and optimisation. Thus, instead of answering rear-view mirror questions like "What happened?", intelligence today answers questions such as "What will happen next?" and "What is the best that can happen?"
"We can now predict what will happen in the future, and deliver that intelligence in time for appropriate action," says Hoggarth.
SAS continues to invest in the three core dimensions of intelligence: the technology, solutions and industry platforms. A major new focus, however, is what SAS refers to as the 'time to intelligence', or reducing the amount of time it takes to deploy intelligent systems.
"Time to intelligence is a critical differential," says Hoggarth.
"It refers to our ability to work with companies to deliver accurate, insightful, predictive intelligence to the desktop, quicker than in other environments. It is this that will drive our continued growth and our customers' success," he concludes.
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