More South African companies are turning to business intelligence (BI) to address pressing business concerns such as new legislation compliance, cost-cutting or good governance. As these companies increasingly take their place among global leaders, it is vital that their use of BI is forward-looking.
"BI is about understanding the past, managing the present and predicting the future," says Bill Hoggarth, managing director of SAS, leaders in business intelligence in SA. "To be successful, companies must appreciate that intelligence is not only about the rear view."
According to Hoggarth, any business intelligence strategy should be able to analyse what happened in the past, and build a model which will show the propensity for certain things to happen in the future. Knowing what the customer bought yesterday, or that yesterday's transaction was fraudulent, is no longer enough.
"Companies must be able to predict what the customer will buy tomorrow, or know that a particular current transaction bears the hallmarks of fraud so that it can be investigated in real-time," he says. "Today, the cost of getting it wrong can be enormous."
Many companies have invested heavily in operational software, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Now they need to get information out of these systems, and this process needs to be enterprise-wide.
"They need to explore and exploit the value that is hidden in the vast oceans of data, text and voice that they collect on an hourly basis," he adds.
To help customers gain true value from raw data, SAS has launched SAS 9, a single intelligence technology platform that builds on a company's existing technology investment to give enterprises a single version of the truth.
"Through SAS 9, we are empowering our customers with a technology platform with which to leverage the hidden power of all that they capture," says Hoggarth. Our enterprise-wide intelligence platform integrates information from any disparate source, and applies ground-breaking analytics to achieve a higher level of intelligence. It has been designed to deliver value to customers by increasing profit and shareholder value."
A key feature of the new intelligence platform is its reach to users throughout the enterprise, moving intelligence from a departmental niche requirement to an enterprise-wide tool. Intelligence is accessed and shared by all.
"SAS 9 has the depth and breadth necessary to provide decision-makers with information they need to drive the business forward," Hoggarth concludes.
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