Operational Business Intelligence: Spot Problems Sooner
Nancy Drew's got nothing on operational business intelligence (BI). This valuable sleuthing tool helps business teams identify and fix problems earlier in manufacturing and business processes.
Avoid Data Overload
While it makes sense to bring some analytics closer to the processes for key operations, CIOs need to be careful not to overdo it—for their own sake as well as for their users', says John Hagerty, a director at AMR Research. Many processes don't need to be monitored in real time or even several times a day, he notes. "Clients have a hard time consuming information more than daily," Hagerty says. Also, the infrastructure needed to analyze the bulk of enterprise operations in a near-real-time basis is too great for most enterprises to justify the investment, he says.
And don't underestimate the human issues, which typically boil down to "Can we trust this is the right thing to do?" Davis says. There's reason for that distrust: People still need to make the complex calls.
But CIOs can ensure that those calls happen earlier in the process, when they can have the greatest benefit. "It's really an opportunity for IT to be a hero to the business," Hayes says. "Business now has insight into completion rate baselines that they did not have before, as well as improved insight into how our customers are using our online product. As the business absorbs this data, they can begin to optimize our business processes."
