Enabling Enterprises Using Business Intelligence

S.P.Jain Institute of Management & Research announces Management Development Program in the Domain of "Business Intelligence" - burning need of decision making in global context.

Prelude

Today, companies are operating in an increasingly complex environment, and face stiffer competition and more demanding customers. They are required to have better insight into all aspects of their business to enable fact-based, data-driven decision-making. However, too many companies face challenges in accessing critical management information about their businesses. Information often resides on disparate systems making it difficult to marry different financial and operational data to gain a meaningful company-wide view. Many companies operate with "different versions of the truth" as individual departments develop local solutions to meet their operating needs.

In trying to address these information challenges & educate organizations with the latest developments in the technology space, SPJIMR has come up with a unique program on Business Intelligence (BI). This program is specially designed for Senior & Middle level Management executives and would help them gain a perspective of next generation decision-making tools. Major focus of this program is on practical application of BI tools in decision-making and other advanced analytical capabilities offered by Business Intelligence applications.

Objectives

• To address the needs of 'middle and senior level' functional managers, Business Process executives and IT managers of SMEs and entrepreneurial departments of MNCs.
  
• To train the participants with live demonstration and hands on exercises with state of the art BI tool Dashboards, Scenario Analytical Techniques and Real Time Data Mining case studies.
• To enable managers to spot and enhance the value obtained from business processes using BI tools and techniques applying to live problems in their organization.
  
  

Value Proposition For the Company/Practice/Area

"Armies need intelligence to win the war in battlefields and businesses are no different from battlefields"

- Art of War (Tun Szu)

The widespread use of information technology generates tremendous amounts of data within an organization. This data contains information that carries immense potential for organization's decision makers. The issue for most organizations is that the data is inaccessible to all but the IT department. While IT can run queries and produce reports at the request of business users, a self-service approach to information provides the greatest benefits. With direct & easy access to information, users can find answers to all the questions that are raised by their activities.

Business Intelligence (BI) is the key to leveraging this wealth of data that accumulates in an enterprise. Using Business Intelligence tools, non-technical users can unlock the immense potential hidden in organization's data by converting it into meaningful & actionable information that can be used for more informed & better decision-making. Managers using Business Intelligence tools stay on top of the critical activities of their organization by gaining enhanced visibility in day-to-day operations & performance monitoring on "click of a mouse". These tools can also be used to maximize performance by proactively identifying potential issues, and addressing them before they escalate into real problems.

Value Proposition For Individuals

In every organization, employees make hundreds of decisions each day. They can range from whether to give customer 'X' a discount, whether to start producing part 'Y', whether to launch another direct mail campaign, whether to order additional materials, etc. These decisions are sometimes based on facts, but mostly based on experience, accumulated knowledge, and rule of thumb. That poses a problem because experience, knowledge, and rule of thumb can take years to develop. Some employees find it difficult to acquire or develop. Those who do may still fall prey to decision traps or biases in judgment.

Improving the quality of business decisions has a direct impact on costs and revenue. For instance, giving a customer a discount may or may not help the bottom line, depending on the profitability of the client over the duration of the relationship. To improve the quality of decisions, managers have the following options:

Option: Do critical tasks themselves.
Result: This leads to burnout, bottlenecks, and opportunity costs of not doing more strategic work.

Option: Hire additional skilled staff.
Result: This increases costs dramatically.

Option: Attempt to define a policy for all possible decisions.
Result: This leads to decisions that do not meet with the rapidly changing needs of the business.

Option: Give existing staff the means to make better decisions using Business Intelligence.
Result: This creates an agile enterprise and is the most cost-effective solution.

Business Intelligence equips individuals with the right information at the right time in the right format to make better & more informed business decisions. Individuals can use BI tools for achieving the following benefits:

• Know More: Stay more informed about all aspects of your business
  
• Do More: Drill to the level of detail you need
  
• Enable Proactive Decision making
  
  

Business Environment - Opportunities and Gaps

Today, companies are operating in an increasingly complex environment, and face stiffer competition and more demanding customers. They are required to have better insight into all aspects of their business to enable fact-based, data-driven decision-making. However, too many companies face challenges in accessing critical management information about their businesses. Information often resides on disparate systems making it difficult to marry different financial and operational data to gain a meaningful company-wide view. Many companies operate with "different versions of the truth" as individual departments develop local solutions to meet their operating needs.

In trying to solve this information challenge, companies adopt different methods:

• Create spreadsheets and custom reports to generate different views of the information to drive decisions
• Use simple SQL queries or system specific reporting tools to uncover answers to critical operational issues
  
• Or simply operate without access to critical information
  

"These approaches do not serve users well in getting the information they need to run their businesses better. Your Business Intelligence system should keep you a step ahead of your competition, not a step behind"