Let’s understand why we are all gathered here today. We are all gathered here today to make some money. I am not talking about business intelligence and analytics and agile BI and big data just for the sake of these technologies. These technologies are all money making technologies.
These days we find that enterprises who do not compete, who do not compete on information, who do not run their business by the numbers really can’t make it in to these days.
Likely we do have some very tangible proof points that there is a tangible return on investment on BI initiatives from looking at a recent analyst report I found. It’s an annual survey. These are last year’s results. This year is also will come out probably midyear. I don’t really expect a lot of changes.
You do see very solid, practically achievable double and triple-digit returns here. Most of these returns we find that they are realized anywhere between 18 and 36 months so somewhere within a 2 year period you can achieve a very tangible return on your business intelligence investments which are probably equally as interesting numbers, in addition, to quantifying your individual platform or individual software BI services, BI applications, the individual BI projects and investments.
There is a general correlation that can be formed between your overall IT investment or business investment in BI and your business success.
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High performing businesses as you can see here on the left. The top performing businesses are defined as anyone growing faster than 15% year over year. As you can see these businesses tend to invest at least 25% more of their IT budget into business intelligence so there is definitely a correlation to find between the overall business success and investments in business intelligence. So let’s understand and talk about in the next few minutes as to what it is going to take for all of you to be successful going forward because I think at this point.
Having been in the BI field for over 15 years, I think we know how to build data warehouses. We know how to build ETL processes. We know how to build dimensions and star schema data models. We know how to create and distribute reports. The real trick is can we really do this according to the new requirements, new pressures, new trends in the 21st century?
The key goal is differentiation. Let’s talk about this. I believe that we are way beyond the age of the information. I believe that most of your corporate investments have been commoditized. You all outsource your products and services offshore. You all use the same global supply chains and the global manufacturing and logistics infrastructure.
Most of the IT investments that you have made over the last few years that you think have differentiated you are now also becoming commoditized via the cloud, commodity type cloud infrastructure. So I firmly believe these days that really the customers call the shots.
Internal processes such as compliance and risk management obviously are still very important. They do not go away. Their importance is not diminished, but in addition to those we now need to deal with our customers. Customers have completely different requirements and behavior patterns than internal processes. Customers can change their mind on a dime.
The age of mobile phones and ubiquitous cloud access for anyone all gives them so much power. You and your competitors, whether marketing products and services, mobile phones really make customers loyalty almost non-existent because if I don’t like what I am hearing or getting or buying from you literally at a single push over a button on my mobile phone I can switch to your competitor.
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For the last couple of years I definitely have become convinced that it’s really those businesses who are totally obsessed with listening to customers are the ones who will win. Notice I am not afraid to over dramatize this term. I like the term obsession. Those who are obsessed with customers know how to attract them, retain them, serve them and ultimately profit from them.