Itm501, management information systems & business strategy, mod 2 case assignment

The paper ” Business Intelligence Systems” is a worthy example of a business assignment. There are rapidly escalating challenges throughout the business world today. The economic environment certainly does not help but the problems go well beyond that issue. Communication and sharing of information and goals have risen as one of the better ways to improve the business environment of today. The need to act quickly when there has been either an internal or external environmental change is crucial to survival and profit at this time. In the past, many kinds of business intelligence software have been tried and many corporations have been disappointed but its time may have not come yet. It is here now. It is a great need. This paper will talk about the importance of business intelligence systems and compare four companies that presently have systems on the market.  Today’s companies are forced to cut back on capital spending, the cost of operations, and focus on the core competencies of each organization (Gartner, 2009). Yet, with all of these issues, new doors have opened including those of eCommerce and globalization in which the profitable players are spending their time and funds. To play in that sandbox though, corporations must have access to information rapidly and it must be reported in such a way that the information can be communicated across the scope of the organization quickly. This is where business intelligence software comes in (Gartner, 2009).
Business intelligence software is a tool to help an organization gain a greater understanding of operations, markets, and competition. BI interprets data and transforms the information into insights that are used to guide strategy formation. They are outcome-based information systems. Metrics matter more than they ever have before and BI will help design the metrics and tie them to the outcomes data generated (Bhatnagar, 2009). This software will also help in determining performance indicators. The dashboard validates the business adage that ” you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” The dashboard in a BI system is frontline and available not only to the C suite but to the very people that are creating the outcome. This is essential today. Corporate intelligence and knowledge management cannot occur if there is not a way to track what everyone knows. That is what this software really does. It makes the corporation more intelligent by the numbers of people that now have information available to do the jobs better.
Optimizing content and benchmarking give the company meaningful knowledge about customer interests and expectations and enable optimization of content of materials collected in the data (Bhatnager, 2009). So, why is the analysis important?
To maintain an effective and sustained presence. It is imperative to have a fact-based analysis.
The knowledge that comes from mined and analyzed data leads to timely and informed decisions.
All decision-makers have data simultaneously.
There is a real-time snapshot of the information needed for decisions
Intuition is validated by fact.
Goals are monitored constantly and course corrections are made ongoing.
Deeply buried knowledge floats up with data.
Find out who is at the long tail.
Benchmarking.
Accuracy and completeness.
In realizing that BI is a good idea and understanding why that is so, an investigation of those of interest is necessary. In this case, the table I compares four of the major companies providing BI products today. Realistically, any of them would provide an excellent suite of information readily available to the people who need it in the company. There are some advantages and disadvantages to each. It appears from the investigation however, that one is not good for everyone and only a thorough study by each corporation will produce the best software for them.
In conclusion, in comparing the group of software companies it is noted that this writer would choose the IBM BI. They were the only company that provided training and certification to members of our team. You cannot use what you do not understand so support is extremely important. Today business must leverage everything possible to get ahead and stay ahead. BI is one of those things available to provide some of that leverage. Though finances are tight, this may very well be one of the places that some of those finances are spent.