BI closer to home

Thursday, 08 March 2007 00:00 Written by Ilva Pieterse

How we compare to the international scene LOCALLY, business intelligence (BI) is sinking in just as fast as elsewhere, and many organisations are not simply jumping on the bandwagon, but demanding to see how well it works first.

Says , marketing director of Ability Solutions: "BI is becoming more entrenched in the corporate mindset in South Africa, and an increasing number of companies are demanding to see what BI capabilities business applications are equipped with before they commit. This is in sharp contrast to a few years ago when vendors had to hard-sell BI to corporations that were simply not interested."

"It is a very busy market sector," agrees Systems MD . "Most of the large organisations are just starting to come up with coherent and structured enterprise plans and goals. The next few years will be very exciting as the plans are executed."

Paul van Aswegen, Informatica`s GM, believes that South Africa`s requirements are the same as elsewhere. "This market is even riper for master data management (MDM) since mergers and acquisitions drive MDM and integration projects," he says. "MDM is often incorrectly positioned as a product solution, but this is only one part of the puzzle. Internal processes, business requirements and the infrastructure and people able to deliver the solution are fundamental to its success."

Intellient BI manager agrees with the fact that data quality, metadata management and master data management are all becoming more important as part of the overall solution.

She says: "As with CRM, many companies that implemented BI solutions in the `90s did not get the expected benefit from their implementation and many were silo focused. There are still some negative perceptions of BI and the ERP II wave with integrated BI has not always delivered on business-wide BI requirements as legacy systems were excluded in the overall view of the organisation."

She believes that BI is becoming more pervasive in organisations and no longer just supporting a single silo area of the business. It is, therefore, becoming more strategic in the organisation for decision-making and business analysis.

"BI is also moving towards BMP and local organisations are starting to see the benefits of having a single, integrated solution," she concludes.

Tags: Business  Intelligence