Business Intelligence Mastery Still Eludes Industry

Although adoption of business intelligence platforms and processes have found a solid foothold within the financial services and other industries, most firms are not getting the biggest bang for their buck, concludes a recent study published by SunGard Consulting Services.
By Rob Daly(2147487629)
Although adoption of business intelligence platforms and processes have found a solid foothold within the financial services and other industries, most firms are not getting the biggest bang for their buck, concludes a recent study published by SunGard Consulting Services.

In the survey of senior management from 93 financial service firms and 74 energy firms, half of the respondents stated that they used business intelligence and perform basic business intelligence project management using operational data they obtain through their IT service.

“From a technical standpoint and business requirements, financial services and energy companies had similar responses with only a 2 or 3% difference in response to each question,” explains Michael Wolk, partner, information management practice at SunGard Consulting Services.

Only a quarter of the respondents stated that they had an additional level of governance for their business intelligence process and could gain an insight from data.

A sizable majority, 80%, either use periodic reporting (51%) or after-the-fact” reporting (29%), which demonstrates that many business intelligence programs do not exploit investigative reporting and what-if analysis. Only 11% and 9% of the respondents said that they use business intelligence for those respective tasks.

Nearly a third, of the group use key performance indicators scorecards and dashboards to analyze their data, while only 14% use business intelligence data for predictive analysis and alert thresholds.

“For the most part, they are still generating nightly, weekly and month-end reports, which others then take and feed into mini-databases and spread sheets for analysis,” says Wolk. “There is still a lot of manipulating, moving and massaging the data involved.”

One potential explanation for why firms have not fully exploited business intelligence is the manner in which firms deploy it.

Often companies deploy business intelligence at the business line or department level since these projects have a narrower focus and allow for a quicker result, says Wolk. “People are trying to get to enterprise-wide business intelligence, but that is the next step.”

SunGard did not ask whether the soft nature of business intelligence’s return on investment (ROI) was a possible hurdle for enterprise-wide adoption, but Wolk’s personal experience leads him to believe so.

However, external drivers such as regulatory compliance and their tangible fines for non-compliance make business intelligence a reasonable investment for firms.

“It just takes senior management or the c-suite to see the value of this data and champion the project,” he adds.

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