For years, CIOs have been left out of the board meetings, and have rarely been conferenced in on strategy sessions to determine forward moving initiatives for the company. Yet, the enterprise today expects the CIO to determine how best to manage the technology needs of the business. If you have noticed there is something not quite right with this equation, so have many others. Business intelligence analytics should be a key factor in any decision making process for the enterprise, yet too many leaders ignore this important and valuable tool. CIOs are now trying to challenge the conventional wisdom and are armed with business intelligence analytics to get the job done.
An Expert’s Insight Using Business Intelligence Analytics
You may be a believer in gut instinct and this method of decision making has worked well for Atti Riazi, CIO of the New York Housing Authority. When it comes to IT and aligning the business, Riazi admits that intuition has to give way to decisions that are based on business intelligence analytics. She is the first to admit that CIOs are not excellent at predicting the future, especially if they are simply relying on gut instinct. Would anyone have been able to determine where cloud computing would have landed by 2011 on purely gut instinct? While it is possible that some intuitive players are able to know exactly where technology is headed without any insight, the rest of the decision makers need to rely on ‘knowns’, which are captured with business intelligence analytics.
Challenging Urban Legends with Business Intelligence Analytics
Riazi is relying on business intelligence analytics assistance from IBM’s consulting services to challenge what she refers to as urban legends within her field of public assistance programs. She is examining everything with business intelligence analytics to determine how best to reduce operating costs, increase building efficiencies, and to determine which investments will actually improve the quality of life for the residents within her program. Business intelligence analytics are leveraged from SAP AG’s BusinessObjects and IBM’s Cognos, among others. While many business intelligence analytics products are being used within her environment right now, she highlights that the focus is not on the product, but on opening minds.
Use Business Intelligence Analytics to Open Minds
If CIOs want to change the thinking within their environments, they need to change their own approach with the help of business intelligence analytics. It is no longer enough to have competent IT professionals on staff. To leverage the true value of business intelligence analytics, CIOs need to add mathematicians, statisticians and sociologists to their staffs. IT is no longer about deploying hardware and software – today it is about intelligence. IT professionals need to understand how to use data so they can move from “thinking” to “knowing”. It can be a challenge to gather this data without the right business intelligence analytics in place, so it may be time to make your move.
Business Intelligence Analytics Help to Predict the Future
While it may be a lot of pressure on the CIO to predict the future of the market, he or she can certainly come very close when relying on business intelligence analytics. If this is your role in the enterprise, how much would you be able to project with key data and analysis at your fingertips. There is power in this data and the right business intelligence analytics platform will enable you to leverage that power to work to your advantage.