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October 10, 2003

The Finger Stops Here

Accountability is becoming a key success factor in building competitive advantage

by David Stodder

Continued from Page 1

The Thrill of Reporting

Reporting has long been the bread-and-butter function of BI. While analytics, data mining, and the like have garnered more attention, solid reporting has always been what companies must have. Now, analytics seem to be taking a back seat to reporting, which is fast becoming an essential part of the enterprise infrastructure and will ultimately be the key BPM delivery vehicle. To capture market share, BI vendors have been racing to consolidate their portfolios around reporting. This year, Business Objects acquired Crystal Decisions; Hyperion snapped up Brio Technology; and reporting specialist Actuate picked up Nimble, which will help Actuate compete in the enterprise realm.

Cognos, meanwhile, has released ReportNet (see review), the company's bold attempt create an omnibus reporting system that is high on both browser-based usability and server-based management. Cognos is focused on BPM as the magnetic force pulling together its wider portfolio, which includes tools for metrics management and other functions key to enhancing accountability.

Pressure to improve financial visibility is beginning to loosen the spreadsheet's grip on budgeting and planning; organizations want a way out of "spreadsheet hell" and all of the data quality problems this condition creates. By focusing on accountability and other performance goals, BPM solutions will encourage organizations to see the spreadsheet as one tool — not the only tool. Role-based dashboards and portals, woven into an enterprise-reporting infrastructure, will become the ubiquitous interface, rather than the spreadsheet.

Beyond Technology

With the technology platform coming together to support the various demands for accountability, organizations may begin to look to their BI, data warehousing, and BPM providers, as well as the systems integrators and consultants that thrive in these areas, for more than just technical wisdom. At the Weasku Inn BI Summit I discussed in my last Strategic Knowledge column, our panel of experts debated whether consultants such as themselves have a role to play in the strategic and ethical debates about the use of information.

"As we advise about building BI and data warehousing systems, we must be more conscious of security and privacy issues," said William McKnight. "In Europe, I rarely get technical questions," said Colin White. "More often the questions are about privacy concerns." Claudia Imhoff added, "Ethical and legal issues are making data quality a huge issue. Organizations know that they'd better have darn good data."

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Accountability, supported as never before by intelligent technology, will be a major change agent in the years ahead. Competitive advantages will go to organizations that accept the challenge and direct energies toward positive outcomes — rather than high-tech finger pointing.

David Stodder [dstodder@cmp.com] is editorial director of Intelligent Enterprise.