by
Seth Grimes
May 5, 2008
How to Choose the Right BPM Suite: From RFP to Final Selection
You've decided that business process management is right for your organization. But what's next? Here's how to build an evaluation team, write a request for proposal, review RFP responses, evaluate a short list of candidates and choose the right BPM suite.
by Andrew Spanyi
April 28, 2008
Follow Three Best Practices to Succeed at Business Activity Monitoring
BAM can monitor crucial key performance indicators around time, cost, quality, and productivity, but many firms struggle when deploying the technology. Three best practices will jump start your project and help you choose the right metrics and alert levels.
by Henry Peyret, Forrester Research
April 28, 2008
BPMS Watch Rates 11 Business Process Management Suites
The BPMS Watch Ratings Report for the Second-Quarter 2008 takes a close look at the integration, human workflow, production workflow and case management capabilities of industry-leading BPM suites. All-around standouts include BEA and Lombardi, Oracle, Software AG, EMC and Global 360.
by
Bruce Silver
April 21, 2008
How To Choose Among The Four Bright Lights Of BI
After a tumultuous year of acquisitions and consolidation, the business intelligence market is now dominated by IBM, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. All four are pitching enterprise-wide BI platforms, each with its own twist. Here's what you need to know about them.
by
Mary Hayes Weier
April 12, 2008
Top U.S. County Reinvents Government Planning and Performance
Maricopa County links performance metrics, financial plans and strategic goals. Microsoft PerformancePoint dashboards keep managers, employees and budgets on track.
by
Doug Henschen
April 11, 2008
Kimball University: Should You Use An ETL Tool?
You can still hand-code an extract, transform and load system, but in most cases the self-documentation, structured development path and extensibility of an ETL tool is well worth the cost. Here's a close look at the pros and cons of buying rather than building.
by
Joy Mundy
April 6, 2008
Gartner BI Summit 2008: The Next Generation of Innovation
Decision making as core competency, emerging technologies as BI enablers and changes in the BI market itself are core topics at this week's Gartner Business Intelligence Summit in Chicago. Analyst Kurt Schlegel explains the trends and business drivers.
by
Doug Henschen
March 31, 2008
Gartner BI Summit 2008: Q&A With Howard Dresner
In a preview of his keynote presentation at this week's Gartner Business Intelligence Summit, former analyst Howard Dresner talks about his new book, the convergence of BI and process management, and what it takes to get to the next level of performance management.
by
Doug Henschen
March 30, 2008
The 'Secret Sauce' of BPM Success
The business process management market is heating up, and a new report reveals that centers of excellence are the key ingredient of deployment success.
by
Doug Henschen
March 24, 2008
Coldwater Creek Grows With Location Intelligence
Women's clothier relies on geospatial analysis to track customers and avoid overlaps as it adds more than 60 retail locations per year.
by
Doug Henschen
March 17, 2008
Location Intelligence: Geographic Context Spurs Innovation
Location intelligence will transform call center operations, e-commerce activities, field service and sales initiatives, but new research reveals that organizations need to look beyond obvious data sources and basic functionality for business success.
by Ventana Research
March 17, 2008
Your Data And The P2P Peril
Usher, 10,000 BC, and your company's confidential spreadsheets could all be out there for the world to grab. Here's how these data leaks happen and what you can do to prevent them.
by
John Foley
March 15, 2008
Hubs, Spokes and Buses: How to Get to a Better Data Warehouse
Are you frustrated by the inefficiency, rigidity and latency of a first-generation, hub-and-spoke-architecture data warehouse? Here's a six-step guide to evolving to a streamlined, robust Kimball Dimensional Bus Architecture that will reduce time to reporting, lower data latency, and deliver more detailed, analytically useful information.
by Jim Stagnitto
March 10, 2008
Column-Store Databases and DW Appliances: How to Make the Right Choice
With data volumes exploding, conventional enterprise data warehouses are fast running out of headroom. Data warehouse appliances are starting to fill the gap, but the emerging category of column-oriented databases may offer a better option. The key to success is matching your application to the right product.
by
Doug Henschen
March 3, 2008
Hunting The Elusive CIO Dashboard
There's not yet a foolproof method for correlating disparate IT data into useful information. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't prepare.
by
Michael Biddick
March 1, 2008
The Road To Pervasive BI
If you're not using business intelligence tools throughout your workforce, it's time to start--or get left behind in your competitors' dust
by
Cindi Howson
February 22, 2008
TDWI Keynote: Larry English Takes on the Status Quo
Organizations that aren't managing information as a resource are wasting as much as half their IT budgets "moving data from database A to database B." This troubling perspective, from expert Larry English, kicked off this week's TDWI World Conference in Las Vegas. Here's the keynoter's advice on the right approach.
by
Doug Henschen
February 17, 2008
'The BI Survey 7' Details Purchase Practices, Ranks Loyalty by Brand
In the successor to "The OLAP Survey 6," Nigel Pendse delivers exhaustive customer survey findings on business intelligence vendor effectiveness and customer deployment success rates.
by
Doug Henschen
February 11, 2008
Kimball University: Three Ways to Capture Customer Satisfaction
What satisfies, or doesn't satisfy, the customer? Use one of these three powerful data warehouse design approaches to gauge satisfaction and help marketers tease out the customer experience behind various behaviors.
by
Ralph Kimball
February 4, 2008
Operational BI: Getting 'Real Time' About Performance
Operational business intelligence is about delivering information to people when and how they need it in the context of business need. Explore the five best practices best-in-class companies are using to drive faster, better decision making and higher customer satisfaction.
by David Hatch
January 28, 2008
Next-Era BI: Proactive, Pervasive, Performance-Oriented
How do you differentiate your business when same-old BI and same-old automation are commodities? Cognos, SAP-Business Objects and independent vendors present visions and real-world examples of blended solutions.
by
Doug Henschen
January 21, 2008
Special Report: BI Megatrends 2008
Complacency Be Gone! Enterprises seeking a competitive edge are looking toward competency centers, MDM, real-time deployments, data virtualization, workload management and operational intelligence. We help you answer six questions that will lead to innovative new BI strategies.
by
David Stodder
January 11, 2008
Intelligent Enterprise 2008 Editors' Choice Awards
Intelligent Enterprise unveils its take on 'The Dozen' most influential vendors that will drive the intelligent enterprise in 2008. Plus, we highlight 36 'Companies to Watch' in five categories.
by Intelligent Enterprise
January 2, 2008
Intelligent Enterprise Top-20 Stories of 2007
Trend stories, how-tos and reviews. Visitors to Intelligent Enterprise depend on all of the above, as proven by our list of the top-20 most-read stories of 2007. The roster includes perennial favorites, like the "Kimball University" series on better data warehousing, as well as forward-looking analyses, like Neil Raden's treatise on BI 2.0, and in-depth reviews, like Cindi Howson's tests of new BI products. Read on to catch the gems you might have missed.
by
Doug Henschen
December 17, 2007
Kimball University: Handling Arbitrary Restatements of History
How do you cope with an executive's request to "bring back a time series of activity for all subscribers who were in platinum status as of X date," or "show me a time series of orders by sales region according to the sales organization as of Y"? Here's how data warehouse pros can cope with the common requirement to look back in time.
by
Joy Mundy
December 9, 2007
Pick the Right Content Management Approach
Do you need enterprise content management, Web content management or a portal with built-in content management capabilities? Take this scenario-based approach to set priorities and choose the right technologies.
by
Tony Byrne
December 3, 2007
Focus on Operational BI: Q&A With Information Builders' Gerald Cohen
Despite industry consolidation, business intelligence is not a commodity utility, insists Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders. Among the largest independent BI vendors remaining, the company focuses on operational BI, and as Cohen explains, that means looking beyond data warehousing and conventional reporting and delivery methods.
by
Doug Henschen
November 29, 2007
How Buying Changes in the New BI Landscape
This year's business intelligence mega deals have altered the complexion of strategic and tactical decisions. Successful practitioners will be unfazed by shifting vendor ownership, but dissatisfied customers are up for grabs.
by
Cindi Howson
November 21, 2007
It's Time to Reinvent Your BI Strategy
Four trends are changing the face of business intelligence, according to a new report by Forrester Research. Here's the analyst's take on the shift along with ten suggested best practices for forging an up-to-date strategy.
by Boris Evelson
November 19, 2007
American Airlines Finds an Edge in Analytics
From post 9-11 restructuring to today's grab for Transatlantic market share, American Airlines relies on SPSS software to guide business decisions.
by
Doug Henschen
November 12, 2007
Smart Decisions: The Role of Key Performance Indicators
New research from AberdeenGroup shows that best-in-class organizations revise KPIs often and embrace dashboard, scorecard and auto-alert reporting technologies more aggressively than industry-lagging firms. Learn why and how leading companies are using these important performance management tools.
by David Hatch
November 5, 2007
Ventana Research 2007 BI and Performance Management Scorecard
In its mid-year 2007 report, Ventana Research defines performance management, explains its PerformanceCycle assessment methodology and details the scores and ranking for 13 leading BI and performance management vendors and products.
by Ventana Research
October 29, 2007
Kimball University: The Subsystems of ETL Revisited
These 34 subsystems cover the crucial extract, transform and load architecture components required in almost every dimensional data warehouse environment. Understanding the breadth of requirements is the first step to putting an effective architecture in place.
by
Bob Becker
October 21, 2007
Master Data Directions: Q&A with Siperian's Ravi Shankar
The Master Data Management (MDM) market is growing at a double-digit pace on the strength of three promised benefits: a cross-enterprise perspective for better business intelligence; greater consistency across customer records for improved transaction management; a solid foundation for service-oriented architectures (SOA). Has MDM turned the corner from leading-edge to must-have? Ravi Shankar, Director of Product Marketing at Siperian, shares his thoughts on MDM progress and next steps.
by
Rajan Chandras
October 21, 2007
SAP Says It Won't Make A Counterbid For BEA Systems
SAP CEO Henning Kagermann says there is too much overlap between SAP and BEA for an acquisition to make sense.
by
Mary Hayes Weier
October 15, 2007
Oracle Clarifies Offer After BEA Snubs First Bid
"BEA was negotiating with us," explains Oracle president Charles Philips as BEA execs retort that $6.7 billion undervalues their company.
by
Charles Babcock
October 13, 2007
Compliance Provides Benefits Beyond The Obvious
There are intrinsic benefits to compliance in addition to avoiding fines and penalties. Companies improve security, communications, and overall business practices.
by Debra Banning and Glen Day
October 13, 2007
