Business Intelligence – Can I just install it?

Do people really think that they can simply add a Business Intelligence score carding tool to their environment and that business will benefit from it?

Let me tell you a story about an experience I had at a major account. I had been working on an analysis application dealing with financial forecasting. We were able to predict future receivables extending forward three years using an Analysis Services cube I built. One of the benefits of cubes is that query times are very short. This means that algorithms can be built and tested against the cube for things like forecasting. We created several forecasting models and then went into history and forecasted into the present to test the validity of the algorithms. We finally arrived at a good model that made sense and the end result was that the client could forecast receivables with greater accuracy than before. They eventually factored their receivables and were able to lower the interest rate due to the forecasting model, saving them a great deal of money.

The same client had a very large call center and wanted the call center information tied to financial information. This was a great analytics application. There were all kinds of metrics we could build and report on and much to be gained in the way of customer service improvements, employee training benefits, business process improvements and so on.

This story will be continued in my next post…