‘’When Technology Delivers Basic Needs, User Experience Dominates’’ – Don Norman, Nielson Group.
As it is mentioned in this ExpertsTown blog article titled Business Intelligence Overview, the main criterion is focusing on productive information. Whenever BI is discussed, the attention is paid mostly to software tools, their features and sophisticated new developments.
We need to emphasize then and there that BI is a concept involving technology. The concept needs to be understood in its original form and applied. BI concepts and methods help in making business decisions. While there is usually more talk about Technology Involvement, the People element is the most critical one. In this article let us see how the people element plays a crucial part in BI systems. The technological advancements that are taking place in BI space are fast and it is not always to easy to catch up with them. Everyone is getting carried with the trend. However, they remain still as part of the bigger game played by businesses.
Traditionally, Men, Machine, Material and Money are the ingredients of the business activities. While the technology advancements enable money to make use of machine and material in more effective way, the men part needs more attention to reap the benefits. All the technology enhancements should lead to more automation and less work. For this to happen, the people need to be”structured’’ more.
The evolution of BI
Simply put Business Intelligence paves the way for effective use of information in taking decisions. With the arrival and spread of information technology using computing systems, the collection, storage and access of information is automated. The initial period consisted of more ‘data processing’ techniques. Already existing data in business administration, production, research and development was processed in computers in this phase. In the second phase, Management Information Systems started spreading. ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning software introduced. Now in the third phase, real time data is getting integrated in to it. As we mentioned in an earlier post, The Power of Business Intelligence, the utilization of BI will be realized when it is at right time by right people.
The new BI
The new Business Intelligence is getting people oriented. This can be called as BI 2.0 in the same lines of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0 etc., In the new environment, the main stake holders of the businesses are always on the move. They are always connected and communicative. When the knowledge and experience of more stake holders are utilized, the modern BI software produces excellent results. As compared to the older systems, many employees of the companies are empowered with the usage of BI system, most of the time. That makes the difference in the new BI. In the back end of this new BI, there is powerful software and data infrastructure. In the front end, easily usable tools, dashboards. Thus by making sure that it is the power of the people that drive businesses. The power of men over machine!
