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Business intelligence is about bridging the gap between the data collected and what data business people need to drive the business and improve. It’s taking that data and turning it into beneficial information that can be used to help your business progress. Although the tools do exist to help with this, many organisations only manage what they can measure which may not give the business value.

Organisations need to react to the information they’re been given as this is where the value is added, this is what we refer to as BI culture, creating the mindset within the organisation to ensure people are getting the best out the business intelligence solutions to ensure the business is able to move forward.

For a business intelligence solution to really add value, you need to start by considering your key performance indicators (KPI’s), these are the business information needs, what do you need to know to make better business decisions?

In order to define KPI’s you need to know what the vision of your business is. You need to start from the very top and work out what the goals are, what is the vision of your business and where are you taking it, this will enable you to work out what the critical factors are for success, once you know this, you can decide what KPI’s you need.

Once you’ve worked out which critical success factors these KPI’s affect you’ll need to ensure everybody knows what their KPI is (within any organisation it’s not uncommon for a KPI to be sliced by different parts of the business). Once everybody is working on their own KPI you can start to measure the results indicators which are essentially the results of activities in your business.

Implementing an effective business intelligence solution can be difficult because it’s often cross functional, the quality of the data is sometimes unknown and it’s not always all going to be under your control, or it may simply be a case of the KPI’s not being fully understood or clearly enough aligned to the data being used.

Another reason companies may find it challenging is because they often have long delivery cycles in their IT departments, for example, if you’re using a waterfall approach where you have to define the requirements up front, get them approved then go into a six month delivery cycle, quite often what you’re delivering isn’t what the end user requires any more because business has moved on. This means that to implement business intelligence solutions it’s strongly recommend that a more agile development approach is taken where shorter delivery cycles are used and the end user is continuously consulted (i.e. what they want, what their priorities are etc).

An effective way to ensure any data is moved and processed is the extract transform and load tool (ETL) which is there to move data from A to B and to process it. There are lots of ways this can be done, traditionally its hand crafted, this solution will work fine if you have people who are familiar with where they’re working, and they like handcrafting code. However, a senior manager who has the issue of change management and of controlling that source code will prefer to centralize it and have it in a tool to make it more manageable.

It can be very beneficial to have a ETL tool if you’re going to build a data warehouse as it will need to evolve and change with your business, in this case you’ll want a tool set that will rapidly allow you to adapt to your system. The ETL tools of today that are very centralized and multi user based, enable people to change the data and document the processing they’re doing as they build it, it’s a rapid development tool, so if your business is very complex and quickly evolving over time, an ETL tool would be recommended.

Your HR data is often key to most businesses, you need to know exactly who your staff are, what skills they have and the benefits they bring your business, more often than not they’ll also be one of your biggest costs.

In many cases it’s the HR data that will be the last to get pulled into a data warehouse because of the sensitive nature of the data but once you start to manage this data effectively, you can see at a glance things like retention, absentees and where people are struggling and this information can prove invaluable when it comes to the effective management of your business.

This data can be difficult to analyse though because any one person can have many attributes hanging off them, meaning you can have many dependants and many skills, however if you extract the HR data, into a data warehouse, you can actually overcome some of the issues intrinsically found, then you can normally find some invaluable information on how you can be managing your people more effectively.

A data warehouse appliance is an all in one solution, hardware, database software and networking software, that allows you to take data from disks, filter it, present it out and build queries from terabyte databases, it’s ideal for very large databases and very large data solutions.

A data warehouse appliance does not however grant immunity against the every day challenges business intelligence presents, the front end delivery solution still has to be designed and built and you’ve still got the demand of user requirements changing as well as data quality issues but a data warehouse appliance does allow you to process vast amounts of data in a much more optimal fashion.

By: Kimberlie Hutson

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A very large percentage of businesses fail within a few years of opening. A lot of websites on the internet have been abandoned and can be considered failures. When people fail at things the first thing the look at is how hard they worked. If someone fails at something when they give maximum effort they may be puzzled as to why things did not go the way they would have liked. The thing that many people do not realize is that hard work does not always pay off, although it is still very important in business.

Hard work along with luck and execution are the most important factors to running a successful business. You can work very hard but if you don’t execute correctly it does not matter. If you do not have plans and backup plan it also will not matter. As far as luck goes people are very lucky in many different ways. Maybe one business owner needs a loan to stay in business but cannot get one but he has a rich uncle he can turn to. Maybe a person gets lucky and runs into Donald Trump at a hotel and tells him about an idea he has and Trump wants to help.

Overall business is not just about hard work. You have to work hard to execute the operations of a business in a productive manner and get luck with things like financing and unexpected mention in the press and things of that nature.

By: Andre Bias

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Business corporations are now facing one of the most competitive eras ever. With globalization and technology, businesses need to identify various areas for improvement in order to stay relevant. Although increasing revenue and profits year on year are essential, rising costs and escalating customer demands have developed a need for corporations to improve internal processes, increase productivity, optimize resources and decrease expenditure, or face the consequences of being wiped out by the competition.

This is where the concepts of Business Process Management (BPM) come in. Through BPM, business processes that occur within the entire organization are analyzed and areas of improvement are identified. As all operations of all departments are interconnected to one another, company-wide functionalities are criticized so that newer and more efficient processes can be proposed. At times, even the roles of human workers are considered in this exercise, with the purpose of achieving increased productivity.

Advancements in technology have resulted in the possibility of improving business processes through automation, computers and applications. However, merely adopting technology without adapting it to current business processes could spell greater inefficiency. Alterations to process flows would need to be planned out as a combination of automated and manual functions are integrated. Therefore, the BPM methodology provides a structured approach in these circumstances.

Although it is common for corporations to want to improve existing processes for cost savings purposes, some companies may look into Business Process Management as an approach to serve new organizational needs. A new product in the making may require a new business process in order to make it cost-effective to produce. A change in organizational structure through mergers and acquisitions may require business processes from two corporations to merge into one. Seamless integration between functionalities requires mapping or even elimination of overlapping processes.

An insight into how BPM initiatives are implemented

The implementation of process changes requires systematic approaches to be adopted for a smooth transition between current processes and newer ones. In this sense, the three core phases include Planning and Analysis, Design, Implementation and Monitoring.

Planning and Analysis

The Planning stage involves fact-finding of the existing processes that are utilized within an organization, and how these processes are linked to one another. Elements such as Key Performance Indicators used to measure the effectiveness of these processes are analyzed and evaluated. The human factor involved in these processes is also taken into consideration. If documented process designs are available, they are good resources to be utilized for the planning stage.

Getting the right picture of the current processes is a crucial factor towards the success of BPM. Once the fact finding initiative is completed, flowcharts that incorporate the details of existing processes are developed. Process inputs and outputs are included in these diagrams as well as differentiation between automated process flows and manual processes.

One crucial area within the planning stage is the determination of the extent of improvements that need to be implemented. These are the goals of the BPM exercise which defines the boundaries of changes to be made. Otherwise, there would be no limit towards the extent of business process improvements required.

Design

The design phase is one of the most important stages in the context of an entire BPM initiative. This is where new process flows are conceptualized and integrated with the use of software applications and systems that will help to enhance productivity. Results from the planning and analysis stage will be utilized to develop new business processes. New process flows will be designed to indicate the end result of the BPM initiative.

Next, application customizations are another area of concern. Even though the utilization of software can help improve productivity, they need to be adapted to an organization’s requirements. For instance, a company’s organization and reporting structure defers from that of other companies. Therefore, applications deployed will need to be adapted to fit variables that are unique to the organization.

The designing stage also serves as a detailed structure of the various areas that are to be changed so that implementers will have a guide on the tasks that should be completed. In other words, this constitutes the development of the blueprint of future processes.

Implementation

The final phase in BPM is the delivery of business processes that have been planned and designed. At this stage, new business processes are created based on the definitions that have been designed. Furthermore, application development or customization to coincide with business processes is also implemented here. Once implementation has been completed, reviews must be made to ensure that deliverables match the elements that have been planned and designed. Any discrepancies should be amended according to design specifications.

Monitoring BPM excellence

Improved business processes are ineffective if they are not enforced. The management team functions to drive these initiatives, which is why they need to be equipped with the needed skills and knowledge as well as leadership and management capabilities to communicate these changes to the rest of the organization.

Apart from that, operations excellence is also another important element. Business performance based on new processes must be reviewed, with any deviance addressed appropriately. Approaches such as Six Sigma are used to measure and improve quality, aligned with the core purpose of BPM.

Actual business performance measurements are statistically drafted and compared against pre-defined key performance indicators. Differences between these numbers or percentages will then indicate performance levels and efficiency of processes implemented. Although much of these are based on performance of internal operations, but in reality many of them have an effect on customer satisfaction levels. For example, turn around time for customer deliveries or order processing are internal processes that affect customer satisfaction levels.

At the end of the day, these business processes must escalate the quality of work of employees and producing excellent products and services to customers. The responsibility for this lies in the competency of corporate management to ensure that service quality is consistently sustained. Only then will a BPM initiative be considered a true success with continuous improvement across an organization attained.

By: Peter Peterka

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When it comes to gaining funding for your business there are a number of different places and avenues that you can approach but the one that you actually choose to use will be based on your business needs. Some examples of the places that you can turn to in the hope of gaining the business finance that you need are bank loans, family/friends, credit cards, overdrafts and investors. These are only a handful of the finance options that are open to both start-up businesses and established businesses; however in some cases many businesses often choose to use a combination of many different sources of finance in order to cover all of the expenses.

It can easily be said that many new businesses will exhaust the internal financial resources which are needed and used to get your business off the ground during the initial start-up phase. It is because of this that new businesses will then seek additional capital in order for them to continue to grow. The statement it takes money to make money is also never more relevant than it is when it comes to small businesses. This is due to the fact that every small business needs money to get started, operate and expand as well as to grow.

If you are a start-up business and you are at the point where you require outside finance you must clearly identify the purpose of your business finance. The start-up finance that you gain for your business is generally acquired so that you can gain assets for your business. These assets are used to help your business achieve its profit making objectives.

When you start to look for ways of raising business finance you should have calculated roughly how much money you are going to need in order to cover all of your business start-up expenses. By doing this you have a better chance of getting the business finance that you want and that you require. Once you have gained a rough estimate of how much money you are going to need for your business start-up in order to get your business off the ground you can start to think about the various avenues that you are able to approach as a way of securing your business finance.

However when it comes to business finance there are only really two words that you need to consider, these are debt or equity. Debt finance, for example, comes in the form of bank loans and credit cards. Debt finance is money that is lent to your business. It will cover all of your business costs but you are required to pay it back. You will have to repay debt finance on a monthly basis with added interest. Before you agree to take out debt finance it is important that you are able to keep up with the monthly repayments. To find this out you should investigate your expenditure and ensure that you will be able to keep up with the payments sufficiently.

The second word that you need to know is equity. Equity finance is money that is invested into your business for a share of your business. You don’t have to pay this money back at any point within your business but it does mean that you lose an aspect of control over your business.

Within every business there are five main components that are needed in order to ensure that your business operates successfully. These components are Personnel, Equipment, Housing, Products & Services and probably most importantly Capital. Without capital all of the other components wouldn’t exist within your business.

By: Helen Cox

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Lets begin by talking about leverage. What do I mean by leverage?

In it’s most basic application a lever allows you to lift or move a heavy object with a lesser amount of energy. For instance placing a long stick under a rock in order to move it.

But how does leverage apply to business? Can you place a stick under your income statement to boost up your net income?

The answer is yes.

There are many ways you can use leverage in your business to increase the results you are achieving. The term leverage is often used in reference to the financing of a business. Getting in with little or nothing down using someone elses money is a form a leverage.

THE STRONGEST LEVER

Marketing is arguably the most powerful business lever of them all.

Why?

Because marketing has nearly unlimited upside potential with nearly no downside potential.

Leveraging your business success through marketing can improve your results by 100%, 500%, 1000%, or more with almost no risk or downside potential.

Let me give you a few examples.

It costs the same fixed amount of time and money to run a newspaper ad whether that ad creates one response, five responses or a hundred responses. It costs you the same whether you close 1%, 10% or 20% or those that respond. It costs the same whether the fee income you create is $1000, $2000 or $3000.

When you send a follow up letter to your prospects it costs the same to mail it whether it generates a 0.5% response or a 1% response or a 4% response.

So, as you see the risk or downside potential is limited. And if you are already running the ads anyway the risk is nothing. But the upside potential, the opportunity to improve your results, it virtually unlimited.

And what is the lever that makes this happen? Your marketing.

In other words by becoming better at marketing, by learning how to use better words, better systems and better approaches to your potential client you can greatly increase the results you are getting with little or no risk.

Now that’s a lever!

You create leverage on your investment of time and money and create a much greater result. That’s called leveraging your mind.

By: Shawn Meldrum

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