by Angela Guess
Rich Wagner recently wrote in InformationWeek, “Five years ago, I was leading IT strategy and innovation for a Fortune 500 global chemical company. One of my tasks was to improve our business intelligence, but I had a tough problem. I noticed key decision makers weren’t viewing BI reports. Managers used the reports to monitor past performance and track their results against key performance indicators, but executives were not using them at all. I needed to rethink my reports and give executives something they could use. When I asked the CFO how we could improve our reports, I realized we were doing things all wrong. The charts and graphs our business intelligence tool produced contained internal historical data – events our decision makers and finance team could not change. Instead, our CFO needed forward-looking demand drivers specific to our company – predictive insights that our finance team could actually act on. That was the moment I realized the most important information was where our business was going, not where it had been.”
Wagner goes on, “The true business drivers for the company required a combination of internal metrics and external micro- and macro-economic factors. Without combining these metrics to create a clearer picture of performance, the C-suite deemed our reports useless. I soon realized that this problem wasn’t specific to our company. But, like most companies, a new idea is approached very cautiously and often is met by internal resistance. I knew I first had to build and test my theory to prove this kind of approach would indeed improve our ability to forecast.”
photo credit: Flickr/ CTSI-Global