The Extended Enterprise
Collaboration as an enabler of Business Intelligence. Updated on 4/20/2021.
Business intelligence is the use of technology to analyze, discover, and identify business data. You can’t afford to have a business intelligence system, that is, well, unintelligent! Join the list of constant growth of companies who benefit from business intelligence. As of 2015, there were an estimated 30 to 50 million websites using Google Analytics around the globe. With the increasing popularity of Google Analytics and artificial intelligence, business intelligence is being overlooked, when in reality a business intelligence strategy is what your enterprise needs to look at in order to produce actionable and meaningful insights.
Some positive effects of implementing business intelligence at your company:
- Cost reduction
- Increase in efficiency and productivity
- Supports decision making
- Improves sales
- Reveals opportunities.
Key performance indicators (KPI's) are the foundation of business intelligence and need to be viewed across the enterprise. It is therefore important for your company to be able to collaborate about this information and how it is used in your business strategy.
Business strategy may seem easy enough to follow for some; however, how well-informed as a whole is company about the business strategy? A team succeeds by working together within the transparency of all information.
All should also have the ability to give input on the business strategy. Some of you in a single area of a company have better insight as to what that sector needs than, for example, another in a different sector. If a business is failing to implement its business strategy early enough, it is usually due to the lack of collaboration and lack of groups able to work together to execute the business strategy. By working together, not only will most people end up pleased at the end of it by being able to provide input but everyone will understand the details of what is expected of them, and will be reassured – because they had input – that their area of the business is doing what will be best for that part of the company. Top management can then make sure that all employees grasp the strategy, clarifying any details that are needed.
Collaborate Using Data Visualization
If business intelligence makes the data easier to understand, then data visualization turns that into a story. According to Predictive Analytics Today, "it is estimated that over 1 billion terabytes of data are generated in a year." There are many data types of be visualized, including one, two, and multi-dimensional data, among other types.
Some common interactions with this data in the data visualization process include painting, brushing, identifying, and scaling it. So, what are the best practices considering there are so many options of how to visual the data?
Some best practices include:
Knowing Your Goal
Ask yourself: "What is my goal?", "Who is my intended audience?", and "What is my desired effect on my audience?"
Using Correct Data – Quantitative vs. Ordinal vs. Categorical
Quantitative – Used to define how much there is in a particular thing
Ordinal – Data that has a logical sequence and is logically accorded together
Categorical – Data which belong together
Keeping Visualization and Dashboard Simple
A simple, easy to read dashboard results in maximum impact, and this will help your audience better access and understand the information, and help answer questions faster.
Keeping Users Engaged
Regular emails and metric-driven notifications offer continual engagement and calls to action.
Empowering Your Audience
Identify your highest priority viewer and tailor your data visualization towards them, as this will empower them. Then, consider which KPIs answer important business strategy questions, as this will ensure your visualization contains meaningful and actionable data.
Designing Interactively
First, gather all your requirements for data visualization, then design a prototype and give out the feedback in an interactive form. Next, you can revise based on this experience.
Collaborate Using the Cloud
Through the use of cloud storage, optionality–the potential for options–opens up, and this has a positive effect on business strategy by making data easier for everyone to access and does not disrupt the analysts or business systems when new data is uploaded.
The cloud has also made paying for only what you use when you use it possible, resulting in more money saved. Especially important as more and more enterprises move to the cloud, is to separate your storage and compute, says Starburst. Contrary to what some may think, this will save money but will not sacrifice performance, compared to the old model of storing and computing in one.
Competitive Advantage to Clarify Goals
Today, no business can work in isolation without floundering. An organization’s success is dependent on a complex network of partnerships that combine resources to clarify the services and products that should be presented to the market. This is known as the extended enterprise, a concept that has far reaching repercussions if it is managed smartly.
With collaboration on a large scale, organizations have access to massive amounts of data that, if utilized correctly, can be used to meet critical business goals. Even if some organizations choose to work independently via agreements, they are still part of the architecture that influences the exchange of information, money, and services.
This collective intelligence and the data that generates from are a gold mine if they are managed smartly. Since most of that data lies outside an enterprise, businesses need a single platform that can help them leverage that intel and turn it into a competitive edge.
The Visible Systems Advantage
At Visible Systems, our aim is to help organizations make better business decisions by helping them leverage data that is working behind their enterprise architecture. With our help:
- Stakeholders can use the collective data powering their enterprise architecture to gain insight about business objectives across different verticals.
- Data managers can get to the data that matters and share metadata, models, and glossaries across an extended architecture.
- Organizations can benefit from a simple framework in one integrated platform for efficient and quick decision-making.