TDWI had an interview with Michael Corcoran of Information Builders recently – Q&A: Pushing BI Beyond Business Managers: TDWI in which he had a great phrase:
“Information can have a dramatic, positive behavioral effect when it is directly available”
I am not familiar with the WebFOCUS platform – if anyone from Information Builders wants to set up a briefing for me that would be great – but from what Michael says it seems to me that a platform like WebFOCUS would get companies well down the road to managing operational decisions.
The keys to success would be a couple of things:
- Can you identify the decisions that matter and focus on them?
- Can you change your thinking from “this is the data I have, who needs it?” to “these are the decisions we must improve, what data would help?”
- Can you integrate analytic insight with regulations and policies – put business rules and analytics together, in other words?
- Can you focus you analytic effort on predicting the future not reporting on the past?
- Can you automate as much, or as little, of the decision as makes sense?
If you can then I, like Michael, think your information can have a dramatic and positive effect. Decision management is about putting your data to work and it seems to me that Michael is focusing on that same objective.
