Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards can be designed to present as much or as little information as required in any number of presentations from data visualizations to straight tables and pivot tables. From a design perspective, it’s best to group dashboards into specific kinds of dashboards based on the intent and operations looking to leverage business […]
An organization asked me to review their ERP system that controlled their manufacturing production, purchasing, inventory management, order entry and accounting. The executive management team expressed extreme frustration at the lack of visibility into their business. They felt their ERP system did not provide them the information they needed to effectively manage and control their […]
It’s widely understood that having good listening skills are a critical and essential skill in business and in everyday living. As a general observation, it’s not difficult to find pundits offering opinions on how the public’s average attention span is becoming noticeably shorter due to the constant access and exposure to multimedia, Internet and converging […]
Maximizing ROI on system implementations is always the primary goal in any economic environment. System implementations ought to follow a framework that executes and manages the process in an efficient and effective manner that ensures ROI from the capital investment. Measurement of ROI is determined based on the stated objectives during the planning phase of the proposed system implementation. Implementing a value […]
Turning the IT organization into a highly effective shop is a success onto itself. However, to maximize a CIO’s contribution to the organization he/she needs to be a trusted business adviser and problem solver helping departments or functional areas solve business problems, improve processes and provide leadership. For CIOs to maximize their effectiveness in helping organizations meet […]
Recently I helped a system user with a technical issue over a weekend. The user was very apologetic when she called me and was basically at wits end. She needed support on a financial report writer that failed to generate any reports. As the Controller of the company, she was trying to finish the month […]
ERP implementations are one of the most costly, complex and environment changing projects an organization can undertake. In this hyper competitive market, solution providers will negotiate creative contracts to secure deals. One such tool is to value price projects. The definition of value pricing is deriving a selling price for a service or services based on a customer’s […]
Access to financial and managerial information to gain understanding, metrics and pinpoint weaknesses or opportunities to improve operations has gained tremendous attention as solution providers flood the market with “user friendly” business intelligence tools. Solution providers position these tools to help “enlighten” businesses enough to purchase their products. However, a software solution is only as […]
A group member in one of the CIO groups I belong to in LinkedIn posted an inquiry on the good and bad experiences with transport company software solutions. The inquiry stated the following, “I am currently looking into replacing the main systems platform for a reasonably sized trucking and courier company and would be interested to hear […]
Business intelligence is not just a set of tools to analyze raw data to help make strategic and operational decisions. It is a framework that offers guidance in understanding what to look for in the volumes of disparate data. As a framework, BI is a continuous cycle of analysis, insight, action and measurement. Analyzing […]
