Firms look beyond BI for real time solutions

As Indian companies scale up and also become global organisations, chief information officers are looking beyond business intelligence (BI) for real time intelligence and at consolidation of the various BI solutions for an integrated viewpoint of the organisation, industry experts told Business Standard.

Businesses are seeing the convergence of performance management and BI into Business Performance Management (BPM), that is BI with a purpose.

Organisations are now moving beyond as simply generating reports is insufficient, Suganthi Shivkumar, Managing Director, Hyperion Solutions Asia Pte Ltd, ASEAN and India explained, "Information must be in the context of financial and operational plans, as well as financial data. As such, the integration of various reports and information through analytical insight and better visualisation and interactivity, is getting more important for CIOs."

BPM solutions are finding their application in all industries, particularly the retail, banking and finance, manufacturing, telco and public sector.

For instance, with the strong revival of the manufacturing sector in the last three years the industry is under tremendous pressure in terms of capacity, productivity, people and cost.

Anil Pillai, Chief Executive Officer, Rapid Effect, a BI solutions company hosting a panel discussion on 'Decision tools for competitive manufacturing' said, "The efficient use of information and data has traditionally been ignored by the manufacturing sector. With transaction systems such as ERPs stabilising, we believe the competitive edge will now come from intelligence generation from data collected using such systems."

Also as organisations grow and mature they recognise that there is a need to consolidate their diverse range of BI tools and applications and are looking for a scaleable and integrated BI platform which can bring reporting, analysis, planning and financial reporting together.

Standarisation is the other main concern for chief operational officers (CIOs) who are confronted with the dilemma of creating order in the face of the proliferation of BI tools and applications within the company, said Shivkumar.

"Rapid Effect is launching two new tools for the manufacturing and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the coming quarter," said Pillai. The firm already has five BI tools in its solutions portfolio.