Posts Tagged ‘KPI’

Highlights from the 2010 Pacific Crest Technology Conference : SaaS as a Catalyst for Business Intelligence and Analytics

February 27th, 2010

qgallivan

This week I was on a panel discussing the growing state of Cloud Computing and the SaaS BI market.  The panel consisted of moderator Nabil Elsheshai, Senior Analyst of Information Management Software and IT Services at Pacific Crest along with Bill Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning; Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft; Scott Weiner, CTO of Cloud9, and myself.  I want to share some key themes and observations from the event particularly because they set the tone for the next evolution of BI.

The criteria IT uses to buy BI has shifted, resulting in a new approach to BI decision-making. The era of high risk, complex and time consuming implementations is giving way to a new era of quick BI wins defined by specific business use-cases that are implemented in days, not months or years, with no CAPEX spending and extremely fast time-to-value. At PivotLink we’re seeing this shift in buying criteria being driven by both IT and the line of business.  IT needs to deliver a faster turnaround on BI solutions for high priority business projects and do so with limited resources. SaaS BI is a perfect augmentation strategy for legacy BI implementations. By enabling IT to better support the business with highly secure, easy-to-use tools and right-time data – all  without breaking the bank or bringing on new resources - SaaS BI is the best tool for these high value quick BI wins!

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It’s all about tracking metrics

December 11th, 2009

Ajay Dawar

Ray Wang just posted an awesome and insightful article about how to approach the use of software to improve business in these tight times. I especially loved the last 2 suggestions quoted below, because it captured the essence of SaaS BI – a byte sized approach to tracking metrics:

  1. Choose your entry points to add business value. It makes no sense to boil the ocean.  Today’s analytic solutions require bite-sized entry points.  Clients often start with analysis of metrics and KPI by department and work their way to cross-departmental initiatives.  Advanced customers focus on external entry points such as customers and partners.  (see Figure 1.)
  2. Define the metrics that matter. Begin with the end in mind.  This Coveyism always rings true in transformational activities.  Metrics should be aligned with your entry points.  Quantify the baseline and determine the effort.  Adjust your ROI targets to align resources with efforts to move the needle. (see Figure 2.)

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