The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence [Paperback]

Steve Williams (Author), Nancy Williams (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0123724996 | ISBN-13: 978-0123724991 | Publication Date: December 19, 2006 | Edition: 1

Business Intelligence (BI): It's not just a technology. It's not just a methodology. It's a powerful new management approach that - when done right - can deliver knowledge, efficiency, better decisions, and profit to almost any organization that uses it.

When BI first came on the scene, it promised a lot but often failed to deliver. The missing element was the business-centric focus explained in The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence. Written by BI gurus Steve Williams and Nancy Williams, The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence shows step by step how you can achieve the promise of BI by connecting it to your organization's strategic goals, culture, and strengths while correcting your BI weaknesses.

Features:

* Provides a practical, process-oriented guide to achieve the full promise of BI.

* Shows how world-class companies used BI to become leaders in their industries.

* Helps senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they can ensure a strong payoff from their BI investments.

* Identifies the most common mistakes organizations make in implementing BI.

* Includes a helpful glossary of BI terms.

* Includes a BI readiness assessment for your organization.

* Includes Web links and extensive references for more information.

Steve Williams, President and founder of DecisionPath Consulting, is a leading advocate of business-driven BI design and development. His consulting firm is one of the largest in the specialized field of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. Steve has over 23 years experience in information systems and systems engineering and has co-authored a training course on the BI Pathway Method. Nancy Williams is Vice President of DecisionPath Consulting. With over 21 years of business and technical experience, she provides technical and strategic leadership on business intelligence as well as hands-on guidance for client engagements.

* A practical, process-oriented book that will help organizations realize the promise of BI
* Written by Nancy and Steve Williams, veteran consultants and instructors with hands-on, "in the trenches" experience in government and corporate business intelligence applications
* Will help senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they
can help ensure a strong payoff on BI investments

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The ideas in The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence were central to our deployment of business intelligence applications that allowed us to manage revenue delivery and reduce costs.
--Kevin McCaughey, Vice President - Strategic Planning, McCormick & Company Global Industrial Group

One performance management approach we are taking is to leverage business intelligence to better serve our customers and to optimize our cost structure in relation to the services our customers value most. We have used the strategies described in The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence to align our BI program with our critical success factors and to drive our BI development efforts.
--Terry Lillis, Chief Financial Officer - Retirement and Investor Services, The Principal Financial Group

This is a "must read" book for anyone who wants to achieve real business intelligence. It advances the discipline of BI by focusing on business value built upon a strong foundation of technology best practices.
--David L. Wells, Director of Education, TDWI: The Data Warehousing Institute

Nancy and Steve Williams understand the "business" in business intelligence. This book is a must for business leaders who require that their BI programs drive real business value.
--Barbara Wixom, PhD, Associate Professor, Director MS-MIT, University of Virginia - McIntire School of Commerce'

Book Description

An A-to-Z approach for getting the most business intelligence from a company's data assets or data warehouse

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (December 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0123724996
• ISBN-13: 978-0123724991
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #634,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for the BI Professional, August 28, 2007

By 

L. Bradley Bergh "-brad" (Wilmington, Delaware USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence (Paperback)

Steve and Nancy Williams have made a significant contribution to the Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence literature with this comprehensive and well organized argument for looking at Business Intelligence as an investment in building sustainable organizational value in either a for-profit or non-profit environment. The book provides a clear understanding of the need for Business Intelligence along with the challenges that have plagued many efforts in the past. In it they put forth a number of ideas to address these challenges while outlining a "value management" oriented methodology for overcoming them. In the process they point out that many of the TDWI Best Practices are completely consistent with the value oriented approach.

The husband-wife team skillfully make the case that a successful Business Intelligence program needs to focus on building measurable and sustainable business value through coordinated change in workflow (business process), information flow (dashboards, scorecards, "reports", etc.), and decision structure. And that a Business Intelligence Program needs to be considered and managed as a "portfolio" consisting of multiple individual Business Intelligence projects, each characterized by both benefit and risk.

They argue that for a BI (Business Intelligence) project to add value it needs to enhance the organization's ability to deliver greater value to its customers. Each BI project delivers some benefit, and always at some risk. Both the benefit and the risk need to be measured and managed. The existence of multiple projects gives rise to the need to manage a "portfolio" of BI projects with varying degrees of risk and reward.

They point out that BI delivers information and that information is only beneficial if the information is useful to decision-makers. That is, it reduces the uncertainty surrounding a decision. Since the only thing information can do is alter a decision, one's need for information becomes a function of the decision and the business process to which it belongs. Thus new information often presents an opportunity to make a decision more efficiently bringing about a change in the way a decision is made (the decision structure). Furthermore, data used as input to one business process often originates in another. Hence, the need to consider possible changes in more than one business process in order to achieve the expected benefit from improved decision-making capability. Many of the challenges that have led to undesirable results in the past can be traced to the inability of the organization to deal effectively with this inter-related and often required simultaneous change in decision structure and work process. This inability is most likely attributable to focusing on specific technical objectives rather than the more encompassing value-building objectives of the investment. A value-focused approach helps anticipate this impact and resolve possible conflict.

This is one book that should be within easy reach of every BI professional, team-lead, business analyst, supervisor, manager, and CIO interested in building a value oriented organization.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Points from everywhere to everyone, September 19, 2008

By 

H. Ali Abdulaal - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence (Paperback)

Let me start by saying that I liked this book.

At the beginning, it appears like a copy of a specific book that has been a best-seller of this genre (unfortunately, I read that book; Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning). But little after going through the chapters - and passing my little disappointment - the reader finds that it is basically a summary of - maybe - all the major and must-read books of the genre in one place. Starting from strategic view and management (Business Intelligence Competency Centers: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive Advantage) to technical points (DWH lifecycle) to even famous articles and references to websites and online standards.

The authors clearly read (and most probably applied what in) each of these books and then said "why not put everything together in one place so everything will be understood". But while doing so, they actually pieced it together and produced a solid, actionable work, which is of their own.

To me, it was like a crash course in every area of BI with stressing on management and business value. Process Engineering & Opportunity Assessment are my favorite chapters in this book. And although all books nowadays provide you with a framework here or there, I find this one's rather interesting.

It is a nice read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence, July 30, 2007

By 

Robert E. Paladino "CPA" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence (Paperback)

Steve and Nancy Williams have provided a clear and concise understanding of Business Intelligence (BI) and its ongoing business value. Their book reflects deep experience, first hand observations and a practitioners approach to achieving business results and large returns to BI technology investments.

The book follows a practical approach and is organized in building blocks to enable an increased maturing view of this key competitive advantage.

Part 1 "Identifying and Leveraging BI-Driven Profit Opportunities" consists of chapters 1-3, provides introductory terms, the business case for BI, and key barriers, risks designed for a broad audience.

Part 2 "Creating the BI Asset" consists of chapters 4-6, introduces their BI Pathway Method that aligns strategy, drivers, and objectives with detailed information requirements and IT architecture. It outlines a BI maturity model addressing culture change considerations, and bridges the gap between IT and business vocabulary, often two different worlds. Finally, a prototypical technical infrastructure provides context, definition and positioning to IT assets, tools, applications and information for the business decision maker.

Part 3 "Leveraging BI for Profit Improvement" consists of chapter 7-9, describes more deeply how companies have used BI in different ways to drive profits; discusses common mistakes or pitfalls to avoid, and looks at the future of BI.

As a functionally oriented executive and business adviser, I appreciated each chapter provides key points to remember, questions to ask about your BI needs, and quizzes to test learning and comprehension.

This book is a welcome addition to the executive's library who understands the value of leveraging information for competitive advantage and value creation.