[A Strategic View of BI & EPM – Part 1 of 6]

Rapidly changing business challenges today require better insights and faster action. How can you harness the power of inforation to build and maintain an advantage? What role can Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management play to help business leaders drive results?

I like to describe Business Intelligence (BI) as the art and science of accessing data and transforming it into useful information. This begins with identifying the right data, enhancing it through analytics, and presenting it as actionable information to decision-makers.

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is the process of planning, executing and analyzing activity with the goal of improving financial performance. Various levels of planning – from long range strategic planning to annual budgets to monthly forecasts – help organize resources and manage the business. As plans are executed, actual results are tracked, measured and analyzed. A feedback loop informs which tactics are effective and which may require adjustment. This virtuous cycle of planning, execution, analysis, then planning again, drives progress.

BI and EPM increase the organization’s understanding of the enterprise and the environment in which it operates. This insight improves decision-making, resource allocation and strategy, enabling the business ultimately to achieve its goals.

This all sounds simple, but in the real world, organizations can be complex and face a wide variety of challenges and priorities when implementing effective BI and EPM techniques and technologies. To help inform and start a dialog, we’re launching a series of short posts that will discuss:

• Who needs a BI/EPM strategy?
• When can a Project and Technology Roadmap help you?
• Why are Data Governance and Master Data Management important?
• How can you improve reporting and metrics?
• How do you sustain best practices in BI and EPM?

Stay tuned for more…

Read other articles in this series:

Part 2 :  Who Needs a BI & EPM Strategy?

Part 3 :  How Can a Project & Technology Roadmap Keep Your BI & EPM Strategy On Track?

Part 4 :  Why Do Data Governance and Master Data Management Matter?

Part 5 :  How Can Aligning Reporting and Metrics Improve Enterprise Performance?

Part 6 :  How do you Build and Sustain Best Practices in BI and EPM?