Panorama Business Intelligence

Many companies are turning to social business intelligence to cultivate ideas from employees throughout their organizations to add value to business data. But there are several necessary strategies to fulfill before a company fully enables collaborative technology, according to a recent Information Management report.

“To truly enable collaborative BI, information delivery and the tools used to visualize, analyze and share corporate data need to be developed with the end user and his or her personal workflow processes and communication inclinations in mind from the start,” Information Management contends.
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International toy retailer Toys R Us has become the leader of the retail trend to “pop-up” stores – rapidly opening and closing retail locations through short-term leases to better position products.

This holiday shopping season, the company is utilizing business intelligence solutions to track and identify the best locations to open 600 pop-up stores across the world, according to a Computer Weekly report. Toys R Us first tested the concept last year, when it routinely opened and shuttered 90 stores per season. The success of the plan prompted the company to expand its pop-up store efforts this season, and across Europe in 2011.
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When the worst of the global economic recession hit near the end of the summer in 2008, companies across the world were faced with the challenge of using less to get more out of their business.

Some, instead of cutting the human element out of business data, turned to social business intelligence solutions to give their information added value. Such a shift mirrored a similar one from the early 1990s, also during a recession, when enterprise resource planning became popular, according to a recent TechTarget report.

“I’m seeing very much the same dynamics today. It’s just that the bet is being made on knowledge worker innovation,” Rob Koplowitz, principal analyst with IT consulting firm Forrester Research, said of the rise of collaborative technologies.
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According to a recent Forbes report, a “cognitive bias,” or overconfidence, in decision-making skills prompts many executives to fully take advantage of business intelligence solutions.

This high regard for their own decision making causes their companies to invest fewer resources in “fact-based systems and processes that could help us correct our misperception,” according to Forbes.
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Online travel booking leader Expedia recently utilized business intelligence software to fix a bug on its website that translated into $12 million profits, according to Silicon.com.

Expedia Vice President of Global Analytics and Optimization Joe Megibow told Silicon.com that the company’s use of business intelligence helped identify a single change to a web page that generated an overnight sales surge. The company had investigated why customers who clicked the “Buy Now” button did not complete a transaction.

It turns out credit card verifications were failing because customers were confused by an optional “Company” field, mistakenly entering their bank name, when filling out the transaction field.
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Companies that are looking to implement business intelligence solutions are finding their employees, not the complex technology, are serving as a major barrier, according to a recent report from the MIT Sloan Management Review.

Change management and and cultural resistance are two of the most common barriers, according to the study. The latter was cited by 23 percent of survey respondents.

Among some of the other top obstacles, 38 percent of respondents said they lack the understanding of how to use BI to improve their business, 34 percent lack bandwidth due to competing priorities and 28 percent lack appropriate skills.

“The adoption barriers organizations face most are related to management and culture rather than being related to data and technology,” according to the organization, which surveyed nearly 3,000 executives and business analysts from 108 countries and 30 industries.
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Technical Support Engineer:

At Panorama, we are currently looking to expand our technical team in North America. If you’re interested in working in a leading software company that would challenge you and help you grow personally and professionally, we’d love to hear from you!

Job Description:
• Engage in support activities with partners and customers
• Help the Pre sales and Sales team with current opportunities

Technical requirements:
• IT experience with Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 Server platforms
• Good knowledge of IIS 6 and 7
• Working Knowledge of MS SQL\OLAP 2005 and above
• Knowledge of Flash and Java platforms would be an asset
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With the latest Harry Potter film set to open later this month, Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros. Pictures, is using business intelligence software to better predict sales of the series’ DVDs.

Previous methods allowed Warner Bros. to forecast sales only within 40 percent, but the company is finding much stronger returns thanks to its BI solution, according to CIO magazine. The company can now more accurately estimate how many discs it needs to make and how many to provide to each retailer, helping to improve the manufacturing and distribution processes. BI is also helping Warner Bros. select optimal release dates for DVDs that will ensure high sales.
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The notion that everybody has an opinion couldn’t be truer than in the business world. Company employees from the C-level to entry level have thoughts, ideas and opinions on everything from daily meetings to long-term business direction.

According to a recent Forbes report, companies traditionally have struggled to take advantage of the thoughts floating around in their employees’ heads. Ideas were locked into individual memories, notes were buried on computer hard drives and opinions were misinterpreted at meetings.

Not sharing such information limits its distribution, even when not intended, according to Forbes.

“That lock-in of information access introduces one more point where valuable tacit information becomes inaccessible, if the notes are lost, erased from computers, or gone when the person leaves the organization,” Rawn Shah wrote for Forbes. “You may never know the possibility of value such insight can bring, by placing such boundaries.”
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