Business Management Performance Software: According to CIOs today, business intelligence (BI) is the single most important application focus. Because BI offers a 360° view of the organization and its many complex systems, it facilitates deep analysis, better decision making, increased productivity, and business growth.

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Executive Summary

According to CIOs today, business intelligence (BI) is the single most important application focus. Because BI offers a 360° view of the organization and its many complex systems, it facilitates deep analysis, better decision making, increased productivity, and business growth. A typical BI project has a return on investment (ROI) of 430%—assuming proper implementation and organizationwide user adoption.

Failure to achieve user adoption results in missed deadlines and compromised business performance—as evidenced by the highly-publicized failures of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Ironically, because organizations were in such a hurry to realize bottom-line benefits, they cut critical corners—ultimately jeopardizing their projects and delaying the very rewards they so urgently sought.

Now, because the pressure to demonstrate returns on software implementations and upgrades has never been greater, organizations risk failing to learn the lessons of the past. Organizations are under pressure to quickly justify their software investments and are likely to fall into the same traps that doomed earlier projects to failure.