We know a reactive BI program can provide valuable insights to an organization. With that said, a proactive BI program can provide even more – sometimes insights that can save a business.
What do I mean by reactive and proactive? If the business directly drives most of your BI priorities, then your program is reactive. This is not a bad thing. It is just a sign of a program with more potential. This may sound contrary to our normal blogs discussing how your BI program should be centered around your business. We are not suggesting something different here. Instead, we are building on that foundation to offer an even more advanced way of thinking. Your BI program will develop its own understanding of your business and should eventually develop insights of its own to help the business. What is this wizardry? Here is a simple example.
Let’s say that the leadership of Company X notifies its managers that the company needs to take a different direction with its product line. They believe, based on years of experience, that their target customer has evolved and that the company must adapt to keep them satisfied. They begin the significant change as a company hoping to reverse the continual decline in sales. Sadly, after trying this for some time, they realize their assumptions were incorrect and now the situation has actually gotten worse. The company is at risk of total failure. Intuition and experience, although often right, had led them down the wrong path.
The worse part of this story is this – if the answer was in the data, and it probably was, you as a BI professional failed the company. You had the ability to mine the data and identify the real reason for the decline in sales and you did not do it because you were not asked. “But I’m not leadership!” you say. You can use everything at your disposal within the company to raise concern with the truth of data by your side. Scream your findings from the mountaintop if you have to and save the company from failure and you will become leadership. We are not always asked by the company for BI guidance. A lot of times this is out of ignorance – the leadership has successfully navigated without BI for years so why would they think they need to use us now. We need to be proactive and demonstrate the value of finding significant insights that may boost a company to success or save a company from failure. Don’t sit back and wait – it is your creed as a BI professional to use data to help the business.
At ConradBI, we know how to guide companies through the steps of establishing the use of business intelligence. We can help your BI program come into existence and then mature from reactive to proactive.
