by Angela Guess
Larry Alton recently wrote in The American Genius, “Many companies are still lacking real business intelligence competence at the C-Suite level, and these companies risk falling behind in an era built on big data. So, how do we increase business intelligence competency in the C-Suite? The first step is increasing education about the importance of all that data… The reality behind business intelligence is that, if you know how to read and interpret all that data, your company’s story is spelled out in front of you. How things are changing, what strategies are successful, and what you need to be doing next: it’s all there. And that’s information the whole C-Suite needs, not just the CIO.”
Alton continues, “For example, current data suggests that in 2016, two-thirds of digital marketing money will be spent on mobile ads. That’s because other data has taught marketers that more tech users are mobile-only than desktop only. This is information that can change the company strategy, but someone needs to be aggregating and interpreting this information and working with different members of the C-Suite to make data actionable.”
He goes on, “In many cases, C-Suite executives know that data matters. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any major business leaders who don’t recognize the importance of business information. The bigger problem is that these executives don’t know what to with it. In order to get executives on board with business intelligence, a few changes need to happen. First, executives need to work with data-driven employees to choose appropriate business intelligence software for their company. Informed staff, such as IT team members, can help to facilitate this while educating executives by providing clear outlines of potential software and their benefits to executives. Using an outside ranking system to help executives visualize the overall quality of different business intelligence programs can also help executives participate in this process.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ ** RCB **