On Thursday, July 29, StoneHenge Partners and Grant Thornton
hosted the first in a series of Strategy Roundtable sessions. CIO
and CFO attendees had the opportunity to build relationships with
other executives in a variety of industries, hear a great speaker,
and exchange ideas on hot topics.
Our goal for these roundtables is to create an ongoing forum
that brings together IT and financial decision makers from the best
organizations in our area and facilitate an environment for
information sharing and access to leading resources.
In our first session, John Gutierrez, from Grant Thornton, led a
presentation on Business Intelligence, one of the hot IT topics for
2010.
Several CIO/CFO attendees from local companies enjoyed a casual
breakfast and listened to Gutierrez talk about BI, including
- What Is Business Intelligence?
- The Business Case
- The Solution
- Vendor Overview
- Implementation Considerations
- Approach and Methodology.
Gutierrez emphasized the importance of approaching BI
incrementally instead of monolithically.
| Typical
Perspective |
Our
Perspective |
| IT
Driven |
-Collect all the data
-Continually "proving value"
|
Business
Driven |
-Align outcome with strategy
-Top-down approach
-Target specific business needs
|
| "Boil the Ocean"
approach |
-Collect all requirements
-One answer to every user
-Create "enterprise" warehouse
|
Pragmatic
approach |
Flexible, scalable foundation
Define success criteria
Ensure metrics are actionable
|
| Long Dev
Cycle |
-Large investment
-Minimal incremental value
|
Rapid/Agile Dev
Cycle |
-Deliver quick wins
-Prove value / gain buy-in
-Reduce initial investment
|
| Fixed
Requirements |
-Assumes static needs
-Limited flexibility
-Less user discovery
|
Evolving BI
Needs |
-Select scalable tools
-Hit "moving" targets
-Disciplined but flexible
|
Participants talked about their own experiences with BI as well
as how to deal with the power users, and data security/integrity.
Download the PDF
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The next session is being planned for mid to late September.