Knowledge is Power.

Business Intelligence establishes the means to monitor trends and issues that can impact on your business.

Business Intelligence gathers information from a variety of internal and external sources, identifies patterns and trends and forms them into a single and cohesive business view. The selection process for these has to be based on business value criteria (in line with roadmap primary layers).

Having more information does not necessarily lead to better analysis or appreciation . Our view of the future is affected by our biases and the fact that we are players in the environment while, at the same time, trying to be objective about it.

Although the business environment is uncertain and facts can get lost in the accompanying "noise", we are able to structure a preferred future that needs to be regularly reviewed with a built in feedback loop to modify our views in light of changing events.

The role of Business Intelligence is to:

        Track commercial opportunities and threats, future markets and market demand
        Track competitors and competitive technologies
        Track emerging technology and developments to identify technology opportunities and threats – from internal know-how as well as from external sources

A broad based business intelligence approach will also enable companies to identify potential strategic alliances and collaborative opportunities in order to optimise capabilities, competencies and resources to address new customer needs.

The challenge is to develop a holistic organisational perspective by collating tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge from stakeholders remodelled into a more usable business opportunity.

The process of business roadmapping encourages that knowledge exchange and better cross-functional communication among participants.

Each organisation needs to track and monitor meaningful, critical data and customise information that may impact on its preferred future.

© Bmaps Pty Ltd 2013