Editorial Review:
Business Intelligence (BI): Its not just a technology. Its not just a methodology. Its a powerful new management approach that when done right can deliver knowledge, efficiency, better decisions, and profit to almost any organization that uses it.
When BI first came on the scene, it promised a lot but often failed to deliver. The missing element was the business-centric focus explained in The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence. Written by BI gurus Steve Williams and Nancy Williams, The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence shows step by step how you can achieve the promise of BI by connecting it to your organizations strategic goals, culture, and strengths while correcting your BI weaknesses.
Features:
* Provides a practical, process-oriented guide to achieve the full promise of BI.
* Shows how world-class companies used BI to become leaders in their industries.
* Helps senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they can ensure a strong payoff from their BI investments.
* Identifies the most common mistakes organizations make in implementing BI.
* Includes a helpful glossary of BI terms.
* Includes a BI readiness assessment for your organization.
* Includes Web links and extensive references for more information.
Steve Williams, President and founder of DecisionPath Consulting, is a leading advocate of business-driven BI design and development. His consulting firm is one of the largest in the specialized field of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. Steve has over 23 years experience in information systems and systems engineering and has co-authored a training course on the BI Pathway Method. Nancy Williams is Vice President of DecisionPath Consulting. With over 21 years of business and technical experience, she provides technical and strategic leadership on business intelligence as well as hands-on guidance for client engagements.
* A practical, process-oriented book that will help organizations realize the promise of BI
* Written by Nancy and Steve Williams, veteran consultants and instructors with hands-on, "in the trenches" experience in government and corporate business intelligence applications
* Will help senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they
can help ensure a strong payoff on BI investments
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
A valuable contribution to the different perspectives that surround business intelligence 2008-08-28
The world of business intelligence (BI) has been dominated by a technicians approach. There are architectures, data models, algorithms, and transformations. Now there is a book about the "soft side of business intelligence" from the perspective of the businessperson.
The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence by Nancy Williams and Steve Williams covers a wide variety of topics, all relevant and informative. There are several highlights to the book:
* A checklist of common mistakes to avoid when building the business intelligence infrastructure,
* What to look for in the building of the business intelligence infrastructure,
* Plenty of "mini" case studies, and so forth.
In addition, there is a brief section on the early dawn of information systems, beginning with simple cost accounting and going to the balanced scorecard. Another interesting feature is the discussion of the maturity model of business intelligence.
Another nice feature of the book is the sprinkling throughout of pithy words and contributions from notables such as Michael Porter, Peter Drucker, Gordon Moore and others.
The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence is an easy read that is full of good information. This book belongs on the desk of the business manager charged with building and operating the business intelligence infrastructure. This book represents a valuable contribution to the different perspectives that surround business intelligence.
Review Submitted by Bill Inmon
Profit Impact of Business Intelligence 2008-05-07
Very celar and concise. This was of great value in my efforts to articulate the value of Business Intelligence within our organization.
Required Reading for the BI Professional 2007-08-28
Steve and Nancy Williams have made a significant contribution to the Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence literature with this comprehensive and well organized argument for looking at Business Intelligence as an investment in building sustainable organizational value in either a for-profit or non-profit environment. The book provides a clear understanding of the need for Business Intelligence along with the challenges that have plagued many efforts in the past. In it they put forth a number of ideas to address these challenges while outlining a "value management" oriented methodology for overcoming them. In the process they point out that many of the TDWI Best Practices are completely consistent with the value oriented approach.
The husband-wife team skillfully make the case that a successful Business Intelligence program needs to focus on building measurable and sustainable business value through coordinated change in workflow (business process), information flow (dashboards, scorecards, "reports", etc.), and decision structure. And that a Business Intelligence Program needs to be considered and managed as a "portfolio" consisting of multiple individual Business Intelligence projects, each characterized by both benefit and risk.
They argue that for a BI (Business Intelligence) project to add value it needs to enhance the organization's ability to deliver greater value to its customers. Each BI project delivers some benefit, and always at some risk. Both the benefit and the risk need to be measured and managed. The existence of multiple projects gives rise to the need to manage a "portfolio" of BI projects with varying degrees of risk and reward.
They point out that BI delivers information and that information is only beneficial if the information is useful to decision-makers. That is, it reduces the uncertainty surrounding a decision. Since the only thing information can do is alter a decision, one's need for information becomes a function of the decision and the business process to which it belongs. Thus new information often presents an opportunity to make a decision more efficiently bringing about a change in the way a decision is made (the decision structure). Furthermore, data used as input to one business process often originates in another. Hence, the need to consider possible changes in more than one business process in order to achieve the expected benefit from improved decision-making capability. Many of the challenges that have led to undesirable results in the past can be traced to the inability of the organization to deal effectively with this inter-related and often required simultaneous change in decision structure and work process. This inability is most likely attributable to focusing on specific technical objectives rather than the more encompassing value-building objectives of the investment. A value-focused approach helps anticipate this impact and resolve possible conflict.
This is one book that should be within easy reach of every BI professional, team-lead, business analyst, supervisor, manager, and CIO interested in building a value oriented organization.
The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence 2007-07-30
Steve and Nancy Williams have provided a clear and concise understanding of Business Intelligence (BI) and its ongoing business value. Their book reflects deep experience, first hand observations and a practitioners approach to achieving business results and large returns to BI technology investments.
The book follows a practical approach and is organized in building blocks to enable an increased maturing view of this key competitive advantage.
Part 1 "Identifying and Leveraging BI-Driven Profit Opportunities" consists of chapters 1-3, provides introductory terms, the business case for BI, and key barriers, risks designed for a broad audience.
Part 2 "Creating the BI Asset" consists of chapters 4-6, introduces their BI Pathway Method that aligns strategy, drivers, and objectives with detailed information requirements and IT architecture. It outlines a BI maturity model addressing culture change considerations, and bridges the gap between IT and business vocabulary, often two different worlds. Finally, a prototypical technical infrastructure provides context, definition and positioning to IT assets, tools, applications and information for the business decision maker.
Part 3 "Leveraging BI for Profit Improvement" consists of chapter 7-9, describes more deeply how companies have used BI in different ways to drive profits; discusses common mistakes or pitfalls to avoid, and looks at the future of BI.
As a functionally oriented executive and business adviser, I appreciated each chapter provides key points to remember, questions to ask about your BI needs, and quizzes to test learning and comprehension.
This book is a welcome addition to the executive's library who understands the value of leveraging information for competitive advantage and value creation.
Selling BI to the Business 2007-05-21
It's about time we saw a book devoted to how business intelligence will drive organizational profit. It's clear that the authors have been in the trenches and have faced having to support the sometimes very expensive BI initiatives with real business value. Most BI projects now require cost justification and this book should provide the readers with the basics (and more) to develop a cost benefit analysis.
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