How to Use Pervasive Business Intelligence to Transform Your Business

7. Near real-time dashboard reporting on fresh data

There are always dozens or hundreds of operations managers trying to stay on top of demands. Unfortunately for them, working with reports built on data from the previous night is like watching a rearview mirror—it's not where the action is most of the time. With an ADW, the operations managers can have up-to-the-minute reports and analysis of operations.

For example, regional retail store managers can "see" whether promotions are unusually successful, requiring quick actions to avoid out-of-stocks. Or perhaps a high-volume commodity is not selling at the forecast velocity in two of ten stores, significantly affecting profit margins. Another example: unsold seat tickets for tonight's show could be given away to induce loyalty at gaming establishments.

8. Business activity monitoring and alerting

Dozens of business processes need daily alerts to advise when something really good or bad has happened. Perhaps interbank settlements are somehow congested today and penalties will accrue. Or maybe a manufacturing line is drifting out of tolerance, causing potential defects or quality control issues downstream. Whatever the alert, it's not enough to know the "fire alarm" rang. An ADW provides the analytic answers to guide both the front-line employee and the back office in responding to alerts.

Often it works both ways: the front-line employee may detect a problem and the back office may quickly investigate to do triage. Or the back office may be notified that there is a problem and then work with the appropriate front-line groups to fix the issues. In either case, ADW technology provides the pervasive BI to align recovery and improvement actions.

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