Put some business intelligence in your inbox

E-mail has already changed business forever, and now business intelligence continues to accelerate that change.

Microsoft's recent partnerships with SAP, Lotus and others are cementing Office applications as a platform for more advanced business software, the new push by Microsoft with PerformancePoint and Business Edge by SAP Business Objects. What may prove a more serious threat to Microsoft's BI moves is not the product plans of other BI vendors but the question of whether up-and-coming online office software, particularly Google Apps, will provide a competing vehicle for BI information.

Instead of trying to predict the next BI takeover, it would make more sense to explore what kind of partnerships SAP Business Objects and others will form with productivity application vendors to make their tools as popular as Microsoft e-mail and spreadsheets. If BI is going to be accessed more directly by business users, it's going to have to start looking more like the tools those users already know.

Fox Business recently announced that AutoRevenue Selects Business Intelligence Leader to Move Reports Online

"Selecting Business Objects, the world's leading business intelligence software, as our reporting platform enables us to provide on-demand reports from our website with a dealer portal," said @utoRevenue General Manager, John Max Miller. "Now our dealership clients will have self-service access to their marketing reports so that they can quickly see the success of their multi-channel sales and service campaigns and other key performance indicators."

Multiple report formats, such as HTML, PDF, Excel and Word files, will be available to @utoRevenue customers online. Dealers will receive e-mail notifications when reports are ready for viewing.

"This process of integrating Business Objects into our web environment will have two phases. First, dealerships will have access on our website to view all their current reports. A second phase will give the end-user the ability to trend data and to drill down into a report and locate specific information they want to know," said Miller. Dealership management will also be able to access real-time dashboards, giving them more control and a top-down view of areas they want to focus on.

The initial release will available to dealers by the end of first quarter 2008.


Microsoft Bill Gates presenting to 100 CEOs in the Beyond Business Intelligence: Delivering a Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Information Management said

In the decade since that first CEO Summit, technology has transformed the world of business in profound ways. Back then, e-mail was just emerging as a preferred medium for business communication. E-commerce was in its infancy. Most companies still relied on faxes and phone calls to conduct business.

Today, we communicate and collaborate instantly with colleagues, customers and partners around the world. Global supply chains speed the flow of products from factory floor to store shelf. Cell phones are ubiquitous. Mobile access to e-mail is rapidly becoming the norm.

The impact on the workforce is remarkable. Productivity is higher than it's ever been. Buyers can shop the entire world without leaving their desk. Sellers have access to markets that were once beyond reach. The amount of information collected about customers, competitors and markets is unprecedented.

But there are times when it feels like all of these changes have overwhelmed the tools we use to do our day-to-day jobs. I wanted to share my thoughts on this important issue with you and other business decision makers and IT professionals.

The problem, really, is twofold. The first is information overload. Faced with the endless deluge of data that is generated every second of every day, how can we hope to keep up? And in the struggle to keep up, how can we stay focused on the tasks that are most important and deliver the greatest value?

The other problem is something I call information underload. We're flooded with information, but that doesn't mean we have tools that let us use the information effectively.



Business Intelligence: Developing a Query-Driven E-mail Delivery System is another post on MSDN Channel9.