The key to working smarter involves developing a deep understanding of customers to enable cross-selling and customer retention.

In fact, these days, the true differentiator for any company trying to separate itself from the pack is its ability to construct a single view of each customer. Using puzzle pieces obtained at each point of customer contact, the intelligent enterprise can predict how customers will respond to offers and determine how to focus organizational resources to deliver greater customer value.

Paul Castle, managing director, SAS Institute Inc, said, "Today, employees need to understand the drivers of success in all facets of the organization, anticipate the impact of changes in key variables and measure progress toward both divisional and enterprise objectives. This will enable them to consistently deliver value to customers."

In fact, a broad range of applications for BI is enabling organizations to garner a high return on investment figures. BI is used to identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover new business opportunities, roll ERP (enterprise resource planning) data into accessible reports as well as react quickly to retail demand and optimize prices.

Castle added, "With traditional applications, companies can improve the efficiency of operations, for example, processing transactions more efficiently with less manual intervention or improving communications between departments within the company. But these operational systems such as enterprise resource planning systems, sales force automation systems, customer interaction systems and procurement systems are not capable of creating the knowledge that a firm needs to differentiate itself and to sustain competitive advantage."

For this reason, BI is increasingly recognized as key for business growth. According to research company IDC, the BI market is projected to grow to US$7.5 billion in 2006.

But, the situation is far from being cut and dried.

Kriss Channe, marketing director at Business Objects said, "Few organizations have a comprehensive BI strategy or clearly defined BI standards, and so face a growing patchwork of disparate BI technologies."

A big challenge that companies encounter, said Castle, is the proliferation of disconnected information silos. Currently, individual departments have been run like separate businesses, each free to pursue its own IT infrastructure.

In fact, Moaiyad Hoosenally, industry manager, Technology Practice at analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan said, "Our research indicates that while multi-channels have been rolled out, few organizations have managed to develop a consistent customer experience across the channels or dramatically reduce the cycle time from inquiry to fulfillment. This is partly because workflow systems have been inadequately implemented."

This has resulted in the use of disparate hardware, platforms, systems and databases throughout the enterprise. In addition, it becomes extremely difficult to establish and measure progress toward company-wide objectives.

"Companies are using BI to justify or disprove the wisdom of what would otherwise be gut business decisions."

"Without BI tools, very often, the evaluations of opportunities for growth are based on gut feelings, 'guess-timations' and assumptions because it would be too expensive and time consuming to get hard data. BI can let organizations run some quick and credible numbers to justify that gut," said George Lee, managing director, ASEAN & India, Hyperion Solutions.

Another factor

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