Background

Business intelligence (BI) capabilities that provide better analysis of and insight into operations will be needed for organizations to achieve high performance amid their biggest future impediment: an uncertain economic and political environment.

A recent study that found that nine in 10 senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies place strong analytical and business intelligence capabilities at the top of their list in preparing them for their biggest challenge ahead. Those companies best prepared to thrive in this climate will be those that take advantage of their capabilities to collect and analyze internal and external data.

EIS can help high performing companies to focus on how to extract and analyze data that can generate insight and value for the organization. This includes support of business processing and decision-making at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Today, this data is acknowledged as a corporate asset, with C-level executives now viewing it from a business rather than technology perspective. Through the use of data warehouses as the fundamental enabler, and the business analytics that leverage it, business intelligence offers a strategic, competitive advantage that examines trends and histories in order to predict the future as well as models scenarios and creates benchmarks to make the future.

Specifically, EIS's business intelligence team helps organizations improve performance by:

• Providing insights that can help pinpoint new revenue-generating opportunities
• Improving operational efficiencies and visibility across the organization
• Optimizing the return on such existing business and IT investments as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning.