Beyond Integration: Ingraining Insights Into the DNA of People and Processes

Research by global IT market intelligence specialists IDC shows that the adoption of data-driven decision making has begun to affect competitiveness. Organizations are differentiating themselves through productivity and profitability. And they are no longer relying on experience or ‘gut feel’ when making critical decisions.

The benefits are plain to see. A third of the organizations surveyed achieve ROI on business analytics projects within six months and 70% achieve ROI within 12 months. Tellingly, 80% of the most competitive organizations employ data-driven decision making, compared to 58% of the least competitive organizations.

The fact is, doing nothing is no longer an option. The most competitive companies are twice as likely as the least competitive organizations to say that they have recently started using new analysis techniques on new types of data.

Naturally, good decisions are based on the best available information. To achieve this, IT needs to recognize that there is a wide range of decision makers and decision processes. From executives to analysts to front-line employees and consumers – each group has different data requirements. But there’s a common thread: each group demands on-time access to all the relevant data.

This means organizations need a coherent information environment, providing data that is consistent and agrees internally, is of high quality and trusted. The mandate is to bring data and business processes together to build this environment.

Data technologies are helping create this environment by becoming more integrated. Big Data is integrating into data warehouses and high-performance databases. High-performance databases are blending operational and analytical data, and moving to a memory-based model.

These new database technologies are also much more flexible, supporting dynamic schema changes so that data systems can adapt quickly to changing business needs. This will forge a bond between business users and IT. The result: data management technologies that actually drive, rather than curtail, business innovation. In other words:

• Out with the old customer/supplier model of business users versus IT, which put users and IT on opposing sides with opposing interests

• In with the new partnership model, where IT personnel are more closely associated with specific business functions and can better support those functions

You can find out more in Blueprint for Success: Ingraining Insights into the DNA of People and Process, our exclusive IDC interactive infographic. It makes clear why businesses, as well as IT, can and must transform in order to be able to run a real-time enterprise that simultaneously transacts, analyzes, and acts.

SAP’s vision for a real-time data platform offers a fundamentally new approach to data processing. By unifying all data assets into a single environment, it greatly simplifies the IT landscape and helps unleash the power of data. Learn more at www.sap.com/realtime_data.

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