BI - Smart Utilities' Light Bulb

MSPowerUtilities — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:27:00 GMT

The software industry is continually challenged by the need to convert data into useable information and several years ago that challenge took shape in the form of dashboards – graphical representations of key information that was being generated by various software programs.

In essence, the dashboards were bottom line indicators of performance on the key metrics that top executives considered valuable and important to their overall management of the company.Heretofore those dashboards were mostly targeted at top executives who needed summaries and forewarnings of potential underlying business problems.

The people actually running the various components of the business weren’t always included in the dashboarding effort, leaving them on their own for creating information relevant to their operational component.

Dashboarding has also typically been a monthly exercise to pull together key metrics, so the potential for near realtime information to manage the business has not existed.Today’s software solutions offer broader opportunities for the utilization of dashboards throughout companies, to have the effect of increasing overall business IQ.

For utility companies, this broader utilization comes with some difficulty because of the way that information is spread throughout the organization. But there is growing realization that spreading the use of dashboards, from the accounting and senior management offices to everyone – civil and electrical engineers, technicians, planners, operations, customer service representatives, safety officers and others – empowers excellence and improved performance throughout the organization.

It’s my hope you’ll enjoy learning more about the democratization of Business Intelligence efforts throughout the enterprise. The white paper includes case study examples of Italy’s Edipower and Hong Kong’s CPL Group, along with a number of views from analysts at Gartner and IDC Energy Insight and consultants at Accenture. – Larry Cochrane

Microsoft Power and Utilities Blog : Edipower

BI - Smart Utilities' Light Bulb