According to Aberdeen’s recent survey of 231 end users, collaborative tools and techniques that share decision context in and outside the organization lead to improved business performance in top companies. Trends impacting the need for collaborative BI include desire from lines of business for fact-based decision support and the mobile movement toward greater geographic distribution of workers. Business managers are seeking to rely not only on experience but also supporting information.
“Timely data is valuable, but without the proper context to interpret that data, the analysis and therefore the quality of insight suffers,” says Michael Lock, report author and senior research analyst, business intelligence, Aberdeen Research.
Collaboration hopes to fill the context gap, says Lock. “By tapping into the minds of veteran decision-makers, companies can apply the right perspective to business information and generate more powerful analyses.”
Knowledge transfer is made smoother through these tools, Lock explains. “Perhaps not surprisingly, some companies are seeing success in leveraging social media and other collaborative techniques to complete the transfer of analytical horsepower from the veteran business minds to the younger generation of decision-makers.”
“Collaborative BI: Harnessing the Extended Enterprise to Boost Productivity” is currently available free from Aberdeen.
Read a recent Information Management in-depth look at collaborative BI here.
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @va1va1entine or via email at valerie.valentine@sourcemedia.com.
