What type of organisation are you?

When we look at the integrated Business Intelligence offering from the Microsoft stack, it’s important to understand how each component can be used to address the needs of individual organisations. For example, each component of the BI stack can be used to address many different challenges faced by organisations.

Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager sits squarely at the top of the stack and along with SQL Server Reporting Services is the most end user focussed product in the entire solution.

Typically, there are two types of situations an organisation can find themselves in with regards to their data and information systems strategy. Some organisations still languish in data poverty whereby many disconnected line of business applications such as finance, sales and human resources reside and operate independently of each other.

Whilst components of the Microsoft solution stack can help address data analysis needs, drive access to information and provide reporting capabilities, lack of integration can still be a barrier to true BI.

On the flipside of this, many organisations with an integrated systems strategy can be seen to suffer from data overload where conflicting conclusions can be drawn leading to confusion about the relevance of information.

The ability to provide one version of the (ever changing) truth can be achieved through the use of a scorecard to help organisations understand key performance indicator metrics against targets from a variety of different data sources.

When we begin to look at what an organisation needs from a scorecard, for example, the ability to summarise information through contextual analysis and/or receive alert notifications of important changes in performance metrics and trends then the real value of Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager can be more easily understood.