A White Paper

Business Intelligence: The Strategic Imperative for CIOs

CIOs Contribute Directly to the Bottom LineInformation Access for Any IndustryEffective Use of Technology: The Core of BI

Delivering Information Quickly

Lowering the Total Cost of Your InvestmentCustomer Successes: Growing the Business With BI

Amerisure Boosts Productivity While Leveraging LegacyInfrastructureHarleysville Group Ensures Success

Proving the Model

Table of Contents

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The job of the CIO has changed dramatically in recent years. Seventy-six percent of CIOs say theirroles are becoming more strategic as organizations look to use information to create a competitiveadvantage.

By providing information access that will help employees exceed performanceexpectations, increase customer satisfaction, and fuel expansion, CIOs are being called on tocontribute directly to growth.How can CIOs improve decision-making and optimize performance? Despite vast amounts of crucial business data residing in disparate systems, according to a recent survey of IT executives 64percent of CIOs don’t think management has the right information to run their business. A CIO’sability to utilize technology to distribute that information in the format users want has fuelled theshift in their responsibility.Business intelligence (BI) allows organizations to integrate applications and databases essential tousers and enables analysis of information to optimize decision-making. The hitch is in finding theright combination of information accessibility and processing power to effectively support BI acrossthe extended enterprise. This paper will help CIOs answer the following questions:

How simple is it to answer event-driven or ad hoc questions based on current systems and data?

What proportion of time is spent on collection and input of data as opposed to analysis?

Is the IT department consumed with running queries, reports, and obtaining information fromdisparate databases?

How easily and quickly can information be disseminated to the people who need it, in theformat they want?

Is it easy to identify trends in the organization’s performance?

Does senior management have a single view of information?

Can information be distributed to customers, employees, and partners in a consistent fashion?

Information Builders

CIOs Contribute Directly to the Bottom Line

Strategic Leadership Survey,

Harvey Nash Co., 2007.