In ERP the entire focus is on automation or efficiency improvement. BI is more about improving performance. The top management has to question the current reality. For example, if revenues/sales person are Rs. 1 Cr., Can I make it 1.25 Cr. And if I want to do it what should I do?
You talk about incentives, training etc. We suggest you give him intelligence and the impact on his her performance could be highest. BI is the case for empowering people to perform better and without the empowerment, training and incentives will produce only partial results.
But there is skepticism about BI. This will go away in near future like it happened with ERP. Today, it is rare to see people who argue about the need for having ERP software. For any new plant that is being put up the boiler, generator and ERP investments are put at par. Unfortunately, in case of BI there is no physical system like ERP. BI starts with a proposition
like – can I bring in a 25% reduction in your inventory. It’s a conceptual thing and often it is relatively difficult to visualize the end outcome. Also, end outcome is dependent upon action taken based on BI. Therefore it is difficult to assign the ‘credit’ to BI.
