That loud screeching sound you heard this year was the result of many manufacturers slamming the brakes on a variety of IT and automation projects in their companies. As the recession exacted its price on business activity, many tech projects and plans were slowed, trimmed, or outright canceled. But one tech area that has shown some resiliency is business intelligence, also known more broadly as performance management.
The reason that BI/PM kept its nerdy head above water this year is that top management clearly understands that the vast amounts of data generated by the huge investments companies have made in myriad information systems over many years won’t pay off in better and faster decision making unless they can make sense of the data. Automation begets a need for more automation.
This year’s Great Recession certainly put pressure on BI/PM initiatives in many manufacturing companies as management teams grappled with slower and unpredictable demand, cash flow, supply chain as well as inventory management issues, and the resulting need to lower costs. But the underlying requirement for actionable, fact-based information continues, albeit with more specific outcomes demanded.
“Nothing is recession-proof, but understanding cost control and productivity have gotten more emphasis over the past year,” says Paul Hoy, worldwide industrial sector executive, business intelligence and performance management, at IBM Software Group. “Something doesn’t even get considered if it doesn’t have ROI in the same year, so what we’ve seen is less emphasis on transformational projects and more on project-based, operational things.”