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E-Business Intelligence

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E-Business Intelligence

Turning Information into Knowledge into Profit

McGraw-Hill,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Dictatorships hoard information that employees need. Information anarchy results in chaos. But information democracy keeps everyone informed and participatory — and, you’ll be relieved to hear, election campaigns are not required.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Despite the stereotype of the great company run by a mercurial, charismatic dictator in the Steve Jobs mode, a number of cutting edge business thinkers argue that if you want your company to grow, you should introduce democracy into the management mix. One of those thinkers is author Bernard Liautaud, who, unlike most folks who theorize about business, actually owns a company, and a fairly significant one at that. His European software company, Business Objects, has annual revenues of more than $240 million. In his book, he explains why democracy is good for business. Companies that adopt his ideas, he says, will realize numerous advantages, including better communication between the company and the customer, more intelligent data about who buys products and why, and the discovery that you can sell data back to your customer. getabstract welcomes this fascinating report from the horse’s mouth about the growth and evolution of the democratic, intelligent, e-organization.

Summary

An Information Dilemma

Reaching for a way to symbolize the information dilemma facing today’s companies, BT Research Chief Technologist Peter Cochrane posits, "Imagine a school with children who can read and write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor for the Information Age in which we live." This is not a happy prospect, but it is not an inevitable one, either. The solution is a democratic, open approach to business information and intelligence.

Companies in the new era need to rethink their basic philosophy of organizational intelligence. A company has to become more intelligent to be more effective. The intelligent enterprise makes decisions faster and can outmaneuver its competitors. To thrive, each aspect of your company needs better intelligence. Customer relations needs intelligence to better serve and retain customers. Sales needs information intelligence to determine which products are selling to which customers and why. Marketing needs intelligence to determine why certain products are being bought so it can use that precedent to shape future marketing strategies.

Companies that lag in this new world of e-business intelligence will...

About the Authors

Bernard Liautaud is president, co-founder and CEO of Business Objects, a provider of e-business intelligence solutions. Liautaud was named one of the "Hottest Entrepreneurs of the Year" by BusinessWeek in 1996. In fewer than 10 years, he built Business Objects into a global corporation with more than 10,000 customers and more than $240 million in annual revenue. Business Objects was the first European software company to go public on NASDAQ. It is also included in Intelligent Enterprise ’s January 2000 list of "12 Most Influential Companies in the Information Technology Industry." Mark Hammond is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. A lifelong journalist, Hammond covered the business intelligence, data warehousing and database industries for PC Week magazine after a dozen years as an award-winning reporter for daily newspapers in New York.

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