Failing to Plan is like Planning to Fail, but it’s difficult to plan something so nebulous as Business Intelligence. That’s why we created the “Performance Plan”.
How many times have you been in need of information but when you reached for the latest BI report you found it only met a few of your information requirements? Or since you didn’t actually trust the report handed to you, you decided to trust your “gut instinct” instead – and then perhaps later knocked up some numbers in Excel to back up your version of reality? This is an on-going issue for some of the world’s top organisations, and causes heartburn at every level in the organisation. It is especially an issue at the C- level where business leaders cannot get a clear picture of reality which is backed up by trusted information.
Over the years, companies have generally managed to survive like this. However since the global economic crisis hit, organisations are finding that they actually need information they can trust to make critical decisions in order to stay in business. People are starting to see that “gut instinct” decisions, even in the best of times, can be wrong.
More recently the world has been shaken by Christchurch and Japan’s severe earthquakes that changed not only business forecasts, but lives, in just a matter of minutes. There are big decisions related to these external, unpredictable events that need to be made on an on-going basis in order to move forward, and having the right information, at the right time, in the right format can be the fundamental difference for those that survive.
These types of external events are outside of our control, no-one can plan or predict them so we have to look inwards and decide what we can do. The events often highlight for us what exactly it is that we do need to plan for, and how we would like to be more proactive with our information readiness in response.
Like the old saying goes “Failing to plan is like planning to fail”… but whose responsibility is it to plan and create the right information delivery in your organisation? The business will point to IT and IT will point to the business. To turn this finger pointing into productive engagement at CDP we have created the Performance Plan that aligns both sides and prioritises your information requirements in a proven, methodical approach. This ensures not only alignment, but on-going business value, and organisational readiness in the information management journey. The Performance Plan provides two things: a Plan and a Platform to provide proven results that impact your business performance.
So, take a step forward, plan your information requirements. Stop finger pointing, and align your organisation. Stop making a decision by not making a decision at all. Instead, start making decisions based on facts that you can trust. Create a Performance Plan that defines how you will turn your data into the strategic asset it needs to be in order to make a fundamental, on-going difference. The fact is, when you plan to take better care of your data and information, you actually do, and your organisation will thank you for it.