Business Intelligence Lowdown

Data management in mergers and acquisitions

Whenever a M & A happens, there is a coming together of resources in terms of manpower, technology, and other physical assets. However, the integration of data during a M & A is often overlooked. The data represents useful information about a company's customers, their opinions, data on the products and services of the acquired company, etc. The data is very useful in mapping the path for the new merged entity in terms of the external direction to be taken and internal business processes for marketing, sales and the IT departments. A new organizational structure can be created depending on the requirements. If the data is not made use of, the merger may actually slow down the growth process, lower employee morale, and cause losses. Even if the merged businesses have common business ideologies, they may operate in different manners and treat data differently. Businessintelligence reports:

Without a solid data quality solution, managing the data between the parent company and the subsidiary would prove dangerous. The organization would have a difficult time identifying mutual customers and that confusion would threaten the very relationships they had worked so hard to develop.

Read More: More Than What You Paid For: How to Avoid Cannibalizing Your Long Term M&A Plan

Business data and the market value of a business

Data has become so valuable for corporates that they store it in warehouses especially constructed for them. Applications such as CRM, ERP, Inventory management systems, etc are implemented to utilize the data and add to it. The data that they create and refer to reveals important purchasing and buying patterns, dispatching options, and consumer buying trends. However, inaccurate and incomplete data is not uncommon in most data warehouses. It has a negative effect on the decision making process. Frequently, the scope of the problem is such that companies have to introduce an enterprise-wide quality solutions program. This enables the executives to access uniform data from a centralized source and be confident about the decisions taken on the basis of that data. It is important for this purpose that the company has measurable business goals and an alignment between business and IT objectives. Businessintelligence reports:

Well seasoned data quality experts, particularly ones experienced in turning business requirements into lasting data quality standards, are generally far more effective than part-time programmers whose job is to “fix” glitches, or contractors that don’t know your business.

Read More: Business Data – The New Gold Standard

Data integration is critical for the successful implementation of enterprise level applications

"Master data management" is the art of managing information exchange, such as customer and product information, between different computer systems. It is very difficult for large companies to maintain multiple sets of master data. Moreover, enterprises have more than one ERP or CRM system, which is different from the other. It is difficult to manage data across these systems, track their path, and maintain accuracy across the master databases. Inconsistency in corporate data can lead to duplication of efforts and difficulty in analyzing business performance. Having a centralized master database facilitates developing marketing strategies more rapidly or pushing for more sales via the web. Product numbers, names, brands, formulations, etc all constitute information that can be very difficult to utilize if it is not easily accessible. Very often, companies have a range of products that are almost similar and can be grouped as one but lack of insight into product specifications prevents companies from integrating their product database. Having data that responds to an optimum number of definitions can be a great time saving device. Businessintelligence reports:

Application software vendors, always quick to spot a revenue opportunity, have recently sniffed that there may be money in this area, so a range of “master data,” “data hub,” and other products have been running off the presses of their slick marketing departments.

Read More: Are you master of your data, or its slave?

Security and data integration attract venture capitalists

IT company executives and venture capitalists are of the opinion that enterprise data mining, health care, and regulatory compliance are some of the areas that will attract investment in the near future. Companies looked to object programming technology in the nineties in order enable interoperability between their various applications. However, the technology did not work as desired since the objects that were created for one application were not easily transferable to another program. SOA or service-oriented application is expected to provide a thorough solution to the data integration problems of companies that currently have applications running on heterogeneous systems. It would be of immense help for companies if they can implement a sustainable data management system that will help them access the data, which is currently not of much use, being locked in various databases. The process may be an intensive labor oriented one and can accommodate several start-ups. Trigo is one such start-up that was created in 2000, it was acquired by IBM in 2004. Eweek reports:

Data integration and protecting the integrity of data will become increasingly important as new regulatory compliance legislation goes into effect, noted William Conroy, CEO of Initiate Systems, a data integration software maker based in Chicago.

Read More: Security, Data Integration Top Venture Capital Interests

PrepKit from ucertify receives a good response.

An upgraded version of its MCSE 2003 PrepKit has been released by ucertify. Detailed study material and mock tests that mimic the real tests in terms of content and difficulty are reasons for a favorable reaction to this PrepKit. Each test is followed by an in-depth performance analysis; notes are provided for the correct as well as incorrect answers. The students can also insert their own comments that are useful in gauging their progress. The PrepKit can be customized to match the requirements and progress of the students while learning as well as while taking the tests. Students using the PrepKit will get familiarized with Hot Area Questions, Drag and Drop Questions, Create a Tree Questions, etc. Technical articles written by industry experts expose the students to the technical expressions, definitions, and clarify their doubts regarding the various concepts. Students can also take pop quizzes and can even set the time they wish to complete the quizzes in. ucertify.com Reports

Exam 70-294 is a core exam for MCSE 2003 certification. It tests a professional's aptitude to plan, execute, and maintain a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory infrastructure.

Read More: uCertify upgrades Exam Simulation PrepKit for MCSE 2003 exam (70-294)

Newspaper Incorporates Business Intel. to Boost Efficiency and Information Access

The Tribune-Review, based in Pittsburgh, is taking business intelligence to a new level by incorporating it ever deeper into their organizational model.  The paper used to conduct departmental reporting by submitting it to the IT staff person as many papers do.  This manner was not only inefficient, but it also produced static reports that could not be manipulated by the manager without the need to resubmit the report entirely.  That has since changed, however, through the incorporation of Business Objects software.  The company sent a few employees to undergo training who then returned to link the Business Objects software to the papers databases.  The paper also incorporated real-time reporting to allow business managers to pull up data that was freshly updated rather than having to wait the customary months before information such as zip codes and clusters were updated.  Newspapers & Technology Report:

"To allow (management) to interact with the data, sort it, group it, drill down into it and do analysis on it without having to re-involve IT, is going to help them be more productive," he said.  "Having more information at their fingertips is, in the end, going to let them make better decisions."

Read More: Business Intelligence: Better brainpower can mean better decisions