Measuring IT Value With Business Intelligence and Analytics

Jerry Maguire may have screamed “show me the money,” but as Bob Bracco (Upland’s Director of Customer Success for the ComSci Line of Business) states, IT leaders are shouting, “show me the data!”

During Bob’s presentation of “Measuring IT Value with Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics” at Upland’s Impact 2015 session, he explained how he has spent years working with customers in executing BI / analytics. During his presentation, he reviewed a bevy of topics revolving around BI and how customers (and prospects) could garner best practices and leverage their own data to assist in making better business decisions within their organizations.

While speaking to the attendees, Bob likened the IT Financial Management industry to being as interesting as “dry toast” and the fact that even after 12 years, his wife has no clue what he does all day despite the fact that he has explained it to her several times over the years.  What was so compelling about Bob’s comments was the fact that the entire room shook their heads in agreement.  Obviously, the room full of IT and Financial Professionals shared his sentiment.

Bob quickly dove into why organizations are hungry for BI and stated what was abundantly obvious to all attendees – organizations require BI in order to execute their jobs. Historically, BI was hard to obtain, required too much “human intervention,” and by the time the information was compiled and presented to management, was often stale or diluted. In his words, “IT leaders need the ability to see and predict BI in order to take action.” Today’s IT leaders must keep the massive quantities of data under control and should be able to “apply the brakes” or oversight if spending trends are heading in the wrong direction.

Bob also shared the “before” and “after” view of measuring IT value. The “before” view historically included interacting with systems that “did not talk” to each other, and very manual processes for collecting and matching information (the human factor) compiling those results, then presenting to Senior Management.  He stressed how by the time the information was presented, the results were stale, diluted and many times, wrought with errors which would delay and or impede business decisions and impair judgment on those decisions. Today, the “after” view of measuring IT value offers near-real time or real time information being made available in an “on demand capacity” allowing business leaders to make key decisions almost as quickly as the information is made available.

In summary, Bob conveyed to the attendees that with the assistance of ComSci, we take that ugly mess of IT goo and turn it into meaningful and measureable Business Intelligence allowing leaders to take action. We not only help you identify trends, but also we help set triggers to show you how you’re doing – in real time. With us, you’ll hold the keys to truly measuring your IT value.