Is your company losing money because your business resources are spending too much of their time finding and gathering data rather than analyzing the data and making decisions? In the future, we’ll use Corporate Performance Management (CPM) to measure the performance of the enterprise. But until CPM is pervasive, business users will depend on data shadow systems - groups of spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) and local databases (Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL Server) that gather and transform data into relevant business information. Most people already understand the risks of having multiple spreadsheets, but the real problem is the lack of data integration and consistency that increases business risks and costs.
How do you make a smooth transition from the use of data shadow systems today to CPM in the future? Despite what the IT group may want to do, taking data shadow systems out behind the woodshed and shooting them is not an option. It’s imperative to leverage these data shadow systems for effective performance management now, and not lose the valuable business information they contain. We will examine the root cause and potential solutions to address these systems.
Attendees will learn:
- How to engage the business to determine what data and functions their data shadow system provide
- How to re-architect the data shadow system to increase business satisfaction and improve system integrity, transparency & maintainability
- What are the limitations of current ETL implementations that dive business user to create data shadow systems
- What vendor offerings enable the transition to performance management systems