Business intelligence in SharePoint - Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 - page 4

A strategy is a set of policies, procedures, and approaches to business that is intended to produce
long-term success. The strategy reflects the mission of the company.

The mission is also used to develop measurable objectives. When established, objectives help
determine KPIs, which are quantifiable measurements that reflect critical success factors.

KPIs make it possible to monitor the metrics that are aligned with principal objectives. Then,
managers or employees can analyze issues that surface from data that indicate conditions in need
of more attention (these were once called “exception reports”). Action can then be taken to “correct
the course” so that the company reaches its destination. As you will see in this topic, in addition to
KPIs, visualizations that include interactive charts and graphs, maps, bubble charts and more prove to
become very powerful because they change behavior and lead to more data drive-decisions.

For illustration purposes, the following example shows how an organization— Adventure Works Bike
Company—designs a KPI, turning data into actionable information:

Mission: To design, build, and market bikes to meet the needs of the mountain bike
community

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Strategy: To improve customers' satisfaction ■

Objective: To increase repeat customer store sales by 20 percent ■

KPI: The number of quarterly repeat customer sales ■

To achieve the objectives, the decision-makers in the Adventure Works Bike Company ask the fol-
lowing questions about the business:

What has happened? (monitoring)

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What is happening? (monitoring)

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Why is it happening? (analyze)

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What will happen? (forecast based on analyzing)

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What do we want to have happen? (new hunches spurring new actions based on what you know)

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Part of the problem when trying to arrive at the answers to these questions is that much of the
data needed is in a raw format stored in Line-of-Business (LoB) systems and other disparate, discon-
nected business areas. Chapter 3, “The lifecycle of a business intelligence implementation,” explains
how companies accomplish providing access to this data in a usable form.

Beware of losing sight of what matters most

Companies that develop a vision or mission statement (define who they are and what success is),
make goals, and monitor those goals can then re-evaluate and flourish. This approach is used by
corporations, teams, departments, and not least, individuals (us). Unfortunately, what happens often
is that organizations lose focus of the vision and are deterred or distracted.