Grasping for facts: tapping into hidden sources of business intelligence.(Selected Topic)

DO you ever forget your login IDs, passwords, PINs and personal codes, only to be unable to access them because you've also forgotten the secret word you have to enter in order to recover them? Have you experienced confusion when the voice of your GPS software is telling you that "you are approaching your destination," you're on the cell phone asking for directions to your next appointment, your pager is going off and your cell phone alarm chimes in, all at the same time? Well, when you start to feel like technology is making you crazy, just think of the opportunities it provides to improve your business performance.

Technologies were originally introduced to business as tools to make work easier and more efficient. Most of us would agree that the technologies adopted by the credit industry have generally proven to deliver a definable return on investment. This remains true, even though the technology gurus could not deliver everything the industry had hoped they would.

Software applications today have displaced business dinosaurs such as paper files, mailing, and manual processes, with data warehousing, the Internet and electronic data interchange. Industry specific software programs have been implemented by most successful credit and collection organizations to manage processes from account origination, to customer servicing, to credit scoring to debt recovery. These programs have helped managers to achieve competitive cost levels, improve per-employee margins and monitor expenses--if only from a financial perspective.

There is no doubt about the result. Technology has helped to improve the per-transaction cost of servicing accounts. In addition, the rise of business-to-business, web-enabled, feature-rich applications has alleviated the pare of the enterprise software integration miseries of the past, making the adoption of automated systems more appealing to corporate executives and managers. These impressive solutions are scaleable, self-maintaining and cost conscious. Yet, all this good news isn't enough. Especially in the highly competitive business environment of service industries, both academics and business leaders now say its time for the next phase in technology driven, innovative management. The next phase goes beyond financial measurement alone, envisioning a more holistic strategic measurement approach, one that's poised to catapult early adopters ahead of their competition.

The Next Phase

For change-weary credit managers, this pronouncement sends a cold shiver through their organizations. Yet because of the technologies they have implemented over the last decade, most credit and collection managers, perhaps unknowingly, are positioned to meet this next challenge. Why? Because management experts, academics and business consultants have also hounded us to "harvest data," teaching us "you can't manage what you don't measure" And harvest data the industry did! Today's questions are "just where is this data" and "how do we find it?" How can we pre-empt the competition in deriving the benefits from this data, this hidden business intelligence that we can use to enhance our opportunity to meet or exceed high-level business objectives? And what advantages can we achieve over less tech-savvy competitors?

Locating Untapped Sources of Business Intelligence