You Get What You Measure!

Some of our readers may be old enough to remember the turn of the 2000s when reporting, analytics, and data storage tools were expensive. This gave the big companies a significant competitive edge because, in practice, only they could afford to buy and use the valuable tools, while smaller competitors were left to lick their wounds.

Reporting and analytics operations were usually concentrated in a separate unit, which operated under the IT organization. This meant that the business was not managed by acting on the reports. The management’s role was mainly to order the report and hope that the result was fit for purpose. It could take weeks from the order to the delivery; agile brainstorming, innovative iteration characteristics of the service design and quick reactions to a changing situation were unheard of when it came to reporting.

Jump to the present day, and you can see how big the change in data utilization has been. The ways to develop analytics have changed, and instead of just obtaining the tools, the competitive edge now comes from the strategic use of knowledge management. The emphasis on strategic importance has led to a situation in which reporting and analytics are in the core of every business. The management obviously wants to use the best tools for experimentation, development, thinking and conceptualization. Fortunately, business user interfaces have evolved so that they are now easier to use, more intuitive and require less technical skills.

The change takes place at different paces in various sectors, but the direction of change is the same—analytics is becoming the management’s concern. All critical processes in business, from strategy to tactical operations, can be measured. And as the saying goes: You get what you measure!

As technology director in BDS Bynfo, I have enjoyed seeing how companies have learned to appreciate a knowledgeable analytics partner over the years. Our job now involves a wide range of duties, from training executives to supporting end users and specifying the content in a single cell in a report. We work at strategic, tactical and operational levels. Our jobs include PoC reports, architectures, cloud transformations, launches, updates and preventative maintenance of solutions in production.

We still feel that BDS Bynfo’s decision to focus on knowledge management was the right one for us. The area is limited enough so that we can focus on mastering it profoundly in terms of operational concepts and relevant technological platforms. It is also a rich and constantly evolving area, and it offers an enthusiastic and curious specialist a diverse field of expertise.

The quickly developing analytics business also needs open-minded explorers who have the courage to take the business forward and come up with new ways to develop processes and applications of knowledge management. I see BDS fBynfo employees as passionate, reliable and knowledgeable explorers, who guide and help our customers through the data jungle mazes to the desired destination. We will invest more heavily in these kinds of efforts in collaboration with our customers, and you will be able to read about our projects in our blog.