We've been working on business intelligence (BI) for going on 20 years now. Yet many executives and managers still can't get what they need from their data analysis tools. They wish they had better prognostic capabilities. They wish they had predictive models that would notify them about potential problems or risks before they occur.
Budgets serve an a priori planning and communication role as well as a control and monitory a posteriori role. I hope that you will find this issue of CBR packed with useful data that helps you prepare your own IT budget (planning role) and survey-based ammunition that helps you back up your decisions with evidence (communication role). As always, the insight and guidelines brought to bear by our contributors should help you refine your own thinking about the appropriate course of action in your own organization.
Business needs change, the competitive landscape changes, so system requirements must also be able to change if we want to deliver software that satisfies our customers. That's agile development in a nutshell, right? But what if we're so focused on the rapid development of working software "trees" that we don't see the "forest" of business requirements?
In this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, we tackle the topic of virtual teams and their management. Like any team, virtual teams are groups of individuals with shared objectives and shared responsibilities. Unlike traditional or colocated teams, though, virtual teams draw members from multiple locations and thus cannot easily meet face-to-face.
At the heart of customer relationship management (CRM) is the customer, and knowing the customer is key. Next month you’ll learn why it's vital to determine not just the customer’s propensity to buy but her capacity to buy — and why companies whose CRM systems leverage broader market data and predictive analytics will surpass those that get their CRM functionality out of a box.
