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Quick Takes Week of June 8


June 12: Several examples of scorecards are offered in this Computerworld piece. The most compelling is the first. Administrators at the Maine Medical Center in Portland moved from a mix of Excel, PowerPoints and plain paper to a wide array of scorecards. The transition to scorecards – there are 50 to 60 of them, each of which can capture as many as 25 metrics — enables personnel to assess performance and track how changes impact patient care and hospital finances.

June 11: Richard Herschel, the Chair of the Department of Decision & System Sciences at Saint Joseph’s University, takes a long look in this BeyeNETWORK column at Dice.com’s business intelligence job listings. He discusses the requirements for several positions and concludes that there is a strong emphasis on relatively narrow experience, such as working with software from a particular vendor. His concern is that this priority could obscure the importance of “core mathematical competencies,” good verbal and written communications skills and other more general qualities.

June 10: Larry Marion begins this Datamation column with the observation that BI is rising in importance in the eyes of the folks who sign the checks. His main bit of evidence are the results of a BusinessWeek Research Services study (to which he links) that says that top executives at big U.S. companies see operational efficiencies as a key, and that BI is recognized as an important tool for accomplishing that goal. He points to five areas where BI can help cut costs: marketing, sales, purchasing, inventory control and human resources.

June 9: Things go better with BI. That paraphrase of an old Coca-Cola slogan seems appropriate for what the company plans to do this summer. According to InformationWeek, Coca-Cola will deploy Freestyle drink dispensers that offer more than 100 varieties of sodas, juices and teas in California, Georgia and Utah. The massive amount of data that will be generated as customers choose their beverage will be fodder for business intelligence platforms at the company’s Atlanta headquarters. The idea is that the feedback will increase efficiency and cut costs by enabling plans to be adjusted while new products are in development.

June 8: Curt Monash has a dilemma, which he outlines in the first paragraph of a post at Intelligent Enterprise. He says that business intelligence tools are “due for a revolution,” but that it is such a huge topic that he doesn’t know where to start. He does the right thing and just jumps in. Among the changes that are coming, he says, are the addition of natural language, a move to add more flexibility to platforms and an increase in collaboration and communication. At the end of the post, he outlines other areas of change that he will cover in the future.

–Carl Weinschenk