AutoPower Corporation

MITS Success - Make the other 80% of your Company business data 100% useful

In your organization, there is a continuum of responsibility from the line worker responsible for putting parts in boxes to the Leaders. At both ends of this organizational hierarchy, the primary functions do not leave a significant amount of time for data analysis. At the bottom of the organization, the focus is on specific production tasks; at the top, the focus is on strategy. Neither of these individuals can afford the time to sift through the enormous amounts of data produced by today's enterprises. However, the fact is that your business runs and succeeds based on meeting strategic goals, measuring progress, and monitoring specific business activities.

The good news is that the best interface for these polar opposite groups is similar - a simple stoplight. If the light is amber or red, it is time to involve the rest of the continuum - those knowledge workers in the middle of your organization who have the scope, tools, and time to make detailed analysis not only possible, but frequently a major part of their job. In the middle levels of the organization, knowledge workers rely on data analysis to both manage down and report up the organization.

In the past and even currently those with higher analysis functions often perform the dissemination of results manually. The results are delivered in written or verbal reports often reviewed days, weeks or months later. This means the business management in always reactive and not proactive in dealing with business operations.

Business intelligence tools like MITS can now automate this process, with the power to easily distill and distribute summarized information you can literally monitor your key business indicators virtually in near-real-time. This enables business owners, managers and production staff with analysis tools that proactively monitor overall and specific business operations.

How you would apply MITS Business Intelligence is best understood in terms of three well-established business control signals.

x Strategic - Organization Alignment
x Tactical - Measuring Project or Initiative Progress
x Operational - Monitoring Specific Business Activities.

MITS Strategic Signals

Strategic signals measure progress towards strategic objectives; they help align the organization to strategy in ways that static mission statements cannot. An executive level MITS signal would reflect enterprise-wide strategic goals and corresponding key performance indicators or KPIs. A good model will support enterprise-wide strategic signals that "cascade" down to the department level with gradually more restrictive views of data, while retaining alignment to corporate objectives. Working down from global to departmental helps avoid creating dashboards that pit department against department. Strategic signals are typically highly summarized, highly graphical, less frequently updated, and include global, external, trend, and growth measures.

On a strategic level you may want to balance financial and non-financial measures, a balance of short-term and long-term indicators, and a balance of leading and lagging indicators.

Leading business intelligence signals usually contains four perspectives:

x capacity for growth
x product development and operations
x customer satisfaction
x financial results

MITS Tactical Signals

Tactical signals present trends and progress towards strategic initiatives or special projects and are frequently measurements against established goals. They may involve just one of the four perspectives of a strategic signal. Starting to move away from a simple stoplight model, tactical signals frequently include summary data as well as visual indicators and make full use of hyperlinked tools allowing drill-down and root cause analysis. The focused nature of tactical signals allows more detailed information to be displayed where the context is clear from the outset. Tactical signals often target data that helps maximize profit and/or increase sales.

MITS Operational Signals

Operational signal are used to monitor business processes in near-real-time with the aim of intervening quickly to resolve issues or take advantage of opportunities. Operational signals are usually departmental in scope and absolute values and thresholds based on averages and norms are frequently as important as trends. Like tactical signals, the focused nature of operational dashboards allows more detailed information to be displayed. It would be unusual for a top-level manager to use an operational signal; a traffic light summarizing operational capacity trends would be more appropriate.

MITS and AutoPower

Effective signals for your business are composed of key performance indicators. Organizations using the AutoPower system have many viable trend or performance indicators; AutoPower helps you identify your key performance indicators (KPIs). Starting with organizational goals, we evaluate the measures of behavior and events available to ensure they are both key and performance related.

KPI candidates are key measures, crucial to your business strategy and they are linked to performance. There have a cause-and-effect relationship between actions and indicator. They clearly distinguish between effective and ineffective performance of your operations.

Your employees will clearly understand and have control over achievement of the KPI. Order fill rate and cycle time are typical KPIs they neatly summarize a number of measurements, are easy to understand and target, and have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Are you ready to not only run your business but to see in near-real-time the critical factors that dive your business performance? Call Ross @ 800 229 2881

Information presented here is based on an Article (Sept/Oct 2005) in International Spectrum by Ross Morrissey who is a product specialists at Management Information Tools, Inc - Developers of MITS, the leading Business Intelligence tool native to the MultiValue database environment.