Another guest post this week by Peter Spielvogel, resident cycling and EII maven. -T.M.
By Peter Spielvogel
Running a business has a number of similarities with running
a Tour de France team (although I have
no direct experience with the latter). In both cases, teams that use data better than
their competitors gain a significant competitive advantage. And, the volume of
data and how it’s exploited have changed dramatically over the past few years.
The BPM in the title refers to the beats per minute that
riders carefully monitor to make sure
they maintain a pace they can sustain. During the preparation phase for the
Tour, each rider’s miles are logged, along with power output, heart rate,
speed, cadence, for each ride. All this information,
plus data on diet and rest is stored in a
database and compared to prior performance metrics and benchmark data. Trainers, riders, and managers recommend changes, test them
in a controlled environment, and monitor the results. New technologies, such as
wireless, enable real-time evaluation and tuning of performance, all while on
the move.
Does any of this sound like your day-to-day activities in
corporate IT? Over the past few years, the amount of corporate data has
exploded. Determining what’s important and how to extract value from a bunch of
numbers becomes increasingly difficult. Fortunately, data integration
technologies such as enterprise information integration (EII) have made this
much easier. EII allows organizations to extract the information they need,
on-demand, from wherever this information resides. This technology complements business
intelligence (BI) tools and business performance management (BPM) software that enables complex multidimensional
analysis.
Having real-time information at your fingertips allows you
to answer difficult questions quickly. For example, when a competitor attacks,
you need to be able to know how much you have in reserve so you can determine
how to meet the challenge. Do you try to stay with the leader, hang back and
hope they will burn out, or do your best to maintain position while saving
energy for another day? Without precise information on max heart rate, VO2 max,
power output, and the road ahead, making that call would be an educated guess
based on gut-feel. Good managers are forced to make these kinds of decisions
daily, but in today’s business environment, intuition is sometimes not enough. Unlike
the Tour, business campaigns last more than three weeks and the market dynamics
are more complex.
So, when you see riders with wires coming off their bodies
and bikes, think about the flow of data and how technology has changed the
rules of the game. Those that deploy new IT effectively can keep their BPM
within the zone. Those who don’t will ultimately lose the race.
May the best team and the best
technology win.
Comments