Are You Running or Managing Your Business?
Recently, I was traveling to Kansas City to give a presentation on using PeopleTools 8.5 to improve business intelligence. Little did I know that my travel would offer me a good opening example to support the presentation.
If you are a reader of this blog then you are likely familiar with the statement “ERP systems allow you to ‘run’ your business and business intelligence allows you to ‘manage’ your business”. Coincidentally, this is also the opening line I used to support and give context to this particular presentation.
Here is the real-world scenario that helped drive my point home. I rented a car from a rental car company that shall remain nameless but know that it is not Joe’s Awesome Auto Rental Hut but rather a mainstream rental organization focused on business travelers. This rental company took my reservation online and had a car waiting for me upon my arrival.
So there they are, running their core business of taking reservations and providing vehicles for use. However, if they used some business intelligence from the data that is available to them either in my profile and other data sources, they probably would have done a better job of “managing” their business and providing a vehicle that results in higher customer satisfaction. Specifically, using minimal data, they would have known I was a business traveler who did not need: 1) A convertible in Missouri in the middle of October, 2) A sports car with two seats with a trunk barely large enough to stow a pair of shoes let alone enough space to support two business travelers, and 3) A back seat that was no longer a back seat but replaced by a “speaker”, a substantial sub woofer the size of my head. (Ed. note: Jokes about the size of Larry’s head are anticipated and encouraged. Email them here.)
What’s the moral here? Nothing, except that it’s a fine example of running a business versus managing a business and using available data to do so.
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More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
