Strategic Business Management

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HOW DO BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, BUSINESS ANALYTICS AND ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FIT TOGETHER?

The late Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Richard Feynman learned a valuable lesson as a child. His father showed him a picture of a bird species and told Feynman its name in several different languages. Then his father noted that regardless of the bird’s various names, it did not in any way affect the reality of the bird’s existence or its physical features. The lesson for Feynman was that no matter what name people use for something, it does not alter what that something is. We can apply that lesson to the confusion today about the difference between mainstream business intelligence (BI),¹ business analytics (BA) and enterprise performance management (EPM).

Are BI, BA and EPM different words for the same species or two different species ... or animals? Are BI and BA part of EPM? Or is EPM part of BI and BA?

It is an ambiguous question because the underlying inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes of an organisation, whether a public sector government agency or a commercial business, may arguably have some parts that belong to BI and BA, whereas others belong to EPM. The key word in that sentence is arguably. This argument arises because IT-centric people often see an enterprise as a ravenous consumer of billions of bytes of data intended to manage the business (a BI view). In contrast, leaders, managers and employee teams typically view the same enterprise as an organism ...