Business Intelligence vs. Operational Intelligence: Why OI beats BI
Business Intelligence (BI) is about analysing what has happened to date and looking for efficiencies to optimise the business in the future. BI typically analyses static snapshots of internal data about a business’ customers, sites, stores, staff and sales – producing either pre-canned reports or on the fly visualisations as the analyst explores that static historical data. It is a bit like looking in your rear-view mirror when you are driving. Essential thing to do, but on its own nowhere near enough to enable you to drive forward safely.
Operational Intelligence (OI) on the other hand is more like looking through the windscreen while monitoring your speedometer and satnav. It’s about driving the operations of a business through a live real time visualisation fed by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, mobile devices, vehicles and environmental feeds like traffic conditions, weather and flooding. This is important because it enables an agile, more informed response to conditions on the ground. The one common factor in all those data feeds is location – where the sensors are, where the vehicles are – and so on. The only sensible way to visualise it is on a map by taking real time feeds, and combining them intuitively using where the things are as the unifying factor.
The short answer is no – or no more than with BI or other line of business systems. However, there are things to keep in mind. Employees might not appreciate their location or that of their vehicle being tracked. They need to understand that it’s to enable them to do their job more safely and efficiently – you can see when they’re off the intended route or detained somewhere longer than expected so you can check they are safe. It also means they’re less likely to be sent miles to carry out a job when it turns out that a colleague was working round the corner and could easily have carried out the work. It’s also more likely that they’ll arrive at the customer that needs visiting or the asset that needs maintaining on time and with the right equipment – making their day less frustrating and more productive.
If you’re a retailer tracking customers to see if they are near your store so that you can send them offers, you need them to sign up to share their location through your mobile App – most will. However, you do need to be careful not to store the location information unnecessarily and certainly not after they cease to be a customer.
OI is about supporting the way you run your operations in real time. You can’t ship it off to an analyst somewhere else and get the answers once a week. However, you can outsource the IT and the running of the system if you wish to do that and with an enterprise geographic information system (GIS) you can run all or part of the solution in the cloud, while rigorously being able to secure the data and communications.
Get in your car and try to drive to somewhere in the next county while only looking in the rear-view mirror.
