Line56 (an article by TIBCO’s Scott Fingerhut) writes:
BAM may in fact be one of the most important initiatives for the next 5 years. Why? Because not since the hype around “Executive Information Systems” (EIS) has their been an enterprise push toward bridging a dialogue between potential BAM users (business) and IT management and fundamentally improving managerial cycle times. The closest we’ve seen for the last 10 years has been through the business analyst that typically retains no decision-making authority and who oftentimes is an “IT specialist” that can leverage a data warehouse to run analytic queries. Frustration on both sides of the organization is at an all time high. Business reports are never quite what the business wants or delivered in a timely manner. It is analogous to asking a friend to buy a couch for you, not fully understanding your needs, your taste or your vision of the living room. Every time your friend returns with a new couch, you ask for slight changes and both of you begin to get frustrated. In the case of the couch, your living room suffers, for organizations, customers, partners and sales suffer.
Imagine the significant business improvements when two very important things happen: 1) Analysts are transformed back from middle-man reporters to true researchers questing to understand business performance and hidden indicators; and 2) Executive, line and operational business managers become entrenched in partnering and guiding new information systems around their key business performance indicators to take active roles to fundamentally improve business on a day-to-day basis. Business managers will access and interact with BAM systems that enable them to ask their questions and get answers back in “right-time.”
BAM will take on many shapes in the ultimate effort to improve the speed, agility and effectiveness of business operations. The most successful efforts will depend on three-way partnerships between the company’s business and IT units and vendors.
