IT leaders use reporting tools to emphasize business use cases

When it comes to integrating new technology, it's normally up to the IT staff to ensure that stakeholders understand what the system is capable of and how it can help the organization. However, this process can be challenging if IT doesn't have the information on hand to demonstrate their point. As these business case scenarios become more essential to company innovation, IT leaders must leverage their data analytics and reporting tools to make their argument.

Organizations are increasingly using collected information to measure performance and identify areas that may benefit from new technological functions. However, an expert must state how new solutions will provide competitive advantages, based on current and historical data examples. A recent study by The Hackett Group stated that many IT leaders are having challenges when establishing the business value of a system due to the fact that their teams may not be up to the task, ZDNet reported.

IT managers are looking to make analytics and data management top priorities in the company, with 89 percent looking to invest in automation and 74 percent seeking to broaden their business intelligence capabilities, the study stated. While these efforts are substantial steps forward, they still require staff to effectively leverage associated tools.

Making innovation a team effort
While IT teams were traditionally called upon for virtually every task, user-friendly tools are allowing employees to be more self reliant, allowing IT to focus on other critical issues. Many times, IT and other departments are siloed, each having its own responsibilities, which can lead to a lot of redundancies. InformationWeek contributor Ron Bodkin noted that the only way to truly achieve big data benefits is if IT and business groups work together to generate an overall picture of the work environment. This teamwork will boost service quality and development processes, allowing the company to better meet client needs.

With all of this data on hand, IT leaders can use a report designer to group similar elements together and help viewers understand the impact of emerging trends. If information was left just as a set of numbers, many people would not be able to pick out the relevant data that may impact their decision. Using reporting services allows statistics to be sorted through quickly to generate a broader picture of how well the business is performing.

"Continuously improve operational analytics across the business," Bodkin wrote. "The promise of big data is to have technology experts create new capabilities that the business can use to explore and help generate revenue and competitive advantage."