BI cited as supply chain booster

Two new surveys of corporate officers have found an interest in improving supply chain efficiency through modern, technological methods, including business intelligence. Both a KPMG survey of CFOs and a Gartner CIO survey found that BI and supply chain management strategies are prioritized both separately and together. Technology is being used to make businesses smarter, more efficient and more engaged with customer wishes.

"CIOs concentrating on IT as a force of operational automation, integration and control are losing ground to executives who see technology as a business amplifier and source of innovation," said Gartner's Mark McDonald.

The Gartner survey found that increasingly, businesses are not seeing IT projects in isolation, rather looking for ways in which they work together. The movement detected is toward a new way of interacting with customers, using business intelligence data to adjust elements including supply chain management for maximum efficiency.

Respondents to the KPMG survey heavily valued technologies that could improve operational quality or drive growth opportunities. Business intelligence was heavily cited as a technology that could do the latter and be used, as per the Gartner results, as a source of information with which to optimize the supply chain.