Introduction

Organizations invest a significant amount of time and money each year on Business Intelligence (BI) platforms in an effort to improve strategic decision-making and achieve their long-term goals. It has been estimated that 55% of large organizations have spent 50 million or more on BI tools[i], while 65% of small businesses have spent over ten thousand on BI platforms and another ten thousand or more each year to maintain them[ii].

These BI tools are used to extract meaningful insights and develop forecasts from an organization's data. However, these forecasts are often far from perfect. Why is this?

Organizations are fundamentally a group of people – an organized group of people – along with a collection of resources and assets(e.g., technology, buildings, branding, intellectual property). While an organization's assets and resources are certainly vital to the success of an organization, it has been said that "the people make the place" [iii], that "employees are an organization's greatest asset" [iv], and also that "every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company" [v].

These kinds of sayings are so common that they have become a cliché. However, you would be hard-pressed to find a business executive that did not agree with these statements. This is exactly why they are so commonplace.

Surely, then, to gain better knowledge of an organization and to effectively predict and influence its future outcomes – the very purpose of BI – one must have a richer knowledge of the employees and customers of the organization. Or, phrased more simply – to know a business, you must know its people. You must have People Intelligence.

Read Part 2