Dr. Claudia Imhoff – Data Warehouse Industry Thought Leader
Competing with Business Analytics
Most executives today would state categorically that Business Intelligence (BI) has a role in their businesses – but what is the role? Is it simply a supporting character? A backstage hand? Or should it be the star of your business? For example, many companies have some analytical capabilities – an actuarial role for insurance, a market research role in retail companies, lifetime analytics for financial firms – but these are generally invisible to the senior executives.

To be competitive, BI must be fact-based and leveraged by the entire enterprise. The idea of competing on analytics is not new. Tom Davenport has been lecturing and writing about it for years but still very few companies that have embraced the concept. This presentation will demonstrate how some thought-leading companies have successfully competed using business intelligence and how your company can too. Attendees will learn:

• How to create such a world class analytic environment
• The characteristics of an analytical competitor
• The critical success factors to incorporate and the pitfalls to avoid on the way to becoming an analytical competitor
• How to know when you've made it to analytical competitor

Barry Zane, ParAccel CTO and Doug Dilts, Sun BIDW Product Manager
Developing a Fact-Based Organization with the Ultra-Fast Data Warehouse Powered by Sun and ParAccel
Competing with analytics requires an integrated solution that transforms business intelligence from a high-maintenance, costly and difficult proposition to a simple, cost-effective and powerful one.