Yolanda Smit, writing for *iWeb Business*, continues her series on how “super-companies” have not kept up with the BI times:

>Business intelligence should become the control panel that empowers management to effectively steer the organisation towards strategic achievement.

Part of the challenge:

>Strategy committees put a lot of effort into market research to ensure their strategy is relevant within the current economic environment. The reason why strategy execution lacks flexibility to adapt to changes in the environment is that the external environment data that formed the strategy is not included in the data warehouse to enable management to monitor the environment factors. Management might as well shut down their sonar equipment steering the submarine blind.

And its solution:

>By incorporating internal and external data integrated through properly modelled cause-and-effect relationships, the steering team is empowered to monitor the external environment and effectively adapt strategic initiatives maintaining flexibility.

Has your organization successfully made BI a strategic driver?

[[iWeb Business](http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44307:bi-in-the-drivers-seat&catid=69)]