Next Generation Executive Information Systems (EIS)

I’m going to date myself but I was involved in developing an Executive Information System (EIS) for a networking product about 15 years ago.  So I was interested in this McKinsey article titled “Data to dollars: Supporting top management with next-generation executive information systems”.   It makes some excellent points regarding the need to transform data into insights, the importance of ensuring data relevance, the criticality of data consistency, and the necessity of having a clean, intuitive user interface to present information with context.

If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you’ll know that I believe that all of these comments apply to everyone making daily operational decisions and not just “top management”.   That aside, I really liked the recommended approach, including:

• standardize data and KPI definitions group wide – this is key to everyone having a consistent picture of performance and operating from a common understanding;
• base the BI architecture and structure on business domains and groupings rather than IT capabilities – we advocate a holistic approach of managing the performance of a value stream, business process or function;
• combine data from multiple systems to support that holistic view of performance;
• ensure the user interface allows users to move easily between views, with intuitive groupings of information, guidance etc;
• set targets and be alerted to when performance deviates from these and be able to interact with the data to answer questions as to where and why the issue occurred.

The article also speaks to need for transparency of information to stakeholders.  Again I agree with this and suggest it needs to go further to all stakeholders and decision makers within the organization and extend to external stakeholders such as vendors, suppliers, channel partners and even investors.  We are seeing more companies moving this way – such as a VC firm presenting consistent portfolio company financial and operational performance data interactively to their investors; a manufacturer sharing supplier performance criteria and measurements with their suppliers; a manufacturer sharing performance information with their distribution channel. 

It is great to see the promotion of the need for intuitive, timely, relevant, consistent and current information to provide insights to decision makers – I’m not sure the use of “EIS” as the descriptor really does it justice.