It is always exciting to see an industry gain critical mass. As it grows beyond what Malcolm Gladwell calls 'The Tipping Point', interest, growth and adoption suddenly explode.

Business Intelligence is at or about that point - commercially this kind of functionality has been available for a couple of decades, but as its functionality and availability have grown and it's cost decreased, so it has become more broadly accepted. Ironically, the more it is accepted, the more value it has - kind of like the fax machine (the guy who sold the first one of those must surely have won salesman of the year?!) - the more people who have access to it and have their information available through it, the greater the value and the more exponential its adoption.

Interestingly BI, albeit it in a push-fashion, is appearing in more and more consumer focused applications. If you're a BT or Vodafone customer and use their online billing systems and bill-analysis tools, you are consuming BI at a personal level. You can also see the uptake of BI as it becomes embedded within the software that we all use in our daily business and personal lives. Interestingly 'social BI' is evolving from this - new ways for people to connect and interact with others have been exploding overnight - Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo are, but a handful of examples - and with the complexity of these newly mapped collaboration and complex relationships comes the need to expose, analyse and report on them more intelligently.

I'm intrigued to see new and innovative entrepreneurial ideas, such as , are starting hit home with businesses as we become more open to the idea of sharing information and ideas and start to market in different ways. An integral part of the success of these viral ideas is the concept of understanding the key information that exists, leveraging it and providing users with access to and the ability to share information (in this case statistics) at unprecedented rates - the socialisation of BI or Social BI.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Applying the power of information for the benefit of all.

“The world is changing around us at an incredible pace due to remarkable technological change.”

Tony Blair, Transformational Government

The Public Sector is going through a tremendous amount of information transformation at present. This exciting and challenging journey will enable the UK’s biggest employer and holder of over 60 million customers and stakeholders to break down previously impervious barriers.

Following the successful Performance Management in the Public Sector event held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London on 23rd June, we would like to invite you to participate in a very important webinar - on Thursday 18th September at 10am GMT. Entitled ‘Building an Integrated Performance Management Environment’, this essential webinar event will enable you to understand how your organisation can harness the power of information both within your organisation as well as across your stakeholder community.

We will demonstrate how integrated information can be a shared across boundaries previously considered immovable. We will also cover how we can engage with your organisation in terms of defining an information asset road map and then build a class-leading Performance Management environment that can be put in place for all to benefit from.

If you are planning to develop an integrated performance management environment, this webinar is essential. I will give you the key steps necessary to make such an environment happen.

The sheer scale of change both in volume, sources and complexity of data makes it essential that all Public Sector bodies start to develop information ‘universes’ that are designed and developed by all those involved, not just those within your organisation. It is essential that you are able to sift key information from huge volumes of data – we can help you do just that!

Webinar Details

Title:
Building an Integrated Performance Management Environment

Date and Time:
Thursday 18th September, 2008 10am GMT

Duration:
45 minutes

Webinar Leader:
Matt Quinn, Altius Consulting

Register Here

It is with a slight ironic chuckle that I open this week's copy of Computing and out falls a very traditional A5-insert advertising the power and cost-effectiveness of Google's AdWords product.

"Worms reduce waste by up to 80%, Google advertising does the same for our marketing" proclaims Heather Gorringe of www.WigglyWigglers.co.uk on the piece of paper I had to fish back out of the bin to write this blog.

Whilst I jest at the irony, it does highlight the fact that a balance of old and new, physical and electronic, traditional and innovative is where the sweet-spot lies. Throughout Business, and IT, innovation in balance with continued fine tuning of what we know works will always triumph.

Oh, and thinking about it I could do with something to get my compost going...

Research & Development are at the very heart of innovation. It surprises me that so many service-businesses assume that R&D is a product-only function and ignore their innovative potential. We invest significant resources into R&D and it never fails to produce great results - be they new services, a greater understanding of 'things to avoid' or in the case of our research into enhanced user experience with Microsoft's Silverlight platform - a new client!

Whilst investigating visualisation of information we turned our focus to the Silverlight presentation platform and worked with our graphic design partners Universal Pixel to uncover some unique opportunities with Microsoft's Education team. Our research effort, resulting in a project on Microsoft's behalf has led to a resounding success at both this year's education show, in the wider press and in the hearts and minds of teachers and pupils everywhere.

Read More: Mashups : Films for Learning Case Study

Learn about Silverlight: Microsoft Silverlight

Whilst at a Microsoft Public Sector Partner Briefing today, I was introduced to a thought provoking video / presentation that I'd somehow missed over the last twelve months. It's a Microsoft customised version, tailored for the UK.

Amongst the discussions today, John Suffolk, CIO from the Cabinet Office, reinforced a point I believe in very strongly - product isn't interesting, it's solving a problem that customers buy. As the amount of data grows exponentially, so obtaining the information hidden within, understanding the knowledge it represents and ultimately gaining the insight available becomes wildly more important.

Dialling-down the noise and extracting value from data is the problem that we as companies and individuals must solve. Intelligent application of software - focused on benefits, not features and delivered in partnership with specialists will be the future upon which the knowledge economy is built and I for one am excited to be at the cutting edge of it.

If there's one message to take away from ShiftHappens it's that not only does shift happen, it happens at an ever-increasing rate and like compound interest - it'll make you or break you!

ShiftHappens