For the past several centuries, a company’s wealth relied primarily on its physical assets. The amount of real estate it held, the size of its inventory, how much gold it had in its coffers — with these facts, it was easy to determine the health and stability of a given organization.
But since the digital revolution, physical resources have increasingly become less significant. In fact, some of the world’s most successful businesses — particularly those located in Silicon Valley — are known for products that don’t even exist in the real world. And increasingly so, businesses are placing greater focus on these more ethereal resources.
“Data — particularly financial data — is one of a company’s most important assets,” comments Darko Tukulj, Head of Sales at IBM Business Partner Megatrend. “Businesses are very protective about what they are reporting on, because that information is some of the most useful to them. Which products, which markets, which regions are growing? How are they performing compared to previous years? How close are their budgets to actual results?”
Making it easier to parse through company records and find these answers is one of the specialties of Megatrend, which delivers intuitive BI solutions that empower key decision-makers to pursue more informed choices. But among users of its analytics offerings, Megatrend noticed a clear trend — its customers were avoiding integrating these BI platforms with their mobile systems. This pattern seemed odd, since the true value of this information is routinely found when using it outside of the boardroom.
“We asked our customers what was going on,” recalls Tukulj. “And they were concerned about security — if the information was safe being transmitted to a mobile device. They also had logistics concerns. How do they handle different mobile devices — if some of the team have iPhones, but the rest use Androids? Do they need to be connected the company network? How can they present the data in an intuitive and usable way on something mobile?”
He continues, “We decided to help our customers answer these difficult questions.”