CIO Glossary

The Business Intelligence news covered in FierceCIO gives CIOs, CTOs, and other senior IT managers an easy and quick way to keep up with business intelligence software, tools, and solutions. Business intelligence is used to make companies smarter and more efficient. Used correctly, business intelligence tools can enhance business performance by allowing key employees to more effectively analyze data from multiple resources such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) puts the customer at the center of any and all activities within an enterprise. A CRM solution helps an enterprise learn more about the customer's needs and makes any knowledge gained through interaction with the customer accessible at all levels of the organization. The value of CRM software "grows considerably when CRM is tightly integrated with solid enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) functionality. This total solution enables you to support and streamline the entire business process from original customer contact through post-sales service." (JD Edwards)

Whether formally or informally, every business collects information about its customers. Analyzing this information is a critical part of business intelligence called data mining. The internet and other integrated data systems have increased the opportunities for gathering consumer data. Even small companies can now afford to implement powerful data mining techniques that analyze the attributes and habits of customers. Dissecting and putting massive amounts of consumer information to profitable use is the challenge of data mining.

According to Bill Inmon, "the Data Warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, non-volatile collection of data used to support the strategic decision-making process for the enterprise. It is the central point of data integration for business intelligence and is the source of data for the data marts, delivering a common view of enterprise data."

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the integration of disparate systems and business processes into one system with the goal of improving enterprise productivity and efficiency. In a typical enterprise, finance, HR, manufacturing, and sales might all have different computer systems but share common data. The ERP solution solves this problem by combining these systems so data is entered into the system once and there is a seamless collaboration among all departments.

Enterprise risk management (ERM) minimizes the effects of risk on your company’s capital and earnings. It emphasizes planning, organizing, monitoring and leading enterprise-wide to manage the risk of unpredictable catastrophes like 9/11 as well as day-to-day risks. ERM is becoming an increasingly essential part of smart IT strategy in light of emerging corporate governance from the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. It starts with brainstorming both internal and external risks, then prioritizing by probability of the risk becoming reality and the impact it will have on your business. Finally, form your strategy: Can you avoid or mitigate the source? Can you transfer the risk? Or will you conclude the risk is worth it and continue on?

Information Technology (IT) spending is investment in resources used for information processing, such as computers and software. These IT resources help companies to convert, store, protect, process, transmit and retrieve information. As technology continues to change, develop and grow, companies are spending more on IT than they have in the past. The World Information Technology and Service Alliance (WITSA) reported that worldwide spending on information and communication technology nearly doubled from 1993 to 2001. The WITSA also estimated that worldwide IT spending increased from $810 billion in 1993 to $1.38 trillion in 2001.

IT hiring is up as companies make larger investments in technology and IT projects. Hot jobs like Windows systems administrators, SQL server managers, and wireless network managers may become tougher to fill with top IT talent. Dedicated and qualified IT employees are the foundation of your business. Whether you turn to IT staffing firms or use a recruiter to seek out top IT specialists, hiring and staff retention are certain to be top priorities.

Simply put, strategic planning is the process of determining an organization's long-term goals and identifying the best approach for achieving those goals. A strategic plan represents a shared vision of what will be, provides a framework applicable to a specific period of time, and identifies an overall direction. It also identifies the direction toward which short term actions will be aimed, guides acceptances or rejection of new products and opportunities, and governs resources assigned to current services.

Knowledge is comprised of information and experience and typically comes from multiple sources, people and systems inside and outside the organization. When it's used in the right context and is made accessible throughout an organization, this knowledge can help improve efficiencies and increase productivity.

FierceCIO covers offshore outsourcing news as it relates to the IT sector. While offshore outsourcing has always been a point of debate, because of the internet and technology boom over the last 10 years, the subject has become increasingly contentious. In the latest presidential election, President Bush was accused of wanting to send more jobs overseas after one of his economic advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw, said that "outsourcing is a good thing." John Kerry and other top Democrats then stepped in saying Bush should apologize to every worker in the US. Offshore outsourcing news continues to make headlines today.

Managing security patches and updates is an essential part of any enterprise. Securing the network against threats from hackers, viruses, worms requires managing security patches as well as ensuring that users are running the most current version of applications and enforcing anti-virus updates.

Enterprise patch-management software can help streamline patch management, though it too has its vulnerabilities. Software can be expensive and may not do everything you need. The reporting may make it difficult to find out which patches are missing or may only scan and not deploy security patches. Make sure the tool can patch all the systems you run. Stay updated on the latest for smart patch management strategy.

Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which governs how salespeople interact with customers and potential clients. The goal of SFA software is to enable companies to increase the number of sales calls per day and increase sales revenue. To achieve this goal, sales force automation software provides a collaborative system for salespeople and executives to view and actively manage the sales pipeline.

With the proliferation of wireless devices, effective sales force automation takes advantage of workforce mobility. Today’s sales force automation software provides users with detailed knowledge of customer needs at the touch of a button from any mobile device.

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Whether you call it "dynamic IT", "on-demand" or "adaptive” architecture, the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been swirling through IT conferences of late. SOAs provide the ability to create a connected environment that moves information from system to system in addition to allowing the broad reuse of services. This loose coupling of resources makes the model more flexible than traditional system architectures. The concept can be difficult to grasp, but the impact is clear: These methodologies are fundamentally changing the way we build our internal systems. According to a July 2005 Goldman Sachs survey of 100 CIOs, 87% currently use Web services and 54% plan to deploy infrastructure to support SOA by 2006.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the flow of goods and information from initial sourcing to the end user. Supply chain management software tracks procurement, manufacturing, inventory management, distribution, logistics, customer service, design, and financing and used correctly helps enterprises deliver goods to its customers profitably and in a timely manner.

Supply chain management software allow companies to optimize supply and demand according to its material and resource constraints. Furthermore, multiple levels of SCM (global supply chain) advance this optimization through allowing visibility of all players including suppliers of suppliers. In the end, SCM software takes the guesswork out of supplying and manufacturing and promotes a more efficient