Tablets ‘Secret Weapon’ for Getting Executives to Back BI

I just wrote a post about the importance of getting senior executives on board with business intelligence initiatives. Good advice, you may think, but how do you get the execs interested enough in BI that they’ll be willing to champion it?

The usual good advice applies: Ensure there are clear business goals for the technology. Use business terms, not technology terms, when discussing an initiative. Deliver quick wins and incremental value. Ask executives for their feedback — and listen. Focus on outcomes rather than activities. As with all good advice, though, it doesn’t always work as well as we’d like.

Yet IT professionals may have a secret weapon for helping convince executives of BI’s value. And it’s one that may already be in the execs’ hands. Like the BlackBerry before it, executives seem to be the earliest adopters of tablets like the iPad. I cited a Forbes article that quoted Sanju Bansal, CIO of BI provider MicroStrategy, which has deployed 1,000 iPads to its executives and sales staff:

Read More of Ann All’s Blog Post on IT BusinessEdge