Or... Purse... Not to be sexist! The point is that Time is one of those neglected aspects of Business Intelligence that falls through the cracks when we talk about all the mechanics of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence implementations.
Time can make an enormous difference in the actual performance of two companies that have identical Sales and Financial Performance!
Let's say Company A has exactly similar Sales and Financial Performance than Company B. However if I collect intelligence about Time in these two companies, I can surmise that Company A is on the way up and Company B is on the way down. They just happen to be in the same place at this moment.
Business Processes are most efficient and effective only when Time is managed properly and all kinds of waste of time is eliminated. It is not only wastage of Time but the variation in usage of Time for the same business process that can make one company perform better and another, not so much!
Let's say Company A is a mail-order book company like Amazon.com and Company B is also similar. Both of them have outsourced their fulfillment duties to third-party Drop-Ship vendors - two different ones, let's say C and D.
Company A promises a shipping time of 7 business days for normal postal deliveries and so does Company B.
Company A's third party supplier has a highly streamlined, disciplined, highly automated (with perhaps barcodes and such) picking, packing and shipping operation.
Company B's third party supplier is not so streamlined, disciplined and heavily manual operation.
Company A 's 7 Business Day deliveries range from 6 business days to 8 business days only. However Company B's 7 Business Day deliveries range anywhere from 4 business days to 12 or even sometimes 15 business days.
Today both Company A and B may show very similar Sales Performance and Financial Performance but it is not rocket science to guess that A may take away a lot of market share from B. It's only a matter of time.
The point here is that Sales Intelligence and Financial Intelligence alone don't give you full Business Intelligence. Time and other process related metrics like Customer Satisfaction Index (derived from Customer Surveys) may also need to be considered to get an accurate idea of performance.
The problem with measuring and using Time is one of Historical evolution of Computer Automation in companies. Many software applications do not capture enough Time information consciously to make that data available and usable. Many software developers will tell you that they usually put a Date and Time Modified field in many Database tables and it contains only the latest timestamp of some change that was made. It may not capture all the different events that happen in a company along with their timestamps but only the last one done.
This reminds me of the story of the man who searching for a coin under a streetlamp. Someone asked him "Why - did he lose the coin there?"
The man replies "But this is where the light is!"
Not considering Time as an important ingredient of Business Intelligence is a great folly. Existing Business Intelligence applications do not give you the complete picture!
Time translates directly into money and profits for the company. Instead of taking 10 minutes to do something, if I take 5 minutes to do the same thing, I need only half the resources I need. That means excess capacity that can be used elsewhere for some other job , less overall resources for the company and less expenditures!
Waste of Time is one the biggest Cost sinks in an organization - whether they are Government, Profit or non-profit.
Knowing what amount of time is spent on something and finding more efficient ways of doing the same thing without compromising the end result is an extremely valuable thing in your business intelligence armory.
Not knowing it is just like searching under the street lamp for your coin!
Remember that time is money. - Benjamin Franklin
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