Accessibility to Intelligence and the Power to Act (Technological Profile)

When I was originally contacted by Binary Fountain asking me to review and write about their solution, my initial thought was to view their offering through the lens of quantifying results. Specifically, by providing timely access to near real-time intelligence, their clients would be able to measure the success of a program after the fact. Seems like a reasonable approach, as Business Intelligence “BI” is after all leaving the cumbersome and confining realms of traditional ERP-centric platforms in which the extraction of needed information was an onerous task that warranted the moniker of “data mining.” However, and what is compelling about emerging BI solutions such as the one offered by Binary Fountain, is its ability to proactively influence decision-making through an intuitive “dashboard” technology that creates what I call a perpetual cycle of data verification. In essence, these intuitive dashboard solutions are in reality the control panel for the emergence of the social networking world of the Web 2.0, 3.0 and ultimately 4.0 platforms. Simply put, having access to relevant data is one thing. Being able to decipher its relevance to the decision-making process in real-time, whether it be in the world of procurement or for that matter any element of the business world, is essential. In fact think of it in terms of the television commercial by the Chartered Accountants Association in which executives are sitting in the lobby of a five star hotel reading the daily horoscope as a means of determining whether they should accept an offer to buy the company. Traditional methods of post-event assessment in which a lengthy albeit detached analysis by an "expert" is not far off the horoscope analogy. Binary Fountain removes both the mystery and uncertainty associated with charting your course based primarily on what is happening versus the what has happened scenario.