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The benefits of business intelligence (BI) technology are well documented. Organizations can use reporting and analytical tools to get a clearer sense of customer demand and market trends, make more informed decisions, increase employee productivity and make useful data available in real time to the people who need it most.

But the value of BI extends well beyond the walls of the enterprise, and more companies are finding that they can effectively share their intelligence with business partners to add even more value to the information.

Some are creating Web-based BI networks to provide relevant information and analysis to suppliers, consultants, customers and others who can benefit from the knowledge. In some cases the information is provided via a private network, and the data can be customized to allow users — including suppliers — to get the information they need, such as demand forecasts, so they can plan shipments accordingly.

“There’s no one way in which companies are doing this,” says David Stodder, an analyst at Ventana Research. “Some organizations continue to deliver ‘canned’ reports to partners, or may enable them to run select, predictable queries against their data. Analytical applications shared among business partners, which may be developed to run with [packaged enterprise resource planning applications], often still provide BI capabilities in this way.”

Stodder says that dashboards, interfaces that deliver BI, event alerts and performance management metrics, have done a good job of packaging information for a wider range of users, including business partners.

By providing BI to partners, organizations can see supply chain improvements — and help their business partners also see improvements — that might not otherwise be possible. For example, a distributor could enable its suppliers to track and analyze product sales data in real time, so the suppliers could base production schedules on when demand is likely to be higher or lower. The same distributor could provide product manufacturing information to its customers, allowing them to get a greater sense of product availabilities or shortages.

One of the main benefits is cost savings. “The key driver is to bring down the cost of business partnerships through a better information flow,” says Stodder. “If suppliers are better informed and cognizant of trends in sales, inventory levels by region and so forth, they will not ship unneeded merchandise, which may influence the prices they charge.”

One of the key considerations for sharing BI over a network is providing effective security. Some organizations use technology such as high-level encryption, as well as private networks, to protect information shared externally.

Regulatory compliance issues make security even more important. “Organizations need to be more accountable for their data, who uses it and what is done with the data,” Stodder says. “HIPAA, for example, protects patient records, so health-care business partners need to collaborate to ensure that sensitive information is protected as it moves through the information supply chain.”

Improving performance will be a main goal of shared BI, Stodder says. “ Actually, performance management is going to be the future of a lot of BI sharing,” he says. “This will enable partners to agree on key performance metrics and thresholds, work together to monitor them and share alerts when numbers at variance with expectations start coming in.”

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