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Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence
Paperback: 5.5x8.5 (192 pages)
ISBN: Paperback: 1600050433
eBook: 1600050441

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Book Summary

Book: Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence

The goal of "Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence" is to introduce an intelligence framework that builds a foundation for success. The Ladder is really a Ladder of Business Intelligence (LOBI) that aims to create intelligent organizations in which technology systems are designed to support success.

Problems:

Good decision making is rare in the business world
In 2005, an estimated $150 billion was spent on IT systems that were either canceled or suffered cost overruns
There is a great waste of human and artificial intelligence in the majority of companies
All this means that most businesses are not operating anywhere near their capacity

However:
There are successful companies that do operate intelligently – that make good decisions, don’t waste resources and make smart use of IT.

Solution:
Our goal in this book is to introduce a framework that builds a foundation for success. We will demonstrate how to use this framework to enable skillful use of technology and better use of human intelligence. Each step up the Ladder creates a more intelligent organization, one that is able to operate smarter and faster.

Target Audiences:

Our primary audience consists of managers at all levels. What managers want to know is whether the Ladder is going to help them achieve their objectives better, faster and cheaper. This book demonstrates exactly how the Ladder can enable these goals. After finishing the book, readers should be able to ask the right questions regarding the implementation of Information Technology in their business. They should also understand the level of intelligence that their business needs to attain to be successful.

Table of Contents:

Forward
Preface
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Best Companies, Best Practices
Chapter 3: Visions and Strategies
Chapter 4: Down from the Mountain
Chapter 5: People
Chapter 6: Implementing Technology
Chapter 7: A New Way of Doing Business
Chapter 8: The Corporation in the 21st Century
Chapter 9: Innovation and Excellence
Glossary
About the Authors
Appendix A: Natural Bounty Organization Chart
Appendix B: Tom’s Takeaways : “What is Information?”

Chapters 1 and 2 answer the questions: What and why? What is this Ladder? Why should I be interested? What can it do for me? In Chapter 2, we’ll take a look at two successful, highly intelligent businesses and discuss how the Ladder can help your business operate in the same league.
Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 answer: How? How do you go about changing the way a company functions? How do you optimize the key resources of a business: its People, Processes and Technology?
Chapter 7 answers the question: What are the results? What have we attained? What are the differences between organizations at Levels 1 and 2 and those at Levels 3 and up?
Chapter 8 answers: Is all this absolutely necessary? In the 21st century, yes! The demanding economic environment, rigorous competition and regulatory requirements mean that a business must employ all its resources to their fullest extent.
Chapter 9 answers: What about the future? Will this Ladder framework continue to help us to grow and innovate?

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Climbing the Ladder of
Business Intelligence

Happy About Creating Excellence through Enabled Intuition

by James E. Cates, Sam Gill, and Natalie Zeituny

Why buy this book?

Good decision-making is rare in the business world and most businesses are not operating anywhere near their capacity. The purpose of "Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence" is to introduce and guide the reader through a framework that enables a business to organize itself intelligently. An intelligent business functions at a high level of maturity and performance through the effective and efficient use of Information and the alignment of People, Process and Technology.

Praise of this book:

"In every corporation I have worked for, I have sought to strike an alignment between the business units and the IT organization. The Ladder allows people working in business processes to utilize technology to answer the key questions that they have to ask (people-process-technology). The Ladder framework pushes employees to focus on asking the right questions, getting the right information and making the right decisions (question-information-decision). These two powerful ideas, people-process-technology and question-information-decision, are framed in a step-by-step approach - the Circle of Success that allows any company to increase the payback out of their IT investments. The Ladder and the Circle of Success give every company the tools to attain excellence. The power of the Ladder as a framework lies in its simplicity. Striving for excellence will come naturally."
Maynard Webb, CEO, LiveOps
"Many executive teams can draw a clear picture of their own organization’s corporate culture, roles, and responsibilities. However, few have a sense of what it takes to communicate in a way that will allow them to effectively use their Information technology departments. This book provides a specific path and tools to integrate and use information technology in pursuing corporate goals both strategically and tactically. I strongly recommend it to those who work in business organizations and to those who simply enjoy reading a well written book."
Dean Lane, Principal, Office of the CIO
"Cates, Gill and Zeituny have developed an easy conceptual tool "The Ladder" that captures the essence of modern business teachings. The authors have been able to invisibly integrate a vast amount of theoretical business concepts into an easy to learn framework for organizational success. The integrated case example throughout the book captures the interest of the reader as does a good novel. I would find this book a valuable addition to numerous business school courses such as Leadership, Organizational Design and Change, Decision Making, and Strategy. The book provides a clear process to improve the "intelligence quotient" of any organization and if followed, allow the organization to achieve a state of continuous organizational learning and improvement in a business environment of rapid change. This is a book that belongs on the active desk of a manager, not the bookshelf."
John A. Dopp, Director, Graduate Business Programs, Professor of Management, College of Business, San Francisco State University


About the Authors

	*James E. Cates* CEO and Founder, LOBI Group, LLC believes that leadership has basically three dimensions: attitude, aptitude and efficacy. He has developed a framework for applying this approach to any business task. He recently founded a Business Intelligence (BI) consulting services firm where he is developing management training modules using his techniques. He was most recently the CIO of Altera, the world's pioneer of system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions with annual revenues in FY 2007 of $1.26 billion. Jim draws on more that 30 years of executive leadership in software development, IT deployment and corporate management in leading companies including Altera, Brocade, Information Technology Solutions( now Keane Corp), Synopsys, Silicon Graphics and IBM. He has served on an Ohio State University Engineering Advisory Board for over 20 years. He also holds an MS in Computer and Information Science from the Ohio State University Engineering College. He is a recipient of Ohio States Distinguished Alumnus Award from the college of Engineering. In addition, he is the co-author of two books: CIO Wisdom and Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence (LOBI). .
	*Sam Gill* is a professor in the Information Systems department at SFSU. Dr. Gill’s career spans five decades of computing from the infant days of MAMRAM, the Israeli Ministry of Defense Computing Center, through his latest professional engagements as a consultant to fortune 1000 companies and state and federal agencies. During this span, Dr. Gill has been involved in several IT start-ups as well as managed several computing centers. Dr. Gill’s latest venture was DataWiz Centers, one of the first Microsoft Solution Provider partners and the first Microsoft certified training partner. Dr. Gill publishes (articles, books, and courseware) and teaches in many areas of information systems focusing on strategy, management, and technology. Recently, he is currently collaborating with Dean Lane on a book: CIO Perspectives. Dr. Gill’s current research interests include the strategic, tactical, and operational management of Information Systems (IS), Business Intelligence, Software Testing and Quality Assurance (SQA), Information Technology (IT) Budgeting, Offshore and Outsourcing of IT, Development methodologies and frameworks, and development architectures, platforms and languages including: .NET, PHP/MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Visual Basic, C#, AJAX, and Java. Dr. Gill holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
	*Natalie Zeituny* has over seventeen years of experience working with international, world-class corporations, specializing in business strategy, process management and systems technology design and implementation. Ms. Zeituny has held highly visible leadership positions with companies such as 3com, Palm, Brocade, and Comverse. She has designed & implemented corporate and IT process architecture, business effectiveness and efficiency models and aligned cross functional business operations. In 2002 Ms. Zeituny founded and became the principal of NZconsulting, a Management Consulting firm which has served clients such as Palm, Seagate, Brocade, Network Appliance, Altera Yahoo, Safeway, and others. She is currently launching a new business using her past experience; she has architected a new integral system that enables a new business paradigm, language and practices to emerge. Conscious Business Center provides a framework for financial success through planned application of social consciousness, environmental sustainability, personal/technological creativity and spiritual/human self-realization.

Climbing the
Ladder of Business Intelligence

Shipping now

Paperback: $19.95
(with 15% discount only ($16.96)

eBook (pdf): $14.95
(with 20% discount only $11.95)