BI Saves the day

El Reg has an article that clearly shows how great value can be delivered from a BI system.

Having experienced first hand some of Overstock.com’s ERP woes back in 2005 I dug into this story from El Reg.

Ending a nightmare - Overstock’s data center journey

Some would argue the article highlights the difficulty of implementing ERP, but regardless of how you look at it, BI did in fact help Overstock.com out of a bad situation.  The technology now provides the company with a competitive advantage.  Clearly the company stumbled by not moving sooner or better managing their ERP implemenation.  Perhaps they could have done better had they better leveraged up-front analysis and requirements work, but in the end the BI system kept the company moving forward until the combined ERP/BI systems were fully in place.