Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

When flying a plane rapid real-time feedback with up-to-date information is vital. This relies on executive skill being able to read the instruments with on the ground teams to support them to get evaluate and pass on other key information for zenith to nadir control and for external risk impacting decisions. In business, it is no different.

I recently saw a Business intelligence job going at News Corporation.  It is a new function to support the business there where the Executive say the sky is the limit. I know the National Information Manager at News Corporation so I dropped him a note and asked him about the trend for such information management roles.

Such jobs now offering were not even about 5 years ago.  And especially to work for someone with experience and depth of understanding and with a leader track record to use information to make it happen. In the past such jobs would have been posted under planning and would have reported to planning manager. The emphasis and difference now is that business intelligence is about information and driving the business with both strategic and tactical analysis to give planning real teeth.

In his reply to me Steve Bennett said,

Like you, I really hope that more of these roles will appear. It has been a long time coming.

The good news is that I now believe that more companies are joining the ‘information arms race’. It also puts the heat on people such as ourselves to deliver the results long talked about. So life will be interesting in the coming years.

If I have to live with pressure, then this is my favourite sort.

Steve Bennett National Information Manager at News Corporation

Here are key points is the job specification

1. Inspire those around you by excelling at the exploitation of information. Make it a core competitive capability of News.

2. Create the national information strategy and the infrastructure that is going to drive performance over the coming years.

3. Mentor national projects enhancing News Limited’s information management capability and ensuring the usefulness of information.

4. Enhance and maintain our national business analysis capability through highly structured thinking with a solution focus.
The substance of his note tells its own story about the responsibility for information and how it is used doesn’t it?

About Steve Bennett

Being no newcomer to business intelligence himself and someone who has been in strategic and sharp ends of BI and IT since its inception Steve Bennett has also kept company with heavy weights like Howard Dresser and other such notables as a fellow Gartner Guru based in Europe and North America. In Australia now and based on Sydney he heads up the information function of News Corporation, the Media giant, to spearhead and mentor its competitive performance.

I am an regular reader of his blog http://analytics.typepad.com/

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