Business Intelligence Software's Time Is Now

The recession is fostering interest in BI software, which helps companies analyze the data they collect for new cost-cutting or sales opportunities

By Rachael King

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With restaurants stretching from Seattle to the Osan Air Base in South Korea, the Chili's Grill & Bar chain gets a lot of visitors. For parent company Brinker International, that makes for a lot of Triple Dippers to keep track of. Also the owner of such chains as On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, Brinker has to gather information on sales, inventory, and other operations at 1,700 restaurants in 27 countries that receive more than 1 million customers a day. An even bigger challenge, though, is sifting through all that data, organizing it, and then using it to make the business run more profitably.

Making smart use of that information is all the more urgent as customers dine in more often and spend less even when they eat out. Amid falling revenue, Brinker (EAT) already has resorted to cutting jobs and shutting restaurants. "At Brinker, we are not waiting for external actions to strengthen our company," Brinker CEO Doug Brooks said during an earnings conference call on Jan. 22. "We have taken considerable steps to remain competitive and position our brands for accelerated profitability once the economy eventually does improve."

One of those steps is analyzing the reams of data the company collects at its restaurants. Using what's known as business intelligence software, Brinker gets a better handle on consumer spending patterns to make a host of decisions, from altering staff levels to moving around menu items. Interest in business intelligence software is on the rise, analysts say, as economic woes force companies to pursue profit by delving deeper into the information already at their fingertips. "There's a tremendous pressure on cost containment, on developing accurate forecasts of sales and expenses and trying to align the expense stream with projected revenue stream," says John Van Decker, research vice-president at research firm Gartner (IT).

Top Priority for CIOs

Business intelligence software can bring together data from disparate parts of the company. Once that happens, companies can do analysis, run reports, and make predictions based on past performance. Some BI software lets companies weave in external information, such as the price of gas or the unemployment rate in certain regions, to better understand how market swings or economic trends are affecting customer behavior and the company.

Brinker used BI to help with a challenge faced by many restaurants: determining how many staff should work each shift—a task that can be especially daunting during a recession. The company tapped a restaurant performance management system built with Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence software. Among other things, this software can calculate, based on sales, the optimal staffing level during a particular shift at a specific restaurant.

BI software tops the list of technology spending priorities for companies in 2009, according to a Gartner survey of more than 1,500 CIOs worldwide released in January. That priority remains, even though IT budgets are expected to be essentially flat in 2009. Market researcher Forrester Research (FORR) expects the BI market to generate more than $12 billion in revenue in 2014, vs. $8.5 billion in 2008.