Bernard F. "Bud" Mathaisel, Senior VP and CIO, Achievo Corporation

Q: What is the biggest challenge for you as a CIO in integrating analytics within your organization?

A: " Data sourcing is my primary concern. Even the most capable analytics engines will produce meaningless analytics if the source data are wrong. Achievo has three major sources of operations information: our enterprise resource package, which contains the transactions and financial audit trail for the outsourcing work we do; our customer relationship management system; and our project management system, which contains workflow and details about how we execute to client engagements, most importantly those that involve onshore and offshore coordination.

The challenge is to pick the data elements out of each of these systems that are relevant to a particular set of analytics. We must further ensure that these elements are properly posted into our data model and that they accurately reflect the situation under analysis. If we want to know revenue and profitability for a specific set of customers that have come to us through our prior work and relationship with those clients, we are going to need access to all three of the source systems. Management must ensure that the data are accurate and reflect a view of the information that is relevant to the analysis, such as in the last six months, for example.

Because these are the capabilities that we sell outside the company, I have tools at my disposal to source the right data at the right time into a data model that can be used to create an effective business intelligence dashboard. "