Call for entries for the prestigious ITWeb Business Intelligence Awards

Does your business intelligence (BI) project stand out from the rest?

Be sure to enter your BI implementation into the ITWeb Business Intelligence Innovation & Excellence Awards 2013. These awards are a unique opportunity for BI practitioners to be acknowledged, and provide a platform to promote the most outstanding local implementations.

Now in their fourth year, the prestigious awards recognise the best and most pioneering BI projects in the country. The awards are open to end-user organisations that want to enter their BI initiatives and share the BI journeys they have taken.

The awards emerged from ITWeb's BI Summit, an event that has established itself as the platform for BI practitioners to share knowledge, experience and ideas.

"We realised there were impressive local BI implementations that very few people knew about," says Ranka Jovanovic, ITWeb's editorial director and one of the ITWeb BI Awards judges. "The objective was, firstly, to recognise unique, innovative solutions for particular business needs, and secondly, to share their best practice examples with other BI practitioners.

"We are happy to have highlighted truly world-class BI projects over the past years- SARS, Engen, Foschini Group, Sanlam- and we look forward to discovering others who are pushing the BI boundaries in their organisations," Jovanovic notes.

Joining Jovanovic on the judging panel is Dr Barry Devlin, founder and principal of 9sight Consulting. "To me, the value of the awards in the broad marketplace is getting visibility of business intelligence with the business people," says Devlin. "The real value of BI is in improving decision-making - faster, better, etc. But the BI process to get there is not always obvious. Success stories and recognition by the industry help to sell the process and link it to business value."

When it comes to selecting finalists, Devlin looks for business value, as well as a project that is different and exciting: "BI has existed for some time. I look for something that stands out, and gives the particular organisation an advantage we haven't seen before in South Africa.

"From a technical point of view, one thing I look for is cross-platform/cross-line business integration," notes Devlin. "A real challenge is bringing consistent information together across different divisions of the business- achieve that and the broad adoption of BI by business users will grow rapidly."

Also on the judging panel of independent experts is Bill Hoggarth, head of BI at CQS Technology Holdings. The deadline for entries is 30 November 2012. The 2013 awards will be presented at the annual ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit, on 26 February 2013.

Finalists will enjoy marketing exposure in the lead up to the BI Summit & Awards 2013, and will receive two complimentary passes to attend the event.

For more information about the ITWeb BI Excellence & Innovation Awards, clickhere.