by Jonathan Dale, Fiberlink

What do you do when you need to make a decision for something yet don’t have access to key information? Where do you start or whom do you turn to in order to get a foundation of knowledge? How long will it take to work with other people or ask them for the information, or worse, how often do you need to ask for it? How big of a pain is it to work with people sometimes?

Interestingly enough, that’s the situation many people are facing each and every day. Often, people are put in situations where they need to make business decisions, yet they are dependent on others to supply the information used to make those decisions. Conversely, there are employees who are always asked to produce or gather information only to pass it along to others. How do you think they feel?

To illustrate the point, here is a recent survey conducted during a live webinar hosted by InformationWeek and which I participated in. The question was asked, “How many times each month are you asked to provide information or reports to others who don’t have access to the information directly?”

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Source *The Top 5 IT Workflows to Simplify in 2010, http://links.maas360.com/simplifyITWebinar

Overwhelmingly, the results show that they are getting asked multiple times a month to provide information to folks who don’t have direct access to it.

Why on earth do so many people not have access to the information they need directly? I could understand this situation a few years ago. In 2010, no dice. In the age of SaaS and Business Intelligence solutions, I feel it should be the exception, not the norm. There is virtually no excuse why employees don’t have access to the data they need directly. Unless, of course, a company has not invested in the proper platform to distribute information and business intelligence to its employees. If you’re thinking that security concerns are the reason driving limited access, I will tell you that any good business intelligence platform comes standard with access management controls. You can easily designate who can see what content in order to protect that sensitive data. If your excuse is that rolling out a solution will take months and require heavy end user training, that is the farthest thing from the truth. SaaS solutions today can be rolled out overnight. End user training on these systems is minimal, since the reporting is designed for ease of use and decision-making. There really are no longer any excuses.

This really is independent of job function. Having access to critical business decision-making data directly is necessary for everyone. Without it, employees on both sides of the fence are not working as efficiently and effectively as they could. That’s not good for anyone or for business.

If you’re in the same situation as are many of the survey participants, start looking at the benefits a SaaS-based business intelligence solution can bring to everyone in your organization.

There is no substitute for getting what you want when you want it.

Check out the webinar on the  “The Top 5 IT Workflows To Simplify In 2010”