![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/men-who-plan-beyond-tomorrow-slide.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCommercial computers didn\u2019t yet exist, but business people already had a good idea of what computers would be used for: analytics! (And they were right: when commercial computers did finally arrive, in 1953, the very first business application was indeed analytics<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The ad creators pretty much nailed it. There\u2019s the big geospatial dashboard on the wall, and they\u2019re using video conferencing to review the figures provided\u00a0by \u201cmiraculous electronic devices.\u201d It’s clearly a sales planning call, and they correctly predicted that\u00a0\u201cintricate calculations of sales by territories will appear as if by magic in the digital age ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the headline is almost perfect: “For Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow”. Clearly, the gender issue needs fixing, but otherwise that would still work as an ad for analytics tools today (or, say, the title of a blog post…)<\/p>\n Note that even then, this vision wasn\u2019t really focused on the technology. It wasn’t about “dashboards,” “visualizing data,” “getting insights,” or “data storytelling” — it was about collaborating<\/em> around a key business process<\/em>, and making plan<\/em>s to change the future.<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, this\u00a0was actually an ad for Canadian whiskey<\/a> — a reminder of an era where executive decision-making and hard liquor went hand in hand!<\/p>\n Fast-forward to today, and technology is finally delivering on that futuristic vision with products like the SAP Digital Boardroom<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dashboards and other executive information systems are anything but new. But the information has typically been\u00a0backwards-looking and static, pre-calculated and loaded in advance\u00a0from various operational systems. Endless time is wasted debating the\u00a0validity and timeliness of the numbers. And the systems have been\u00a0inflexible — if anybody asks “well, but what about if we….?” the answer has to wait for the next meeting because the information just isn’t available.<\/p>\n Insights, decisions, and actions must be tightly aligned in a real decision-making process<\/strong>. This requires real-time information systems that lets executives get an overview of\u00a0insights from inside and outside the organization, and examine the details behind the high-level numbers. They need to be able to apply predictive algorithms, to understand how current events will affect future KPIs. And they need\u00a0tight links to scenario planning processes, so they can assess and compare different approaches to\u00a0problems facing the organization.<\/p>\n And these approaches shouldn’t be limited to executives. Every day, thousands of decisions are made around your organization. Telling stories with data can be\u00a0very powerful, but actually supporting decisions and actions is even\u00a0more powerful.<\/p>\n Oh — and the whiskey? That’s optional (but check your HR policies!)…<\/p>\n For more about products that combine business intelligence, predictive technology, planning, and support for decision collaboration, take a look at the following video or visit the SAP Digital Boardroom<\/a> site:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Executives should be able to\u00a0collaborate around key business decisions, powered by real-time information from every aspect of their business, at their fingertips. Not just seeing what happened in the past, but being able to predict what’s going to happen, and then acting<\/em>\u00a0on that information to\u00a0change the future.<\/p>\n