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Blog: Richard Hackathorn

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BI and your Corporate Fantasy League

You have heard of the sports fantasy leagues for soccer, basketball and American football. You pick the best players for your own team and then, depending on the actual performance of the players, your team is awarded points. It is a popular game, with over 15 million people involved generating about $2 billion annually, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

An article in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye because fantasy games are being applied in other areas. There are now fantasy games about the US Congress, music recording, box office movies, fashion, celebrities, soap operas and even husbands. The last one was intriguing. You select from a pool of real-life husbands who are polled on what they would do in various relationship situations. If your fantasy husband called the divorce lawyer, you lose points!

How does this relate to Business Intelligence in corporations?

Imagine a fantasy game about your company. This ‘serious’ game is open to all employees who have dreams of running the company. Establish several performance criteria, like sales, cost-of-goods and new accounts for the month. Teams choose their mixture of corporate strategies. Based of predictive analytics from the BI system, the corporate simulator cranks through the numbers and computes a performance dashboard for each team. (Here is where the miracle occurs!) Calculated performance is compared to actual, so that the fantasy teams compete against the actual management team!

Yuck it up! Give cash prizes for best performance. The Board of Directors might consider changes in top management slots based on the results. American idol meets Corporate America.

It is the next-gen version of the suggestion box. Besides, it has the potential of getting employees to think more deeply about their company and realize that big decisions are tough ones.

Posted by Richard Hackathorn on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |

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