The world is changing more rapidly than most of us could expect. It is becoming more and more instrumented which in turn increases data flows and interconnections. At least it is becoming more intelligent in terms of information processing to reveal new opportunities, make faster decisions and convert them into actions with predictable outcome. Business insight is becoming vital competitive advantage and despite that it is a hard job those who would like to keep their companies among leaders have to do that job constantly.

Any company has its own strategy to achieve its objectives but at least it must address three broad dimensions to succeed:

• Achieve more with less.
• Investigate new opportunities and exploit them.
• Act with speed.

Achieving more with less means focusing on value and realigning business to tightly manage volatility and risk. A focus on value assumes conserving capital and cutting expenses where little value is being created, as well as redeploying capital to activities, products, markets that generate growth, margins and true differentiation.
Organization strategies in the form of the forecasts and budgets have to emphasize their long-term focus on value through the ability to manage costs strategically as they optimize their operations for both effectiveness and efficiency.

Companies also need to seek and exploit opportunities to structurally reduce expenses, gain share, build key capabilities and through that to generate more value. The potential severity of the downturn will create opportunities to and. This requires ongoing insight and innovation with regard to products and services, customers and markets and even entire business model.

To win, companies will need to act with speed in order to be able to effect change at a faster and faster pace, in an environment that is increasingly complex and competitive.

Good news is that modern technologies could provide tools for superior insight and predictability to support management decision making and actions measurement.

How accurate are crucial forecasts such as customer demand and unit costs? How much time is spent debating the validity of the analysis as opposed to discussing its implications and taking action?
How confident are you that your company is focused on the right business metrics – the ones that truly drive business performance?
Which decision support processes should be centralized, and which should be placed within business units?

Growing intelligence of the world requires enterprises to become more intelligent as well. You could find different definitions of the intelligent enterprise but we would like to emphasize the following features:

• Develop own opportunities by providing more opportunities to customers, improving relationships, launching new products and services.
• Optimize the allocation and deployment of resources and capital to create more efficiency and manage costs in a way that aligns to their business strategies and objectives.
• Proactive risk management coupled with less vulnerability and greater certainty in outcomes.
• Predictive analysis and scenarios modeling to anticipate opportunities and risks versus to just reacting to or correcting actions.
• Enable and extend employees' insight and reach, as well as the authority to decide and act.
• Reserve the right to challenge the status quo while creating new opportunities and intelligent work with reliable information.
• Gather and process data from structured and unstructured sources of information and convert it into knowledge.
• Provide only the most relevant information to support timely decisions/actions closer to the point of impact and consequence.

Transition to the intelligent enterprise is the complex combination of different efforts within corporate business environment and not just the enhancements of the systems. But definitely systems which support business management and decision making via scenarios playing capabilities play a key role in company strategic goal to become smart and intelligent.