by Jessie Rudd, PBT Group, January 2012

“More information will be created in the year 2009 than in all recorded history up until that year” (sourced at www.jsgilbert.com).Anyone with an opinion, a java enabled cell phone or a computer can and will air that opinion on any one of a million or more social media sites. Access is relatively cheap and easy. There are no qualifications required and things like literacy, intelligence, objectivity have no bearing on what is said by the masses. A thought, idea, joke, whether benign or malignant, can go viral in a matter of minutes. Careers have been made. Reputations ruined. Corruption has been exposed. Governments have fallen. Small town local businesses suddenly cater to an international audience. Companies have been born and others destroyed.In an age of information overload, the consumer has truly become king on an unprecedented scale. They are taking to the internet to air their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with everything from government to product to service delivery – often in overwhelmingly huge numbers.Any company concerned with ‘brand opinion’ simply cannot afford to ignore this font of endlessly changing and churning information.

By Martin Rennhackkamp

With the more technical aspects of IT taken over by the CTO, the role of the CIO has changed to focus only on the sourcing, provisioning and delivery of information as a strategic organizational resource. The BI competency is the primary group that he uses to implement this. However there are some technologies such as mobile BI and cloud computing that the CIO must be very aware of, as they can play a key role in the execution of his strategic initiatives.