Question

Explain why organizations are moving BI responsibility to IGO?

Answer 1

The essential elements of any BI (Business Intelligence) activity are

(1) Data Sourcing,
(2) Data Warehousing (Extraction, Transformation, Loading),
(3) Online Analytical Processing (Data Mining),
(4) Reporting (Data Analysis) and
(5) Decision Making

Alternatively the process can be sequentially presented as

(1) DATA STAGE(Collecting & Organizing)
(2) INFORMATION STAGE ( Summarizing)
(3) KNOWLEDGE STAGE (Analyzing & Synthesizing)
(4) ACTION STAGE (Decision Making)  

Therefore "business intelligence can be defined as a process of collection, storage and analysis of business relevant data by use of strategies and technologies to develop intelligent insights to aid decision making process for any organization". For example ease of doing business in the region, local government support for investments, the size of market, current solutions on offer, market gaps, opportunities, entry barriers, local rules and regulations, people's preferences, factors contributing to people's preferences, business potential, required strategy, required investments, profit and loss estimates, break even analysis and so on. The BI thus helps organizations decide on present and future course of action with respect to any region, country or market. The pool of data and inferences can also be used to understand historical experiences for organization(s) operating in a market and fine tune the strategy for present and future course of action.

Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) are international organizations composed primarily of sovereign states (member countries) or other intergovernmental organizations. They are established by treaties or other agreements that act as a governing charter for the group. The United Nations (UN), The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), European Union (EU), Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are some of the major Intergovernmental Organizations. Some IGO like WTO example enjoy special advantages in terms of power to develop procedures and make rules for international trade, settle disputes, make member adhere to rules and even penalize defaulting member states. The United Nations is the world's biggest intergovernmental organization responsible for maintaining world peace and security along with social objectives like poverty alleviation, gender justice, conflict resolutions, health care, human development and so on.

The very mandate of such large intergovernmental organizations empowers them to have access to local, country specific and region specific data to make policies and programs to carry out their roles and responsibilities. Member countries which are 195 for UN and  164 for WTO are responsible for sharing correct data and access to officials for data collection. World Trade Organization, World Bank along with other intergovernmental organizations is thus able to collect, store, process, analyze a lot of economic data on countries and regions and publishes it through its periodic reports like Ease of Doing Business Rankings (WB), Global Economic Prospects (WB), World Economic Outlook (IMF), The Global Report (United Nations Human Rights Council), Global Wage Report (International Labor Organization).

Thus a lot of Business Intelligence (Data, Processing, Analysis and Decisions) can be developed based on the important data gathered and presented by IGOs which may be very difficult and costly to access individually for every organization before making critical decisions regarding entry, sustainability, expansion or even withdrawal from a market. So while the ultimate decision with regards to business remains with every organization individually, a lot of BI can be sourced from reliable data collected, stored, analyzed and reported by IGOs to help organizations in decision making.