23 August, Johannesburg – a recently released KPMG survey entitled 'Improving Financial Performance in 2010' reiterates, amongst other business priorities, technology as playing a significant role to improve the overall financial standings of corporates, following the recession.

A recently released KPMG survey entitled 'Improving Financial Performance in 2010' reiterates, amongst other business priorities,technology as playing a significant role to improve the overall financial standings of corporates, following the recession.

Technology has a significant role to play in improving the financial standings of corporates as they emerge from the recession. This is one of the findings of of a recently-released KPMG survey entitled "Improving Financial Performance in 2010 and Beyond".

Having the right information, at the right time and in the right format ensures that strategic, well-informed decisions can be made, mitigating risk. Local firms in today's global village operate in art environment in which events in the global marketplace - which these firms have no control over - have a direct impact, making strategic decision-making extremely difficult.

Tying together the fundamental business questions and building an intelligent enterprise is every CIO’s challenge. Martin Rennhackkamp, chief operating officer of PBT, discusses how to overcome it.Time have been rather though and IT spending budgets have been flat. Yet the time to be decisive and resourceful has never been greater. As a result, CEOs are being required to rethink and change their business models and CIOs are being forced to think about information differently. Business Intelligence (BI) is not an end in itself, rather a foundational tool which provides CIOs with the opportunity to do just that, and to ensure business enablement not only during tougher economic times but for the future.

In a typical business intelligence (BI) architecture, data will flow from various source systems to the exploitation environment. The data passes through a staging (STG) area, possibly an operational data store (ODS), a data warehouse, as well as a data mart (in no particular order – depending on the methodology used) and then gets extracted into user reports.

Cape Town - Wooltru, one of the JSE’s oldest cash shells will finally get new operating assets. Wooltru - which until the late nineties housed retail giants like Woolworths, Truworths and Massmart – has secured a long-awaited deal that will see PBT Group reverse its operating assets into the cash shell. PBT’s main operating subsidiaries are PBT Technology Services and PBT Infosight (Pty) Limited, Stricklands Tetra Cape and a 50% stake in PBT Insurance Technologies.