InfoWorld: Intelligence everywhere

Intelligence everywhere by Ephraim Schwartz :

If Y2K is remembered for getting companies to buy new hardware and upgrade old software, the latest driver of change, Sarbanes-Oxley, will be remembered for democratizing information and making accountability a companywide responsibility. Its reporting requirements make it mandatory that businesses hold everyone's feet to the fire.

Enter pervasive BI. Sometimes called situational BI, pervasive BI will mean that management at every level of the organization has access to intelligence and key performance indicators that are relevant and actionable. It ensures that the same kind of information is disseminated at every level down the chain -- divisional, departmental, and regional -- to a local team leader using the same dashboard interface.

I'm not sure if SOX is the real catalyst, but I do think BI is well overdue to start working it's way down to the line managers, which are the ones who can take immediate action on what they see.