Lefatshe has become increasingly focused on providing leading edge information systems tailor-made to our clients needs. With sever successful implementations to our name we continue to push the envelope on what can be done with the wide range of tools, techniques, methodologies and best practices relating to BI & MIS solutions. There are subtle differences between BI & MIS disciplines although the subjects overlap considerably and the terms may often be used interchangeably.

Lefatshe defines Business Intelligence (BI) as any computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analysing 'factual' business data, such as performance by service line or departments or associated vs. Quality of service. Objectives of a BI exercises include

• Performance & Risk Analysis: Understanding the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Risk Indicators (KRI) of people processes and even critical supporting technologies,
• Organisational Analysis: Understanding of an organisations internal and external strengths and weaknesses,
• Decision Support: Understanding of the relationship between different data for better decision making,
• Innovation: Detection of opportunities for innovation or required change, and
• Cost Control: Cost reduction and optimal deployment of resources.

Lefatshe defines Management Information Systems (MIS) as the organised approach to the study of information needs of a management at every level in making operational, tactical, and strategic decisions. Its objective is to design and implement man-machine procedures, processes, and routines that provide suitably detailed reports in an accurate, consistent, and timely manner. Modern, computerised systems continuously gather relevant data, both from inside and outside the organisation. This data is then processed, integrated, and stored in a centralised database (or data warehouse) where it is constantly updated and made available to all who have the authority to access it, in a form that suits their purpose.

What differentiates MIS from BI in Lefatshe's view is that MIS is a more operational tool that looks at the granular and tactical aspects of the entire business giving information that drills down to every person, process, transaction or business activity. BI on the other hand takes a more strategic and high-level view of the business or whatever subject mater under examination giving statistical views and comparisons, patterns, trends, directions, and other macro views of the business.

BI and MIS solutions should make it intuitive for information workers from low level operations through to the executive to interactively navigate and explore data/information rather than attempting to anticipate all the ways in which information workers may seek to drill down into data resources. With increasingly powerful database management systems (DBMSs), rapid expansion in XML data management, Lefatshe sees unprecedented opportunities to advance business performance through improved data management for our clients.

Our BI/MIS offerings include:

• Information Architecture & Data Architecture
• Model Driven Architecture e.g. Common Warehouse Meta-model (CWM)
• Data Integration & Transformation
• Data Quality Management (DQM)
• Data warehousing (DWH)
• Data mining (DM) (Historical & Predictive Analystics)
• Data Matching & Analysis
• Online analytical processing (OLAP)
• Real-time data analytics
• Geospatial Information Systems (GIS)
• Advanced Visual Analytics
• Executive & Operational Dashboards
• Enterprise Reporting & Notification