Using analytics capabilities, the dashboards help traders create optimal trading strategies. The dashboards can also alert users by e-mail in real time if bids fall below a certain threshold required for the company to meet financial performance or plant commitments, according to Sipperly.

A key challenge to implementing the portal system, Sipperly noted, was persuading users to give up spreadsheets for automated systems.

Efforts to meld BI with business processes must include significant input from business users in addition to generating substantial ROI, said Rick Broughton, director of IT strategy atDunkin' Brands Inc.in Canton, Mass.

Dunkin' Brands, which operates 12,000Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins stores, is replacing its manual system for collecting retail data with one that ties BI data to business processes. So far, 300 users have been trained on the new system, with another 200 to be trained, Broughton said.

As IT personnel create the system, business users are being tapped as data stewards because "they know what the best data is and the source for it," he said.