An estimated 25 million Americans play fantasy football each year. And Denis McFarlane, CEO of Infinitive, an operations management firm in McLean, Va., and a recent addition to Consulting magazine's Best Small Firms To Work For ranking, thinks the number should be even higher. He says anybody interested in corporate performance management and business intelligence would benefit from managing a fantasy football team. "Fantasy football sites," he says, "fulfill the grand promises of corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI)." Consulting magazine Editor-in-Chief—and fantasy football player—Joe Kornik sat down with McFarlane to discuss the Xs and Os of his strategic position.
Consulting: OK… this was one of the more unusual press releases we've ever received—fantasy football as the template for Effective CPM and BI?
McFarlane: The idea was really to raise awareness and get people thinking—it's not acceptable for any company not have the data it needs when it needs it. Here's an area—fantasy football—that allows people to get real-time data and make quick and well-educated decisions based on that data.
