The Future of Business Intelligence
January 25, 2010
January 2010 Cover
Have you heard of Technology First? Technology First is a Dayton, Ohio based industry-led, industry-driven trade association dedicated to:
- Proactively Representing IT in the Region
- Increasing understanding of Technology First and its value
- Recognizing and promoting our membership
- Highlighting niche technology companies
Technology First looks to strengthen technology thought leadership by inspiring innovation, focusing on new ideas and best practices, presenting leading edge industry information that is both strategic to business and technical folks. They also look to inspire volunteer leadership by encouraging stronger member participation which involves more working committees and develops programming to best meet industry needs. Additionally, they look to engage in conversations with technology community by leveraging interactive social media.
I was asked to prepare an article on the Future of Business Intelligence. Imagine my surprise when that article was selected as their cover story this month! Click here to read. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Have a great week!
- Jodie
We Do BI Faster… Part 2
December 8, 2009
It’s been my experience that BI projects fail when the technical team fails to understand the urgency that exists with their customers. Failure also comes in the form of not delivering what was needed to answer the business questions or delivering in a format that doesn’t fit into the day-to-day way that the Customer does his/her job.
My son’s day-to-day life is impacted by data points. One of my sons has Type 1 Diabetes. It’s a pain to manage. There are numbers EVERY day!!! Right now he is tied to a Continuous Glucose Sensor and an insulin pump. (When I say tied…I’m not kidding…it’s really attached…by a 23” tube…24×7.) We receive data points every 5 minutes. On his pump, I can see a display that tells me what his BG is right now. It allows me to make decisions right now. What it does not tell me is how past decisions have impacted the current BG. It doesn’t tell me how actions I take now will impact future BG. I use my “gut” to determine what to do when his BG is high and requires insulin or low and requires some sugar. There are some pre-programmed “rules” that help me to make my decisions (e.g. it takes 1 unit of insulin to drop his BG 90 “points”). Displaying these data points on my son’s pump is great if he’s the only one making decisions. However, his dad, me, our doctor, my son’s teachers…all of us need to see the data to make the right decisions. More importantly, we need to see the historical data to understand the impact of past decisions. A tool does exist from his pump company that allows me to upload the data and view pretty graphs in PDF reports. But the data keeps changing…every 5 minutes…Isn’t the same true in business?
At a grocer…a shopper decides to buy Crest toothpaste and not Colgate (no offense to Colgate…but I’m in a P&G town). The shopper does this despite being sent oodles of coupons for Colgate. What does that data point tell me? Should I stop sending Colgate coupons to that shopper? If I start sending Crest coupons can I guarantee that the shopper will come back the next time they need Crest? Where will that decision get made? Where should the BI tool be?
At a utility company…right now, I get my bill at the end of the month and I pay it. I’ve set my thermostat back to 67 in the Winter and 74 in the Summer. I’ve seen a decrease in my bill over the last 12 months since I started doing this. But last night was COLD!!! I was so cold that I couldn’t sleep. What’s the impact of turning up my thermostat to 72 while I sleep? If the utility company decides to build me a BI app that sits on my PC and prints for me really pretty graphs, it does me no good when I’m lying in bed and want to make a decision on if it’s worth it to turn up the heat.
For a sales guy/gal…I enter all of my contact info in Salesforce.com. I have to send out my forecast to my boss, typically in Excel. Should the IT team give me Business Objects for me to see my past customer sales? What about Cognos?
When I design BI solutions, I try to make sure that the solution is delivered in a tool that I need and that makes sense to me. I don’t want my customers to require training just to look at their data. The tool should be easy for me, cuz analyzing the data is HARD!!! What are you giving your customers for data analysis? Is it a tool that’s easy for you to build? Or easy for them to see the data in the format that they need?