Paralysis vs. Agility
This recent article in the TDWI newsletter reminds us of many of the reasons we believe in Agile BI. The main thesis is that business intelligence pros shouldn’t aim for perfection in delivering toolsets and data to business users.
Instead, we must strive for agility and create an environment that allows our users to receive timely, relevant information.
In other words, successful BI enables agility in business decision making, and agility should start with the BI team itself. For example, BI development projects should not be delayed due to “paralysis by analysis” – that is, endless requirements gathering and excessive planning. read more…
IT Takes Back Seat to Users
I have been meaning to comment on an interesting study conducted by a long-time BI practitioner:
The majority of business intelligence projects implemented and deployed in the past two years were done outside of the IT department, according to a report by Howard Dresner, of Dresner Advisory Services. The former Gartner “Research Fellow” and father of the term business intelligence says only 49% of these new projects were done under the auspices of the IT department. Finance, sales and marketing, HR and other departments are now in charge.
We’re not surprised by these findings, but we don’t think this is equivalent to inmates running the asylum, as Mr. Dresner claims. In fact, we are fans of business-centric BI and development methodologies that rely on frequent and meaningful input from users. That’s the way to ensure BI apps answer real business questions and are embraced by end-users. Therefore, we see as a good thing the trend toward greater user and business involvement in BI projects. read more…
Brad Pitt: The Ultimate BI Hero?
Statistics-minded baseball fans are naturally excited about the pending release of the movie version of Moneyball , adapted from the Michael Lewis book about how the low-budget Oakland A’s used superior data gathering and analysis to compete against their much wealthier rivals. From 2000-2006, the team made the playoff five times, despite having one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball. Because of its success, the Moneyball approach to player evaluation and team management has been embraced by many other franchises.
A movie about “baseball BI” (and one starring Brad Pitt, no less!) and the huge buzz around IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy a few months ago (which we discussed here and here) suggests that BI and analytics are having their pop culture moment. But if this is to be more than 15 minutes of fame, BI practitioners might recognize a few lessons from Moneyball and see the opportunities for their own companies. read more…
BI Buzz: What Practitioners Are Saying
You can tell a lot about an industry by what its practitioners say about it when speaking among themselves. Business intelligence is no exception of course. This post by an industry watcher strikes us as relevant and revealing in terms of how much and how fast the conventional wisdom about BI’s role is changing. The big idea, captured in a word cloud, is that “BI is a tool” and its core purpose should be to be produce value for the business by delivering insights that can be used to make better decisions and improve business performance. read more…
Case Study: Fresh Insights & Clearer Visibility
Check out how Balanced Insight Consensus helped Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC), an organization owned by Subway franchisees, transform its ability to use massive amounts of data – including supply chain, sales and finance data produced daily – to manage the business more effectively.
The keys were to:
- Standardize data definitions
- Build end-user engagement around requirements
- Increase the velocity of BI project delivery.
Thanks to a superior business intelligence productivity and development experience, IPC’s IT team has enabled users to answer important business questions quickly and repositioned the BI function as a strategic partner for the business.
You can check out another Consensus success story in this guest post from Raphael Klebanov of WhereScape™ USA.
Business-Driven BI: The Momentum Continues
This report from Booz Allen on “Crafting Best-in-Class Business Intelligence” is more evidence that the momentum around business-centric BI continues to gather steam. The key points:
- “The reason that most companies aren’t getting the most out of their business intelligence has nothing to do with the software itself.” (A point Jim Gallo made recently.) read more…
Stop the (BI) Insanity
Our friend Jim Gallo nails one of the most common issues in business intelligence:
When the BI team (too often synonymous with the IT group) finds itself squarely in the middle of major business dissatisfaction and low adoption rates, there seems to be a tendency to place the blame squarely where it doesn’t belong, namely the BI tools. read more…
That is the core question raised by this article, which rather neatly sums up the new world for BI application developers as they deal with higher user expectations:
In 2011, BI users want to be able to simply pick up and use the technology — they don’t want to read the manual.
That means BI apps must be simple and intuitive enough to work without a huge training program or stacks of documentation. Is it a high bar? Yes. But IT groups should recognize the opportunity to make BI more pervasive across the enterprise and much more valuable to the business. read more…
The recording from Tuesday’s BI Knowledge Exchange with guest speaker Jim Gallo of Information Control Corporation is now available!
Click here for more background on the seminar
Do You Think BI Is Sexy?
The title of a recent post by Wayne Eckerson – “Sex Sells, Data Delivers” – caught our eye for fairly obvious reasons. As catchy as the headline is, he’s making a serious point that reflects important strategic trends in business intelligence.
By “sex,” Eckerson means the visual displays or user interfaces that can excite and attract IT executives who purchase BI tools, as well as business analysts. He adds some useful tips for trying to improve the visual presentation of data as a means to improve user adoption. And that’s the big idea. Improved visuals and enhanced usability help companies generate more value from their investments in BI. read more…
