Easier and Lower Cost Business Intelligence

I spoke to so many people at Dreamforce this week who:

1. Were struggling to bring together data in complex spreadsheets in order to analyze data from multiple systems (see this short presentation on Excel Hell as an example).
2. Believed that in order to get historical analysis of transactional data (even shapshots!) a costly and time-consuming data warehouse project was required.
3. Knew nothing about the business intelligence market and the options that are available to them.

Long-time industry analyst and BI thought leader Colin White has just published a great article called, The Need for Easier and Lower Cost Business Intelligence. He provides an overview of some of the disruptive new solutions that are gaining traction (including SaaS), each addressing the fundamental cost and complexity issues that have plagued traditional vendors in this space. The bottom line?

“There is no question that customers are looking for easier and less costly BI approaches, and this will open up the marketplace to new BI vendors, and to new and disruptive BI technologies.”

posted by Darren Cunningham at 11:02 am

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Alan S. Michaels

Posted on 22nd September, 2007

At Dreamforce, were there any corporate planners in the room?

As a professional strategic planner for 22 years, and a reader of BI blogs for about 3 months, I’m trying to understand why it seems that corporate planning, which typically sets the bar for required business unit planning and competitive intelligence, is not also driving business unit standards for BI (strategic, financial, and operational BI – aligned with corporate goals).

Is my observation above correct?
If yes, is there is good reason why this is so?

From someone trying to bridge the gap.

Darren Cunningham

Posted on 24th September, 2007

Hi Alan. The majority of the attendees at Dreamforce were Sales and Marketing, with growing numbers in IT given their platform-as-a-service direction. Over the last few years corporate budgeting and planning has definitely gained mindshare with the BI vendors as they have all moved to performance management solutions. The result has been numerous acquisitions. Nigel Pendse has done a nice job of keeping track of the market consolidation here: http://www.olapreport.com/consolidations.htm

The problem is that corporate planning driving BI strategy doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of delivering more timely and relevant information to people where and how they work. That’s why new approaches like software-as-a-service are getting so much attention right now in the traditional BI market.
Let me know if you’d like to discuss. I’m sure others have some interesting perspectives on your question. Thanks for the question.