BI for Everyone
Cindi Howson is the most thorough and detail-oriented industry analyst in the business intelligence market. The author of the book Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App, Cindi also manages the BIScorecard website and runs a very popular “BI Bake Off” session at the TDWI conferences. Last week Cindi published a great article in InformationWeek week called The Road to Making BI Available to Everyone. Here are a few points that I think are worth highlighting from this article:
- According to her book, only 25% of workers use BI.
- “BI interfaces have to let data be presented in a multitude of ways in whatever interface is optimal and most familiar.”
- “For BI to become pervasive, companies must first see data as a strategic asset to be exploited.”
- For frontline workers, “BI embedded into their operational applications is the way to deliver it.”
- “Rich internet applications are transforming once static Web-based BI from boring to fun.”
- “For BI to be pervasive, it has to be affordable. Conventional licensing models with high per-user costs–typically over $1,000 per user–stand in the way of this goal.”
- “Established vendors and startups also are turning to software as a service to cut BI deployment and staffing costs.”
- “Specialty BI SaaS vendors such as LucidEra, PivotLink, and Oco offer pre-built, hosted extractions and applications, ideal for companies with minimal IT staffing.”
While she does fall back on the usual recommendations of IT and business alignment and the need for “competency centers” - messages targeted primarily at very large organizations grappling with disparate systems and sunk-cost investments; the article provides some excellent guidance on how to make business intelligence “pervasive” and includes some great survey data on overall usage and adoption.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 2:43 pm
Comments
Dhiren Gala
Posted on 24th February, 2008
Darren, operational BI gives power to the business users to define ad hoc reports thereby converting data to decisions. Take for eg. 1KEY BI Software from MAIA Intelligence which is user friendly, highly interactive interface coupled with multi formatted visually stunning data presentation layers. Traditional BI is limited to few expert users only.
BI today can be embedded into any application which is the best way to deliver BI. BI vendors with their OEM partners deliver BI embedded along with the operational application.
BI today offers web interface with visually stunning reports with animated guages, dashboard, charts, etc.
BI to be deployed across the enterprise wide among the operational business users should be affordable. Vendors like MAIA Intelligence with 1KEY have really made it possible.
Traditional BI cannot be deployed enterprise wide due to its complex useability.
James
Posted on 25th February, 2008
The idea of “BI for the masses” or “BI for everyone” has been around for years.
SiSense Prism is a product that truly does this.
Not only can you perform extensive OLAP-like analytics on ANY data source without having to undergo data warehousing projects or cube creation, you do it without hurting your pocket.
SiSense prices are ridiculous in comparison to its competitors, and compared to software prices in general.
Take it for a test drive immediately. Just register, download and get going!
Ken Rudin is the VP of Market Development at LucidEra. He co-founded the on-demand business intelligence company in 2005. Ken is a veteran of the rapidly growing software as a service industry with over 7 years of experience as an executive with leading on-demand software vendors. These include roles at Salesforce.com, at Netsuite (as an advisor), and at Siebel's on-demand division.
Darren Cunningham is the Director of Product Marketing at LucidEra. Prior to joining LucidEra he was the Category Director for salesforce.com AppExchange Analytics and Data Management. Before joining the on-demand world, he spent over 7 years at Business Objects.
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