The changing face of BI

Lessons learned...BI recommendations

I recently posted something similar on my end user connection for mid-market companies on BeyeConnect. But as I've been doing some research and working on a general market landscape report, interviewing companies using BI, etc. I am starting to see some trends in relation to how organizations would do things differently if they had it to do over again.

So far, the three things I've heard most in terms of how organizations would do things differently, or in other words, general lessons learned, are as follows:

   1. generating buy-in beforehand because, in many cases, it is difficult to gain adoption when end users aren't involved in the process (whether because they feel they are being forced to use a new solution or don't trust the data, etc.)

   2. training and whether to take advantage of formal training or spend time learning the solution(s) independently

   3. not understanding the full breadth of functionality beforehand, thereby spending a lot of time tweaking reports and metrics identification (in some cases, this also relates to the collection of business requirements as well)

How Your Medium-Size Business Can Join the BI Revolution

Earlier this week, I recorded a Webinar with Birst that focused on helping mid-market companies take advantage of BI solutions targeted to small and mid-sized companies. The overall gist was the fact that because of market and technology changes over the past few years, organizations beyond the enterprise market can now take advantage of solutions that may have previously been out of their league. For more information and to access a recording or the slides, follow to links below.

Recorded Webinar and slides:
http://info.birst.com/g/?QZR4IT9N73=clicksrc:lw

Slides only:
http://www.birst.com/pdf/Wise%20May%2026%202009.pdf

Do SaaS solutions really cost less?

As organizations discover the value of software as a service/on-demand BI, its adoption is becoming more mainstream.  Even though touted as targeted to mid-market companies because of the lower costs and lack of on site management, the reality is that many enterprise organizations are deploying on-demand BI solutions at the departmental level. Although this is a fairly widely known fact, I wonder whether SaaS based models will still be more cost effective in the long term? With the increasing availability of on-premise solutions that are less costly and more user friendly, or business user centric, I wonder if the hype of SaaS will continue to increase within the market or whether alternative solutions, or those that are considered mainstream will start to make more inroads into companies that are looking for low cost BI and choose SaaS due to its lower subscription fees.

BI podcast with ebizQ

Check out my recent podcast with Jessica Ann Mola at ebizQ that discusses less expensive BI options available to offset the economic downturn.  Also, we've addressed the increasing role of Web 2.0 and social networking within the work of BI and the overlap of master data management and data governance:

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/2009/05/where_will_bi_fit_in_lyndsay_w.php

Yes, it's a lot in a short podcast, but definitely a decent overview of these topics.

BI for retail

Today BVI Networks announced the release of RetailNEXT, a retail focused BI solution. Aside from looking at more information than simply what is collected within a POS solution, the way video is captured and analyzed is a great example of how unstructured data can be incorporated into various BI applications. Information about how many people entering a store, where they stop, how they browse, and conversion rates can be translated into valuable information to help retailers identify the success of campaigns, placement of merchandise, etc.  Although BI has been available to retailers for awhile, this has been one area of slow adoption.  I partially wonder if that is because of the lack of truly targeted solutions that can meet the business requirements of retailers without having to spend the additional time customizing and integrating various systems and information types.

Join my BI for mid-market community

It's up and running - the end user connection for mid-market BI!  Looking forward to having you as part of the community - my main goal is to create a community to share experiences, frustrations, successes, network with peers, drive research and content, and basically create the community you want where mid-market companies can discuss BI from a viewpoint that reflects what is happening in your companies.

Looking forward to meeting you all and generating some great content.

http://beyeconnect.com/join/wise 

Will mid-market solutions become mainstream offerings?

Adoption of BI as a service is on an increase as organizations look for ways to get more out of their systems and do not want to invest in solutions that do not show immediate results.  In addition, smaller and newer entrants to the market say they can offer solutions quickly and without a lot of IT management.  So even though these solutions are targeted towards mid-market companies, doesn't it stand to reason that enterprise organizations will slowly shift their adoption patterns towards more cost effective and easier to manage solutions?  Out of anyone it seems as if these larger organizations will benefit most from these solutions.  Even though there will always be a market for the larger mainstream vendors, the question becomes whether their market share will lessen as organizations look for ways to easily integrate analytics into their operational solutions without heavily investing in IT infrastructure and long term maintenance.

Back to the basics

There has been so much written about how to optimize dashboard design, develop effective Key Performance Indicators, and how to use dashboards independently or within a full BI framework.  What seems to be missing is the bare bones essentials of what makes dashboards and data visualization applications useful to organizations, what options are out there, and how various players differ from one another on a high level.  This is one of the endeavors I've undertaken this year - to help organizations sift through the data visualization market by identifying how dashboards can add value to organizations, what solutions are available, and where these solutions fit in relation to one another (on a high level - of course!). 

Hopefully, bringing the look at BI value back to the basics will provide additional value and help organizations that may find the market confusing (I know I would if I didn't speak to vendors on a daily basis - and even so, differentiations, inherent value, etc. can become a blur after awhile). So far, solution providers such as IBM(Cognos), QlikView, Klipfolio, Visual Mining, Corda, InetSoft, just to name a few and in no particular order, have participated by filling out a survey that identifies product and service offerings, some key features, and general market fit.  

Anyway, even though I've done some preliminary research based on the results, the final close date is the end of March.  I'm looking forward to seeing the results and will keep you posted as some of the results come in.

Back from TDWI

Last week I attended TDWI in Las Vegas.  Normally by talking to people at conferences such as TDWI, I encounter general themes, trends, or points of interest that are becoming more pervasive in the market. For some reason, this time that didn't happen.  I am not sure whether this is because of the economic downturn, or because many vendors are waiting to announce new releases and general initiatives later in the year.  

There were, however, a few interesting things to note - first is the refocus on business value as opposed to the IT side of BI.  What I mean is that over the years there has been a recurring wish to help organizations identify how BI adds business value and solves business problems.  Unfortunately, because of the industry jargon and focus on infrastructure, this has not always been the easiest thing to achieve. Now, many vendors are working to once again turn their focus on the business value of business intelligence.  

Second, is the push towards mobile BI - but when I say mobile I mean having access to a full application that can be operated from anywhere as opposed to simply accessing reports or dashboards.  This is definitely something to watch for later on this year with new and enhanced product releases coming from several vendors.

Third and final, is the focus on either targeting services to enhance current offerings, or moving away from services towards a more self-service model whereby customers do not need extra training or consulting to manage and develop their solutions.  Either way, it will be interesting to see as the year goes on, whether focusing on increased service offerings will yield positive results in a difficult economy. 

In addition, I am referencing some of the announcements made at TDWI in case you would like some further information:

• DataMentors consulting
• Sybase IQ 15 
• Expressor and ETL conversion 
• Dataupia customer win  
• Aster Data VC funding 

SiSense dashboard winner

Towards the end of December I announced participation as a judge in the SiSense dashboard competition. Here is the winning dashboard:

The dashboard is used to track the thousands of orders that are sent to customers each month. One of the things I liked about this dashboard in particular is that as an outsider to the company I can automatically tell what they are tracking and what the overall status is.