Business Intelligence: 2011

Monday, December 5, 2011

December Newsletter

As we get ready for the holidays and prepare to welcome 2012, I want to share some of the exciting things happening at Dresner Advisory Services!

Research:

Our Third Mobile Business Intelligence Study has been completed and was published on October 31st! For this edition we were able to leverage our 2010 Mobile BI data to create some compelling year-over-year comparisons and contrasts! We've also included a Mobile BI buyers guide with side-by-side profiles for twenty-four vendors, with their current Mobile BI capabilities and plans for the next two years!

For those that participated in the Mobile BI Study, you'll be receiving instructions soon for accessing your complimentary research findings. For all others, we have posted this study, along with the rest of our research on our member site (see below).

In January we'll "kick off" our third annual Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study ® research project, where you'll be able to rate your favorite (or not so favorite) Business Intelligence vendor! This year we're adding a 33rd measure: "Vendor Integrity"! Look for upcoming information regarding your participation. Remember, all qualified user participants receive a complimentary copy of the research findings!

BusinessIntelligenceInsider.com

Our member site BusinessIntelligenceInsider.com, is six months old and membership continues to grow steadily. This site is designed for Business Intelligence professionals seeking resources to help achieve best practice BI. It's here that we host all of our research reports, buyer's guides, customer podcasts, interactive data applications, webinars, recorded seminars and weekly #BIWisdom TweetChats. And, we're adding new content all the time.

New research content this month includes our 3rd Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study Findings Report and a Special Report on Tableau Software. Additional upcoming Special Reports will include Actuate, Information Builders and Oracle.

Recent customer podcasts include : Bruce Yen of GUESS discussing "infrastructure" for Mobile BI and veteran BI expert Chuck Hooper (BIAlytics) with how to create killer KPIs.

Membership is just 199 dollars per month. Please visit the site www.businessintelligenceinsider.com for more details.

Weekly TweetChat

Each week I facilitate a weekly Twitter TweetChat focused on Business Intelligence. It takes place every Friday at 1:00 PM Eastern and covers a wide range of topics. Participants include users, IT professionals, practitioners, other industry analysts and even a few vendors.

Recent topics included: the future of Business Intelligence, Social BI and several HBS-style case studies. Our latest objective is to offer a "clinic" (of a sorts) for user organizations seeking to leverage the #BIWisdom expertise bank. Please let us know if you'd like to serve as the subject at one of these sessions.

An outgrowth of this forum has been my #FutureBI Working Group, comprised of 10 regular TweetChat participants, or "tribe members" as they like to call themselves. We have been meeting (virtually) for the past several weeks and are developing some scenarios to help anticipate and articulate the evolution of BI. More on this as we make progress.

I encourage you to participate - or at least listen in. The "hashtag" is #BIWisdom.

Press Coverage:

Over the course of the past month, we've received some great coverage in the trade press. Here are some of the articles:

Six Recommendations for Implementing Business Intelligence Solutions - Sandhill.com December 5, 2011

Salesforce Makes Mobile Move - EnterpriseAppsToday - December 5, 2011
Survey spotlights mobile business intelligence as top priority - SearchBusinessAnalytics - December 2, 2011
Business Intelligence is Going Mobile - EnterpriseAppsToday - November 28, 2011
Mobile Business Intelligence Goes Mainstream - Datamation - November 16, 2011
Editor's Note: Endings, Beginnings and The Path Along the Way - Information Management - November 10, 2011
Snapshot on The Importance of Mobile BI - Information Management - November 10, 2011

Website Makeover

This past month we launched our new and improved howarddresner.com website. This site serves as a resource for all things related to Dresner Advisory Services and me, Howard Dresner. In it you'll find recent articles, events where I'll be presenting, my Twitter feed, and other important links. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Thanks for your ongoing support!

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!

All the best,

Howard

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Solution to Case Study from November 18th #BIWisdom TweetChat

Hello Folks.

On November 18th, we had a lively discussion surrounding the case study provided by fellow #BIWisdom "tribe" member, Peter Evans.

Leading up to Peter revealing his solution, there were quite a few excellent suggestions for how one might handle a similar situation. Those details can be found in Twitter by searching for the hashtag #BIWisdom. We also archive all of the weekly TweetChats on our member site BusinessIntelligenceInsider.

Below is Peter's solution:

"My solution was to develop a use case and present this to the CEO and the team and then introduce my solution to the CIO as a tactical solution – giving them the opportunity to develop a strategic solution.

Because of my approach I was allowed access to an instance of an RDBMS server and could therefore build a complete application based on a the desktop database tool available connecting to an RDBMS Backend which was used to connect to the banks BI semantic layer along with their operational systems data. Using desktop database tool I built a load and transform system with the ability to import data via the desktop to be added to the end results. Reporting was done via automation of the desktop spreadsheet application via the desktop database tool and auto population of a dashboards and individual and group reports which were then uploaded via code to a web server application and also emailed to the recipients as pdf files."

Our thanks to Peter for the case study and the great discussion that ensued!

Best,

Howard

Visit our new member site!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Case Study for November 18th #BIWisdom TweetChat

Folks,

Peter Evans (@EvansBI) has provided the following case study for discussion this coming Friday at our #BIWisdom TweetChat.

Please review this case and come prepared to discuss!

Our thanks to Peter.

See you on Friday!

Best,

Howard
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scenario:

Large International Retail Bank with Corporate BI System + Operational Systems + Externally generated survey reports and Operational Metrics. Having just been taken over by an external bank the Service Quality Team had a requirement to generate reports and a service quality scorecard to improve the business customer perception and profitability within the marketplace within a six month period.

You are hired specifically by the Business as opposed to the IT Department as there was already friction between the two teams due to past BI implantation failures – You are replacing a team of developers who had been brought in from the new banks IT Department for a three month period – and had left the unit with an Access database which had to be manually changed each month to the point of the non technical business users re-writing access queries and then running them to get each months reports – and the database was growing exponentially due to very poor data management.

Your problems are how to deal with an IT Team who thinks they are under threat not just from you but also the IT Department of the incoming bank. The Business unit employees were also very skeptical as they were made up of both analysts and managers and thought that if the process is automated they could lose their jobs, and finally since you are working for the business you have very little access to any IT infrastructure to make it all work.

As a BI Consultant/Developer what would be your approach.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Cover Letter from our 3rd Mobile BI Market Study

Below is the "cover letter" from our latest (3rd) Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study, which "nets out" our observations and views on the subject: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we started researching the Mobile Business Intelligence (BI) phenomenon over a year ago, we knew we were on to something important, but it wasn’t obvious where the journey would take us.

This findings document marks our third published report on the subject since mid 2010 and offers the clearest picture of progress to date. Having over a year’s worth of data to compare and contrast has been especially helpful in developing a higher fidelity; real-world perspective!

To be clear, we believe that we’re in the midst of a profound shift toward Mobile BI (and mobile computing). We believe this paradigm shift will affect everyone and have as much impact as the Internet did, over time.

This latest findings report shows strong evidence that Mobile BI is taking hold - broadly. Although current adoption, plans and perceptions may vary, this is a global phenomenon - across all geographies, industries, functions and organization sizes.

There are also more choices for organizations than there were in 2010. More and better mobile platform options have emerged – with an abundance of new tablets. And BI software suppliers have invested heavily, offering a much more complete menu of mobile options.

However, there are significant risks and challenges along the way. A proverbial “moving target” of hardware and software standards presents difficulties to both customers and suppliers alike. And, the risk of privacy and security breaches remains at the forefront of industry challenges.

Nevertheless, the Internet is an apt analogy. How do we work differently now than before the Internet “revolution”? What we take for granted: our ability to effortlessly find, create and share information and to readily collaborate with others – was impossibly difficult before it.

Likewise, what will be the impact of Mobile BI - with information and insight literally following us - wherever we are; whenever we need it? It will change the way that we work, our ability to respond more quickly and to align towards common purpose. This notion of pervasiveness has always been the mission of BI, which may now finally be realized with the catalyst of mobile computing.

So what should organizations do with this information? To quote Pasteur, “Luck favors the prepared”. In this spirit, we must all prepare for and embrace Mobile BI, or risk getting left behind.

We hope that this findings report – and our other research – will help guide the way and better increase your chances for success with Mobile Business Intelligence.

Best,

Howard Dresner

President, Founder and Chief Research Officer

Dresner Advisory Services, LLC

Friday, October 28, 2011

Mobile Study TOC

Hello Folks,

Below is the Table of Contents from our 3rd Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study Findings Report.

The report will contain 62 pages of analysis and commentary, including over 40 charts and tables, plus side-by-side vendor and product capabilities and plans - through 2013!

The report will be released to enterprise licensees first (October 31st) and then will be posted to our member site on November 21st.

Best,

-----------------------------------------------

Contents

A Note from the Author: 6

Executive Summary. 7

Introduction: 8

Method: 8

About Howard Dresner and Dresner Advisory Services: 9

Study Demographics: 10

Functions Represented: 10

Figure 1 - Functions Represented. 10