I guess
Black Friday, January sales and constant reminders of how many shopping
days are left before Christmas weren’t enough enough to entice shoppers
to hit the stores early and often enough in the holiday season. Now we
even have Pre-Black Friday and Green Monday. These seductive tactics to
entice people with something “special” reminded me of a discussion we
had at one my Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats.
When I asked my Twitter group of BI enthusiasts what would help to
rein in more users, it was apparent that they thought more self-service
functionality is needed in BI apps. They agreed that vendors have made
great strides in self-service BI (SSBI) but also agreed that vendors need to extend SSBI to advanced analytics.
The weekly #BIWisdom tweetchat is my favorite forum for BI
discussions because it brings out varying perspectives among users,
vendors and consultants and thus usually bubbles up effective real-world
ideas. In the following tweets you can see how they painted decision
making for improving the SSBI environment:
Should we “dummy down” advanced analytics for end users?
• No matter how good the information is, if a tool is too complex for
end users, they won’t use it. They’ll take the path of least
resistance. The more BI practitioners hide the complexity, the more
users will think it’s easy.
• Complexity can be hidden behind well-designed semantic layers.
• Users want things simple and want what they’re accustomed to daily:
Twitter, Google, Apple. And Twitter encourages over-simplification.
Should we train and educate the users better?
• Some tools require near-zero training to use. Pain comes from not understanding the data.
• Assuring data understanding is tough. Even with better visualization, it’s still a difficult problem to solve.
• I just saw a 3D map that could be rotated in a BI app. But does anyone really need that?
• Should it be a zero training approach or contextual help?
• Training in the abstract is tough, but training with live data is close to zero.
• Users have varying needs. They will care about data and information if
it’s relevant to their roles. Training is easier if it’s personalized
to their role.
Two of the group tweeted a viewpoint that buttonholed the real issue —
“It’s funny how BI is becoming part of consumer apps and the app world
is showing the IT world that the focus needs to be on UX / IX design;
yet BI vendors struggle with adoption.”
The #BIWisdom group agreed this is a critical distinction, especially
since a large part of the population is being raised, or switching to, a
‘mobile-first’ approach. The remaining discussion centered on the
vendors’ responsibility for SSBI and BI adoption. As you can see, their opinions varied:
• Tools need to be simple and fast, but it’s not all the responsibility of the vendors.
• BI users aren’t always the right people to ask about UX design. Take
me, for example: Give me a big table of numbers, and I’m set.
• Letting analysts design the UI results in a poor design.
• A BICC (BI Center of Competency) should include an expert in UX / UI design.
As the tweetchat wound down, they agreed on two aspects.
First, vendors that don’t focus on UX / IX design and self-service
functionality risk becoming irrelevant. “That’s the price of entry,”
someone commented. Most agreed that vendors aren’t focusing on design
and SSBI in their sales pitch.
Second, you can have the best data or information in the world, but
“pretty” matters because pretty and easy beat complete and complicated
every day of the week. “Develop an ugly dashboard and see what happens
to usage,” tweeted one participant. Someone else added, “Even the
placement and color of KPIs impacts usability.”
Bottom line: I recognize the validity of all their comments. But I
also recognize that problems are often perception more than reality. I
believe the issue around self-service BI is an education issue first and
a technology issue second.
I believe organizations need more education (and change management),
especially focusing on meaningful BI experiences. And I like the
community-based approach to developing solutions and UX / IX design;
this can make for more durable and more value-producing software. What
could be more seductive than higher value and return on investment?
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2013 Wisdom of Crowds ® Mobile Computing & Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC,
an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders
in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the
term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the
subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results
through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business
Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly
tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory
Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions
and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business
Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Dresner’s Point: How to Move the Needle in User Adoption
The topic of how to increase user adoption of business intelligence technologies generated a lot of opinions in a recent Friday #BIWisdom tweetchat.
The tweets started with opinions about what hampers user adoption. Some tweeted that the tangling of BI into the Big Data space causes confusion, it’s a mistake to try to get end users to adopt “analyst tools” and we must stop force-feeding generic analysis tools to end users even if they are “simple” to use. Someone tweeted that some organizations make the mistake of working only with power users who may have a vested interest in not expanding adoption to others. Many agreed that trying to change a user’s adoption of and interaction with BI tools on a daily basis is difficult; one tweet compared it to trying to change someone’s religion or belief system.
The conversation turned when a #BIWisdom tribe member stated that “BI encompasses people, process and technology; but most implementations focus on the technology and forget the people and process.” Others then chimed in with:
• BI should just be intuitive and just a part of other apps; users don’t want to think about doing BI
• Predictive analytics adds a lot of value; but it needs to be a part of users’ current desktop app, not a separate app
• Analytics should be placed inside business processes and link to actions rather than making users go to another system
• BI solutions should not be approached from a one-size-fits-all mindset
A participant tweeted that “Vendors need to push toward true self-service functionalities and super-easy user interfaces; self-service lies not in making generic tools simpler to use but in custom interfaces for specific tasks.” This tweet sparked comments comparing BI apps to mobile apps, as apps on smart phones and apps are very task oriented, enticing and focus on the end user. Mobile apps have the characteristics that “good BI” should have: agile, visual, interactive and intuitive. Unfortunately this seldom occurs.
Some tweeted that perhaps we should apply the mobile app model to business intelligence. Another participant added that “Every hour of training needed for BI technology cuts user adoption by at least 50 percent — compare that to the quick adoption of iPads and other tablets, which need no manual or training course.”
In the end, the group concluded that there is not enough focus on incentives. They agreed that bad analysis often goes unpunished and good analysis often goes unrewarded. “People who use BI technology well should be made into organizational heroes in internal communications and should be rewarded,” tweeted a tribe member. Organizations should praise people who demonstrate transparency and accountability as both are essential in an effective BI environment.
Along that line, someone added that organizations should also “identify employees who are against the necessary change management necessary to build a corporate culture that embraces fact-based analysis and accountability and then communicate to them the value/benefits of leveraging BI. That aligns with my own observation over the years that, without top-down strategic change management, an organization will not widely adopt BI.
Bottom line: A lot has changed, and the way we use technology today is vastly different from 20 years ago or even a decade ago. But one thing has not changed: technology adoption must be driven top down. If the CEO and other CxOs don’t believe in the technology, nobody else will either. My observance is that CxOs must embrace the technology; when they believe it is critical to their personal success, everyone else will get on board too. As soon as there is a hint that maybe the technology is not strategically important, people will treat it with denial and neglect.
There are some things that can be done to “move the needle” in BI user adoption, but nothing is as impactful as getting the CEO on board.
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2013 Wisdom of Crowds ® Mobile Computing & Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Dresner’s Point: Collaborative Technology Won’t Make You Collaborative
At one of our recent Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats, we talked about the findings in our 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® Collaborative Business Intelligence Market Study, which led to an insightful conversation about why some organizations haven’t adopted collaborative BI technologies and why some adopted it but failed to achieve the anticipated value.
We started with the group coming to an agreement as to what collaborative BI is. I tweeted that, at a minimum, it’s the ability to annotate, share and co-author in the context of the BI solution.
Others tweeted that it:
• Requires that people interact with other users, not just with visuals and data
• Is good for driving toward consensus and documenting the process
• Is important for distributed organizations where it’s difficult to have face-to-face meetings
• Enables collaborating with people one has never met
• Is good for addressing information that doesn’t lend itself to being captured nonverbally
We agreed that collaborative BI is a good mechanism for sharing explicit knowledge but face-to-face meetings are still the best way to share implicit knowledge. Facial expressions are an extremely important part of the context in sharing implicit knowledge.
If it’s so effective, why aren’t organizations jumping on the collaborative BI bandwagon and why have some not seen the anticipated ROI?
The #BIWisdom tribe had several observations:
• Some companies are not progressing fast enough on a BI maturity model.
• The technology is in an early stage and perhaps is not good enough yet to gain acceptance with an audience broader than early adopters.
• Mobile BI has so many collaborative features that people don’t realize collaborative BI technologies are different from mobile BI.
• It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon: Some organizations may have the right technology but lack a collaborative culture, yet others may have a collaborative culture but may not have implemented the right technology.
But what resonated most strongly with the tribe was the conclusion that adoption of collaborative BI technologies is a generational issue. Organizations that have a younger board tend to have younger collaborative business processes across the organization. Where top leadership is older, the organization often lacks top-down encouragement for a collaborative culture and incorporating feedback into the way it operates.
Short of the threat of ouster, embracing collaborative tech tools requires strong change management to build a culture change that understands the value added proposition leveraging collaboration. The group provided two examples of rigid organizational changes to implement a collaborative culture.
The first example was a failure. A large multinational telecommunication company undertook a strategy to change its culture. After 10 years the change has not been accomplished. The big learning is that the strategy was flawed from the beginning because they failed to identify all the actors and their differing stances.
The second example was an organization with 5,000 employees; five percent of them were involved in the change. This successful BI initiative was built on Yammer. The main ingredient it required was curiosity and a desire to improve. It took six months to really gear up, and it reached critical mass when everyone realized that they were solving problems collaboratively that they could not have solved in isolation.
Bottom line: Our Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats are actually a good example of collaboration. Participants (BI users, vendors and consultants) are remote, collaborate with no boundaries and leverage a chance to think “big picture.” Too often organizations throw technology at an underlying cultural issue. But collaborative BI technology is only an enabler for a culture that is already collaborative. The deployment of any business strategy needs to include a solid change management process, plan, strategy and enforcement/modeling from top management; this is especially true with collaborative BI. Collaborative technology will not make an organization collaborative.
2013 Wisdom of Crowds Collaborative Business Intelligence Market Study with Buyers’ Guide
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
We started with the group coming to an agreement as to what collaborative BI is. I tweeted that, at a minimum, it’s the ability to annotate, share and co-author in the context of the BI solution.
Others tweeted that it:
• Requires that people interact with other users, not just with visuals and data
• Is good for driving toward consensus and documenting the process
• Is important for distributed organizations where it’s difficult to have face-to-face meetings
• Enables collaborating with people one has never met
• Is good for addressing information that doesn’t lend itself to being captured nonverbally
We agreed that collaborative BI is a good mechanism for sharing explicit knowledge but face-to-face meetings are still the best way to share implicit knowledge. Facial expressions are an extremely important part of the context in sharing implicit knowledge.
If it’s so effective, why aren’t organizations jumping on the collaborative BI bandwagon and why have some not seen the anticipated ROI?
The #BIWisdom tribe had several observations:
• Some companies are not progressing fast enough on a BI maturity model.
• The technology is in an early stage and perhaps is not good enough yet to gain acceptance with an audience broader than early adopters.
• Mobile BI has so many collaborative features that people don’t realize collaborative BI technologies are different from mobile BI.
• It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon: Some organizations may have the right technology but lack a collaborative culture, yet others may have a collaborative culture but may not have implemented the right technology.
But what resonated most strongly with the tribe was the conclusion that adoption of collaborative BI technologies is a generational issue. Organizations that have a younger board tend to have younger collaborative business processes across the organization. Where top leadership is older, the organization often lacks top-down encouragement for a collaborative culture and incorporating feedback into the way it operates.
Short of the threat of ouster, embracing collaborative tech tools requires strong change management to build a culture change that understands the value added proposition leveraging collaboration. The group provided two examples of rigid organizational changes to implement a collaborative culture.
The first example was a failure. A large multinational telecommunication company undertook a strategy to change its culture. After 10 years the change has not been accomplished. The big learning is that the strategy was flawed from the beginning because they failed to identify all the actors and their differing stances.
The second example was an organization with 5,000 employees; five percent of them were involved in the change. This successful BI initiative was built on Yammer. The main ingredient it required was curiosity and a desire to improve. It took six months to really gear up, and it reached critical mass when everyone realized that they were solving problems collaboratively that they could not have solved in isolation.
Bottom line: Our Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats are actually a good example of collaboration. Participants (BI users, vendors and consultants) are remote, collaborate with no boundaries and leverage a chance to think “big picture.” Too often organizations throw technology at an underlying cultural issue. But collaborative BI technology is only an enabler for a culture that is already collaborative. The deployment of any business strategy needs to include a solid change management process, plan, strategy and enforcement/modeling from top management; this is especially true with collaborative BI. Collaborative technology will not make an organization collaborative.
2013 Wisdom of Crowds Collaborative Business Intelligence Market Study with Buyers’ Guide
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Mobile Business Intelligence - What are your views?
What are your views on Mobile Business Intelligence?
Data collection has begun for our 5th annual Wisdom of Crowds® Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study and we'd really value your input!
Click here to be directed to the survey!
Here are a few important reasons to participate:
1) Your participation supports a modern and wholly objective approach to industry research AND participants will receive a complimentary research report.
2) You get to weigh in and rate your Mobile Business Intelligence software vendors.
3) This study is NOT sponsored by vendors or anyone else. It is intended to provide an objective view into the market and reflect the experience and opinions of Mobile and Location Business Intelligence users.
Also, your personal information is kept completely confidential! We NEVER share it with any other parties, for any reason!
Click here to be directed to the survey!
Thank you in advance!
Best,
Howard
Data collection has begun for our 5th annual Wisdom of Crowds® Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study and we'd really value your input!
Click here to be directed to the survey!
Here are a few important reasons to participate:
1) Your participation supports a modern and wholly objective approach to industry research AND participants will receive a complimentary research report.
2) You get to weigh in and rate your Mobile Business Intelligence software vendors.
3) This study is NOT sponsored by vendors or anyone else. It is intended to provide an objective view into the market and reflect the experience and opinions of Mobile and Location Business Intelligence users.
Also, your personal information is kept completely confidential! We NEVER share it with any other parties, for any reason!
Click here to be directed to the survey!
Thank you in advance!
Best,
Howard
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Our Q3 Newsletter
Newsletter from Dresner Advisory Services
As we approach the final 3rd of 2013, we thought you might appreciate an update and progress report from Dresner Advisory Services.
It's been an especially busy year for us and we're pleased with what we've achieved and excited by what lies ahead.
Here are some highlights from this year:
Here are some highlights from this year:
Our Website: We've reorganized our website dresneradvisory.com and made it much more useful and accessible. On the home page you'll find our twitter feed, recent articles, latest blog entry and most recent research products.
We've also added a "complimentary research" section, with free articles covering essential topics related to Business Intelligence. Titles include: What Influences Value of Predictive Analytics?, Watch Out for the Credibility Gap in BI Data, Make Sure the Heat is on for Business Intelligence, Involve Customers and Suppliers in Your BI Chain and Are You Ready for the Mobile BI Diamond?
We encourage you to visit our website and welcome your feedback!
Research: We took on a pretty ambitious research agenda for 2013 and have succeeded in publishing a number of breakthrough market studies.
Our 4th annual flagship report - The Wisdom of Crowds ® Business Intelligence Market Study was expanded for 2013 and contains 124 pages of in-depth market analysis, with 80 charts and tables, 23 vendor rankings AND an exclusive 17-page buyers' guide! This buyers' guide compares and contrasts 22 BI vendor products across 19 key feature sets and 3 platforms: Traditional, Cloud and Mobile.
Our 4th annual flagship report - The Wisdom of Crowds ® Business Intelligence Market Study was expanded for 2013 and contains 124 pages of in-depth market analysis, with 80 charts and tables, 23 vendor rankings AND an exclusive 17-page buyers' guide! This buyers' guide compares and contrasts 22 BI vendor products across 19 key feature sets and 3 platforms: Traditional, Cloud and Mobile.
We published our 2nd annual Cloud Business Intelligence study in July with everything needed to assess this market phenomenon with 66 pages of in-depth market analysis, 50 charts and tables, 13 vendor rankings and a buyers' guide comparing and contrasting BI vendor cloud capabilities - including user BI features, cloud architectural support and cloud security.
And, we launched our inaugural Embedded BI study - focusing upon the requirement to make BI capabilities pervasive by including them as a part of other applications. Like our other thematic research reports, Embedded BI explores user perceptions and intentions and includes vendor rankings and a buyers’ guide, making it a valuable tool for anyone considering investing in embedded BI products and services.
All of these premium research products can be found on our products page on dresneradvisory.com/products.
What's next: Moving forward, we are gearing up for our fall data collection project, which will support Mobile Computing, Mobile BI and (new this year) location analytics. We'll be sending out another email when data collection begins. As always, we welcome user participation in our studies and reward participation with a complimentary copy of the findings.
We'd also like to hear from you! If you have specific suggestions that you'd like to share, please respond to this email!
Hope the rest of 2013 is a successful one for you!
Best,
Howard
Chief Research Officer
Dresner Advisory Services
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Dresner’s Point: Are You Ready for the Mobile BI Diamond?
A participant in one of my Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats observed that “in the mobile ecosystem, Big Data + social + the NSA data surveillance news are a perfect storm.” Will the NSA
storm change attitudes regarding mobile BI and thus hinder its growth?
It’s a good question and it sparked an interesting discussion in our
Twitter group.
Before the perfect storm, our tweetchat tribe (comprised of customers, vendors and consultants/analysts) were of the opinion that the growing “app” mentality for “cool stuff” among consumers and the easy-to-consume info in mobile apps could end up increasing trust and thus lead to less testing and faster releases.
But one of the tribe tweeted that, at a minimum, the NSA storm will draw more attention to the organizational risks inherent in BYOD models. However, another member pointed out that BYOD is already a big challenge in mobile BI adoption because it makes it difficult to keep standardize and optimize the mobile BI experience.
Someone tweeted that users in finance groups were already the least interested in mobile BI. They tend to be risk averse, and the NSA storm may cause the risks to seem even larger. But another participant tweeted that customer-facing business units are the biggest adopters, not the back-office finance groups. In fact the biggest drive for mobile BI is coming from the boardroom.
The #BIWisdom tribe concluded that the perfect storm won’t have much impact on the growth of mobile BI because “it’s absolutely essential that data be real time” and “in a data-driven culture, the information needs to follow people everywhere.”
Our group agreed that a lot of organizations are trying mobile BI, but achieving success is a slow process. Other organizations are reluctant to justify the investment without greater proof of success, and many of the benefits (such as more eyes on the information, ready access to information) are hard to quantify.
Challenges include:
• Connectivity issues that make live mobile BI undependable.
• Difficulty in authoring and using advanced analytics until the UI/UX fundamentally changes. It can’t just be a simple port of existing code to mobile; it requires rethinking.
An even bigger issue, tweeted a tribe member, is that by definition mobile BI informs one person at a time. “What happens after people are seamlessly informed individually?” he asked.
“They can still collaborate,” tweeted someone else. “What’s the difference if they collaborate on the road or in a cube?”
“Collaborate how?” he responded. “Collaboration requires some thoughtful engineering, which is currently lacking.”
“BI can’t be in its own dimension,” another tribe member tweeted. “Collaboration must be part of the workflow and process to decision making, and that workflow must be smooth and transparent. And not all users feel comfortable with collaboration features, so there’s a cultural shift that must take place.”
The #BIWisdom group concluded that, despite the NSA storm and the technical issues that still need to be addressed, mobile BI will grow.
Bottom line: Like an unpolished diamond in the rough, mobile delivery of business intelligence hasn’t yet reached its potential. But our annual Wisdom of Crowds® market studies show that mobile is increasingly becoming a force in BI. In fact, our recent report on the Wisdom of Crowds® Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study highlighted the fact that 70.4 percent of respondents ranked mobile BI as “critically important” in 2012.
Mobile BI is also a natural complement to cloud BI, which is definitely growing in importance. Our 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® study also found that many small organizations are embracing mobile BI and cloud BI as a means of side-stepping traditional computing. The user data indicates strong synergy between cloud and mobile in BI.
The demand for business intelligence arises from multiple needs; some won’t suit mobile delivery, but some will. So mobile BI adoption will grow despite its current drawbacks.
Consequently, mobile BI will engage a whole new group of users — and they will need to be educated about the use of BI data.
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2012 Wisdom of Crowds ® Mobile Computing/Mobile BI Market Study
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Before the perfect storm, our tweetchat tribe (comprised of customers, vendors and consultants/analysts) were of the opinion that the growing “app” mentality for “cool stuff” among consumers and the easy-to-consume info in mobile apps could end up increasing trust and thus lead to less testing and faster releases.
But one of the tribe tweeted that, at a minimum, the NSA storm will draw more attention to the organizational risks inherent in BYOD models. However, another member pointed out that BYOD is already a big challenge in mobile BI adoption because it makes it difficult to keep standardize and optimize the mobile BI experience.
Someone tweeted that users in finance groups were already the least interested in mobile BI. They tend to be risk averse, and the NSA storm may cause the risks to seem even larger. But another participant tweeted that customer-facing business units are the biggest adopters, not the back-office finance groups. In fact the biggest drive for mobile BI is coming from the boardroom.
The #BIWisdom tribe concluded that the perfect storm won’t have much impact on the growth of mobile BI because “it’s absolutely essential that data be real time” and “in a data-driven culture, the information needs to follow people everywhere.”
Our group agreed that a lot of organizations are trying mobile BI, but achieving success is a slow process. Other organizations are reluctant to justify the investment without greater proof of success, and many of the benefits (such as more eyes on the information, ready access to information) are hard to quantify.
Challenges include:
• Connectivity issues that make live mobile BI undependable.
• Difficulty in authoring and using advanced analytics until the UI/UX fundamentally changes. It can’t just be a simple port of existing code to mobile; it requires rethinking.
An even bigger issue, tweeted a tribe member, is that by definition mobile BI informs one person at a time. “What happens after people are seamlessly informed individually?” he asked.
“They can still collaborate,” tweeted someone else. “What’s the difference if they collaborate on the road or in a cube?”
“Collaborate how?” he responded. “Collaboration requires some thoughtful engineering, which is currently lacking.”
“BI can’t be in its own dimension,” another tribe member tweeted. “Collaboration must be part of the workflow and process to decision making, and that workflow must be smooth and transparent. And not all users feel comfortable with collaboration features, so there’s a cultural shift that must take place.”
The #BIWisdom group concluded that, despite the NSA storm and the technical issues that still need to be addressed, mobile BI will grow.
Bottom line: Like an unpolished diamond in the rough, mobile delivery of business intelligence hasn’t yet reached its potential. But our annual Wisdom of Crowds® market studies show that mobile is increasingly becoming a force in BI. In fact, our recent report on the Wisdom of Crowds® Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study highlighted the fact that 70.4 percent of respondents ranked mobile BI as “critically important” in 2012.
Mobile BI is also a natural complement to cloud BI, which is definitely growing in importance. Our 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® study also found that many small organizations are embracing mobile BI and cloud BI as a means of side-stepping traditional computing. The user data indicates strong synergy between cloud and mobile in BI.
The demand for business intelligence arises from multiple needs; some won’t suit mobile delivery, but some will. So mobile BI adoption will grow despite its current drawbacks.
Consequently, mobile BI will engage a whole new group of users — and they will need to be educated about the use of BI data.
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2012 Wisdom of Crowds ® Mobile Computing/Mobile BI Market Study
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Dresner’s Point: Involve Customers and Suppliers in Your BI Chain
August 15, 2013
Do you remember when you thought it was too risky to purchase something online? Remember when you held out for a while and didn’t immediately hop on board the bandwagon like others to enjoy the convenience of paying your bills via online banking? Or maybe you still haven’t taken those plunges. The same phenomenon is affecting some organizations’ entrée into cloud-delivered business intelligence. But others have injected a big dose of value creation into their BI activities by moving to the cloud.
In fact, one of the significant nuggets in our recent 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study is that organizations targeting external users (customers and suppliers) are the biggest users of cloud BI. It makes sense because of the cloud’s scalability and elasticity —and the ability to isolate those users from internal systems..
Integrating end-to-end value chains is definitely valuable, from the perspectives of data source as well as delivery. Without involving customers and suppliers in the BI chain, you don’t get full value. In addition, delivering BI in the cloud (private or public) allows organizations to spend their resources on innovation as opposed to operations. The cloud’s elasticity and pay-as-you-grow pricing model makes it easier to budget and allocate resources.
So why are some organizations opting for traditional BI instead of tapping into the value of BI through the cloud? I wanted to take a deeper look at this from the perspectives of the tribe at my Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats. Their positions and insights span the horizon of buyers, vendors, and analysts, and they’re on the cusp of what’s happening in the business intelligence space.
On a recent Friday we plunged into a discussion about the nuances of adding customers and suppliers to the BI value chain. The tribe members’ real-world observations align with our survey findings around the top barriers to adopting cloud BI — security issues and loss of control.
It all comes down to trust.
The tribe tweeted that one of the points of moving BI to the cloud is to give some control to users. But that power shift can be significant, and not fully understanding the risks causes some uneasiness. Tweets pointed out that:
• “Internal users having control is one things, but external users (customers and suppliers) affecting control could present risks.”
• “By giving these external partners more control of what data/information they see via the cloud, they may bring their own agendas into your BI.”
• “By giving these external partners more control of what data/information they see via the cloud, they may bring their own agendas into your BI.”
“Where do you draw the line?” they asked.
When it comes to the barrier of security, several participants tweeted that in reality data is no more secure these days inside the organization than it is in a public cloud (think NSA). Nevertheless, perception is as important as reality. Most of them agreed with me that inadequate security is an easy crutch to lean on when there are other hidden agendas for not moving to the cloud.
I asked the tribe what needs to happen for cloud BI to earn more trust to overcome the control and security barriers. Policy changes? Education? New technology?
• A member suggested that executives might gain more trust if the cost drops to the point where that trust is bought. Another said trust can’t be bought, especially since the days of Enron.
• Someone else tweeted that big brands like Amazon help overcome the trust issue and cloud providers are bending over backwards these days to show security and compliance.
• One was of the opinion that “Trust with the cloud is only as good as the gap between now and the next news story on compromised or lost data. Even if you lose cloud data because of internal mistakes, people will still remember that it was in the cloud when it happened.”
• Someone else tweeted that big brands like Amazon help overcome the trust issue and cloud providers are bending over backwards these days to show security and compliance.
• One was of the opinion that “Trust with the cloud is only as good as the gap between now and the next news story on compromised or lost data. Even if you lose cloud data because of internal mistakes, people will still remember that it was in the cloud when it happened.”
My view: Trust takes time. After all, some people still won’t pay their bills online.
Bottom line: For some organizations, bringing customers and suppliers into their BI corral is a good starting point for moving BI to the cloud. And delivering greater value through cloud BI can be the proving ground that leads to larger acceptance within the organization.
Because of the trust issue, most organizations will opt for private cloud BI before moving across to public clouds. Organizations that don’t want to fully move BI to the cloud right away will find the right mix of on-premises and cloud that works best for them.
The cloud will continue to disrupt the business intelligence space just as it has in all other aspects of technology. And whether or not there is a trust issue, cloud BI will catch on just as e-commerce did when people realized they liked the benefits of shopping online.
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2013 Wisdom of Crowds ® CloudBI Market Study
Click Here to Purchase Your Copy of the 2013 Wisdom of Crowds ® CloudBI Market Study
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Discussion: 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study
Having just recently published our 2013 Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study, the group attending one of my recent Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats on Twitter wanted more insights on several of the study’s findings.
Of particular note was the fact that user penetration of BI solutions remains modest again this year, with 36 percent of respondents reporting less than 10 percent of users with access to BI.
Why is user BI access so limited? Budget? Politics? User resistance to change? BI has traditionally been more targeted to executives than to operational levels? The organization is not agile enough to act on BI insights? The tweetchat attendees believe all of these reasons are behind the low numbers.
Members pinpointed another reason for low user penetration: IT departments have very different priorities than line-of-business users. It was evident by responses in our 2013 market study that the past 12 months have seen an increase in demand among users for self-serve, ad-hoc and real-time BI tools. However, despite good intentions, ease of use and speed of implementation are not top priorities for IT departments.
There is a definite need to bridge the gap (described as an “abyss” in one of the tweets) between IT priorities and business needs. That’s why I started talking about the need for organizations to create a Business Intelligence Center of Competency (BICC) back in 2000 and included it as a topic in this year’s market study. BICCs are an effective way of bridging the gap.
“Should BI reside in IT or in a line of business?” a #BIWisdom member asked. I believe it should be co-owned and should reside in both worlds.
I think that the Finance group is in a unique position to help drive business intelligence through an organization if they are willing to rise to that challenge. Finance has tentacles everywhere. And financial metrics are a great starting place, especially for a public company. But it’s only effective if they don’t stop at the Finance department. Organizations need to evolve their BI beyond Finance to an office of performance or a BICC.
Our 2013 market study found that in organizations where there was a BICC reporting in to Finance, they were much more likely to be successful. By virtue of the fact that they had a BICC, in my mind, it also meant that they were willing to take on a broader set of challenges.
Our #BIWisdom tweetchat ended with an important question: How can we get to a point where BI is so pervasive that it’s invisible operationally, where people won’t even know they are using BI because it’s just part of the normal process?
A member tweeted that good penetration requires a BI “evangelist” along with tools and communications about success.
Another member said she believes that BI must be a top-down initiative in order for that to happen. “The C-level executives must declare that it is a data-driven company,” she tweeted. “This declaration even needs to be part of the onboarding process, and employees need to see that a data-driven strategy is a winning strategy.”
Bottom line:
Improving today’s tepid BI user penetration requires the involvement of a CEO who is passionate about business intelligence. A company and its CEO are intertwined; in fact, in many cases the company is really an extension of the CEO. This is especially the case in smaller organizations. A CEO needs to understand where the market is going and make strategic and significant investments to move the company in that direction. Thus, the CEO is not only the number-one driver of business intelligence but also the number-one beneficiary.
Interestingly, our 2013 market study found overall that the executives across the board were not only the biggest drivers of business intelligence but were also the number-one target for business intelligence use. And that’s great because success requires a top-down approach. If BI initiatives deliver meaningful information on which executives can run their company, then BI will filter throughout the rest of the organization.
Howard Dresner is president, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, an independent advisory firm. He is one of the foremost thought leaders in Business Intelligence and Performance Management, having coined the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989. He has published two books on the subject, The Performance Management Revolution — Business Results through Insight and Action, and Profiles in Performance — Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change. He hosts a weekly tweet chat (#BIWisdom) on Twitter each Friday. Prior to Dresner Advisory Services, Howard served as chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions and was a research fellow at Gartner, where he led its Business Intelligence research practice for 13 years.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
My New Business Intelligence Blog
Dear Friends,
Since last year I began supporting a new Business Intelligence blog on the Sandhill.com website, called "Dresner's Point". Each week (or so) I'll post my synthesis and commentary on the previous week's #BIWisdom Tweetchat.
If you're not familiar with our weekly TweetChat, it occurs on Friday's at 1PM ET. Each week I am joined by Business Intelligence and information management experts (e.g., providers, customers, vendors and other analysts) to discuss important topics related to BI.
Below are summaries and links to my articles posted thus far:
January 7, 2013
Dresner’s Point: Three Don’ts, Four Do’s for Business Intelligence in 2013
What will we see cropping up in the business intelligence space in the coming year? At the past couple of tweetchats at my Friday #BIWisdom group, we spent some time tracing the journey of where we’re headed based on current trends. Check the list of do’s and don’ts that I found notable from the discussion and determine where your organization is in the journey.
December 18, 2012
Dresner’s Point: Will Amazon’s Redshift Become a BI Swiss Army Knife?
Once upon a time . . . actually just two months ago . . . #BIWisdom tweetchat tribe members were facing off in response to the question of whether the EDW (electronic data warehouse) is dead. But then at the end of November, along came Amazon Web Services with its preview-launch of Redshift, a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. So is the sense of talking about the valid future of the EDW diminished by the new reality of Redshift? I don’t think so, for the controversy exposes the criteria necessary for Redshift’s success.
December 11, 2012
One of the memorable scenes in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” is when Dorothy and her three fellow travelers of the Yellow Brick Road finally reach the castle and are promised a meeting with the Wizard known as The Great and Powerful Oz. Certain that he will give them some innovation to address their challenges, they’re at first impressed with the flashy “bells and whistles.” Then they’re stunned when they see the reality: a very non-wizard-looking kind of guy operating the bells and whistles behind a curtain. And they hear a booming voice warning them to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
December 6, 2012
At one of my recent Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats, we began talking about innovation in business intelligence products. But that quickly exposed a controversy that changed the direction of our chat to a common ailment in today’s business world: the business side, end users and IT can no longer exist as though they are in a parallel universe.
November 13, 2012
On any Friday at my #BIWisdom tweetchat, you’ll find a tribe of followers who are keenly interested in discussing how to achieve better outcomes from business intelligence solutions. In chatting last week about what will be hot in business intelligence in 2013, the tribe focused on analytics and a prediction that Big Data will shift next year from tech talk to talking about business value. And ETL (the Extract, Transform, Load process) comes into play.
November 6, 2012
It’s that time of year when everyone’s predicting what will be hot next year. My prediction: embedded BI will be one of the hot topics in the business intelligence space in 2013. How do I know? One of the things I’ve done lately (besides our formal research studies on expectations in business intelligence solutions), is ask the tribe at my #BIWisdom’s Friday tweetchat what they see around the bend.
November 1, 2012
Last Friday at the weekly tweethat I host on Twitter (#BIWisdom), I asked: What is the definition of a data scientist? An important topic, wouldn’t you agree, given that an article in this month’s Harvard Business Review deemed it the “sexiest career of the 21st century” and businesses are developing courses for how to become a data scientist even while job ads appearing on the web are still wildly disparate in describing the data scientist role.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)