I don’t like making predictions, so rest assured this
is not another of a myriad of predictions articles that hit the media
annually. Instead, let’s kick start the year with some definite plans
and aspirations of companies in the business intelligence sphere. A
great place for an insightful, real-world view of BI trends is my weekly
#BIWisdom tweetchats with BI customers, vendors and consultants.
What is your organization planning to try to achieve in 2014? When I
recently asked the #BIWisdom tribe this question, their tweets made it
immediately clear that their companies are gearing up for achieving even
greater value from business intelligence than they have to date.
Plans Include:
• More mobile BI
• More BI demos with real-life applications
• Get more into mobile BI as it helps to reach the masses and get closer to “Information Democracy”
• Explore the sharing potential of BI and the power to integrate additional sources at any point in the BI stack
• BI methodology is big on our checklist for this year
• Get up to speed with some of the specialized tools in the BI stack;
it’s hard to keep up with the toolsets released so far for data
integration, data quality, data management and data security
• Migrating to current versions of BI software; for innovations in BI
software you need the newest versions. Examples: user empowerment and
the speed of getting answers (not just reports)
• There is a growing interest in data that tells stories; keep up with
advances in storyboarding to package visual analytics that might fill
some gaps in communication and collaboration
• Monitor rumblings about trend to shift data to secure storage outside the U.S. due to the NSA revelations
• Expand basic BI to more users (not just multi-page dashboards, but targeted BI); mobile BI will certainly drive the expansion
• Have BI super-users engage with others to expand the penetration of BI among users
• Increase use of self-service products to provide more value and increase adoption of BI tools
Aspirations:
• More predictive analytics to learn more about Big Data
• Expand more into embedded BI
• Do more with text analytics; there’s a lot to mine from text analysis
Location intelligence:
The group also tweeted about a new thrust in business intelligence
functionality — location intelligence or location analytics. Will it
have legs in 2014, I asked? Definitely, they responded.
One person tweeted: “I’m close to this topic and see activity and a lot of interest growing in this area.”
Another tweeted, “Through the use of location analytics organization
can see new patterns in their data that graphs and charts don’t reveal.”
Mobile and location are intertwined — two sides of the same coin — so
it should have legs this year. Here at Dresner Advisory Services we’ll
publish a report on our first Wisdom of Crowds® Market Study on Location
Intelligence in February 2014.
Bottom line:
The #BIWisdom tribe’s tweets aren’t mere hopes.
These folks are not punching above their weight. They have experienced
success with BI so far and are building on that success to mine for
greater value.
Judging by their comments, we have new BI trends to monitor as we
watch the “2014ization” of BI unfold. Which trends will rise to
prominence?
I’d love to know what plans and aspirations your company has for 2014. Please post your comment.
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.
Over the years of conducting our Wisdom of Crowds®
Business Intelligence Market Study on various aspects of BI the
percentage of respondents that report success with their BI initiatives
increases each time. Yet there are still some that report failures.
Success begets even more success, of course. What enables an outcome
of “mission accomplished” and what causes failures? This has been a
topic of debates several times in our Friday #BIWisdom tweetchats.
Our market studies consistently reveal that key contributors to
success are management commitment, organizational stability, focused
implementation and requisite skills. So it follows that the opposite
characteristics would lead to failure: lack of management commitment,
unstable organization and lack of skills.
But my #BIWisdom tweetchat participants have expanded that picture
with their real-world experiences as users, vendors and consultants. In
our debates, they swept past the key characteristics and honed in on a
central issue — How do organizations decide that a BI implementation
failed?
Is the deciding factor that the company does poorly, or that the
users are dissatisfied, or is it a combination of both factors? And what
constitutes a “user” in this aspect; is it only users with decision
authority? Is the deciding factor among end users the fact that vendors
say the technology answers problems all on its own and thus there is not
enough emphasis on process, training, briefings, change management? Is
it the lack of a long-term vision and commitment, which then causes the
BI solution to go stale and subsequently be perceived as a failure?
Failure is a relevant term; in some organizations the IT department
may say the BI initiative is a success but end users say it’s a failure
because they can’t use the tool.
A participant tweeted that evaluating whether or not a BI
implementation fails should be like a doctor’s evaluation, checking for
various symptoms to determine whether the implementation is “healthy.”
From their own experiences, the #BIWisdom participants came up with a
list of “symptoms” criteria for evaluating success or failure.
Someone tweeted that user adoption is the only symptom that counts.
Someone else stated that it isn’t the only criterion, but it’s the most
important one. Another participant disagreed, saying that it’s important
that the users adopt a tool that delivers correct data and information.
Another tweeted that early adoption is critical. And someone else
countered that an influential stakeholder’s adoption is the most
critical factor, adding that “one negative C-level opinion is all it
takes for failure.” One person stated that success requires “adoption
from the C-suite to the shop floor.”
Several #BIWisdom folks pointed out that each department head in an
organization might have different success criteria —ease of use,
governance, integration, for example. And several opined that revenue
and growth are the most important success criteria.
Another tweeted opinion is that success with BI analytics tools requires corresponding transformation of business processes.
And there was this bit of tweeted wisdom: “Failure is any BI
deliverable that doesn’t result in a changed process or decisions.
Otherwise, what was the point of the initiative?”
So the discussion shifted to context and actionability as well as measurement of success.
“But how can you measure ‘understanding?’” asked one of the group.
“And what if you can’t prove you improved?” Another participant added
that some business processes don’t lend themselves to measurement. So
it’s “a bit like a scientist’s problem of mere observation impacting
results of an experiment,” he added.
I think this tweet sums up the final opinions of the group: “It’s
fair to say that evaluation of success or failure is a measurement of
whether the BI initiative enabled change. After all, if it just proves
your organization is perfect, the expense of evaluating the outcome
isn’t justified.”
Bottom line: Of course failures also are learning experiences. But my
experience and observation is that in successful organizations business
intelligence is how people stay aligned with the mission and strategy.
Therefore, if BI is that crucial to an organization’s success, it
begs the question: Does the BI industry do enough to ensure initial
customer success with BI tools and solutions?
>> Click here to view our full catalog of Business Intelligence research products <<
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.
