Monday, March 16

13% achieve BI objectives

I'm tired of reading posts about business intelligence needing "an army of consultants", concerns about "losing control over our BI system to a third party", and only 13% achieved their business intelligence objectives.

Or Boris Evelson's quote, "Business intelligence is still an art much more than a science."

Or Hound of the BI-skervilles stating that data is safer inside a company's firewall than outside in a professional data center.

Based on these comments, the way business intelligence is being done today just doesn't make the grade.   There are all kinds of statistics to support this.

So where will the change come from?  The generation of young people coming into the workforce has the power of change behind them.  They do things differently.  Chat, instant messenger, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter are their tools.  They are information consumers with search, investigation, collaboration skills.

So what about those people and companies wanting to keep and hold onto the status quo.

They say improve and maintain.
I say destroy what we know and reimagine!

They say, "BI needs an army of consultants."
I say, "your scope is too large and unrealistic."

They say, "you need control over our technology."
I say, "leverage the internet and don't reinvent the wheel."

They say that "BI is more an art than a science."
I say, "find repeatability and gain from economies of scale or be one of the 87% of unsuccessful projects."

They say, "we have people with years of experience in business intelligence."
I say, "I love smart, innovative, talented, internet saavy people wanting to turn BI upside down."

They say, "data is safer behind your company firewall."
I say, "what are they smoking. Data centers specialize in security."

They say, "users have a fear of the technology."
I say, "you're using the wrong technology for that audience."

They say, "radical change takes a decade."
I say, "radical change takes a minute.  Those hanging onto the past want it to take longer."

They say this is a rant.
I say this is our reality.

10 comments:

Darren said...

Well said Tom!

You're the Dennis Miller of BI.

Tom Hudock said...

Thanks Darren! Dennis is definitely a rant master.

Anonymous said...

I sadly don't qualify as young, but would never argue that for BI you need an "army of consultants" - a tight-knit and relatively small group of high-calibre people, mostly sourced from within the organisation sounds like a much better recipe for success to me.

Peter

Tom Hudock said...

Peter, enjoyed your post about archaeological digs being a metaphor for BI projects and BI professionals the archaeologists.

Forest Gump'ism: BI is also like a box of chocolates. You just never know what you're going to get.

Tom

Anonymous said...

Great post tom. I would suggest that you should not need ANY consultants after initial setup. The future is about self-service. It used to take IT weeks to fix a spelling on a web site. Now you can dynamically change content in seconds and those who know how to leverage the internet can setup entire communities in a day. That's what we are tying to pursue at Izenda.

Tom Hudock said...

Hey Sanjay, self-service could very well be the holy grail. And Izenda is helping move us in that direction. Keep up the hard work over there!

Tom

Anonymous said...

Great post. Thank you. We keep working!

Business Analytics said...

Thank you for that!

Wayne Morris said...

This is a great post. It is high time for some disruption in BI. Take it out of the hands of an elite few and give everyone the ability to see the information they need, perform analytics on relevant metrics to make informed decisions, do it quickly, do it cost-effectively and embrace collaboration as a means of sharing best practices, insight etc. It works for social networks and it can work in the BI world.

asim razvi said...

We should be able to do this fast and correctly, specialists in verticals in BI are becoming commonplace and they know the business and technology, hence no need for a lot of consultants but a few that can get the job done and get it done quickly before the need for the information wears off. Nice rant, good to see its on target.