Bruno Aziza - The Culture of Performance

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February 21, 2010

What's an "Analytic"?

The term "analytic" has been used quite a bit over the years in blogs, books and other forums.

The term is becoming so used lately that business leaders are starting to feel confused by what it means. Some ask: is an "analytic" a new term for "business intelligence", is it the same as a "key performance indicator (kpi)"?

Of course, analytics have been in existence for many years and books such as "competing on analytics" have participated in raising visibility to their importance. However - the understanding of what they are and what they can do, might have been reserved to a small crowd of people inside the organization.

If you are an IT leader, you want to avoid dragging people into esoteric debates. You want to clarify the definition of analytics, their key attributes so you can focus your team and colleagues on what really matters: driving better business performance.

On the back of events such as last week's Predictive Analytics World or "PAW" - what would you say your definition of the term an "analytic" is? How would you describe it with simple terms for folks who haven't been in the space for years? Do you have examples that you use and have worked for you?

Come discuss @ http://tinyurl.com/o89vep

Best,
Bruno Aziza
Co-author, Drive Business Performance
Follow @ http://twitter.com/brunoaziza
Join on Facebook @ http://tinyurl.com/ykcwkap
More on my book @ http://tinyurl.com/ylpo6hj

Posted by Bruno Aziza at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 2, 2010

How Will We Make Decisions in the Future?

A little less than a month ago, I asked people via multiple networks and forums what they thought business intelligence would look like in 2020.

I received some great predictions and I'm summarizing them for you in a short video @ http://tinyurl.com/ykvugkr

Some folks were cautious in their forecasts. One respondent told me that maybe – just maybe – if by 2020 we have solved quality and integration issues, and if continue to improve usability and make the use of mash-ups more efficient, we'll finally get to the point where non-technical users finally benefit from BI without involvement lot of help from IT.

Others predicted that data sources won’t even matter anymore. Even search engines might be passé. They argued that people will be able to ask questions to a computer that is smart enough to ask for clarification before answering the question. This ties well with a prediction I heard – and that is supported by our own work on natural user interfaces – that verbal communication with a computer could soon be common.

Finally, two respondents said that spreadsheets might be less important in the future and that people will favor technology that pushes answers to them, rather than requiring people to look for the right information.

These predictions can help all us picture the future for business intelligence, and perhaps align our actions to make it happen.

My own bets for business intelligence in 2020 include the notion that collaboration and business intelligence will be linked more closely so that it becomes more obvious that decisions are based on hard data as well as the knowledge and opinions from co-workers, partners and friends.

I also agree that data sources won't matter to end-users. I actually don't know that they should matter to people today. I hope that technology will guide people’s decisions more efficiently because it can filter out irrelevant information and focus on information that improves insights and actions.

Last but not least: Culture will change. A culture of performance is the one factor that allows organization to gain continuous success across multiple generations of people and technology. I see day after day the rewards and competitive advantage organizations gain by moving from a gut-feel type of management style to a more rigorous, data-driven decision-making system.

If you have any feedback or thoughts, please feel free to email me directly at bruno@brunoaziza.com

Posted by Bruno Aziza at 6:00 AM | Comments (1)