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April 5, 2008
Business Intelligence @ Crossroads
Business Intelligence (BI) is well & truly at crossroads and so are BI practitioners like me. On one hand there is tremendous improvement in BI tools and techniques almost on a daily basis but on the other hand there is still a big expectation gap among business users on Business Intelligence's usage/value to drive core business decisions. This results in every BI practitioner developing a 'split' personality - a la Jekyll and Hyde, getting fascinated by the awesome power of databases, smart techniques in data integration tools, reporting etc. and the very next moment getting into trouble with a business user on why 'that' particular metric cannot be captured in an analytical report.
For the BI technologists, there is never going to be a dull moment in the near future. With all the big product vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM etc. throwing their might behind BI with their acquisitions and product development and BI specialty providers like Informatica, SAS et al. showing no signs of slowing down - "the technologists can get ready to join the big swinging party"
For the business users, there is still the promise of BI that is very enticing - 'Data to Information to Knowledge to Actions that drive business decisions'. But they are not giving the verdict as of now. Operational folks are really not getting anything out of BI right now (did somebody say BI 2.0?) and the strategic thinkers are not completely satisfied with what they get to see.
The techno-functional managers, the split personality types are the ones in the middle trying to grapple with increasing complexity on the technology side and the ever increasing clamor for insights from the business side.
Having said that, Business Intelligence is so interesting as it presents a wide canvas for practitioners to paint their strokes. These can be related to business domains, technology (databases/tools/web etc.), statistics, visualization, project management and most importantly "common sense".
Pick your strokes right away - there is more coming from this space on the fascinating world of Business Intelligence.
Have a great day! Thanks for reading.
Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at April 5, 2008 5:30 AM
