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Business Intelligence Report
Butler Group, March 2006, Pages: 338
Introduction
Business Intelligence is a widely used and reasonably mature type of technology, and is based around the capture and use of the data that every organisation generates on a day to day basis. Other Reports, such as DQI, have shown how important it is to make certain that data is clean and accurate if it is to be depended upon as part of important business processes. However, this is only the beginning of using data in a more valuable way – the organisation also has to be able to delve into its data in order to capture and use intelligence.
One possible objection to this Report is based on the fact that most organisations have become very good at catching and storing the process data that they generate every time they perform a business operation, and they might believe that this is enough – however, we believe that simply saving details on every customer, for example, does not guarantee access to useful intelligence. Our argument is that saving and storing data is not the same as capturing and retrieving valuable information, as data and information are separate things.
This Report is about the fact that we now see BI as being about how organisations can become more efficient in the way that they exploit the data assets they already have, and we believe that there is intense pressure upon the users and vendors of BI because of this need.
Our view is that over the last two years BI usage has become stagnant. The vendors have failed to address key user requirements. They have focused on bringing new technology on stream, acquiring and integrating complementary products, and building end-to-end BI-based intelligence suites. However, whilst doing all of this, they have fundamentally failed to understand the way that business organisations are utilising their products; and it is this basic failure that is holding back organisations from working smarter with the data assets that they hold.
Today we have a situation where businesses are strongly inclined – perhaps we may even go as far as to say that they are desperate – to find a better, more efficient, and more cost effective approach to utilising the competitive and commercial value of their data assets. The BI industry itself is eager to provide its services at a cross organisation level through the deployment of strategic and enterprise-pervasive BI, but the business community seems somewhat reluctant to acquiesce. A stalemate appears to exist; on the one hand both business users and the industry itself need to improve the way that BI products and services are used; but if we are to move beyond departmentalised tactical deployments of BI, we must understand the critical steps that will be involved in optimising the technology for the benefit of the enterprise. Therefore, on behalf of business users everywhere, there is a need to clearly spell out the incremental value proposition that the extended enterprise use of BI can provide.
The era in which the isolated use of multiple BI tools can be relied upon to support the information needs of business is rapidly drawing to a close. The future value of BI to business organisations will come from the extended use of enterprise intelligence services that incorporate the use of products that have the capacity and the capability to be used as genuine, enterprise wide, intelligence-led, data access, management, and information delivery solutions.
Resulting from this, it is believed that business decision makers should be challenging their technology suppliers to deliver intelligence-lead solutions that can deliver pervasive BI facilities that empower information users at all levels within the organisation to work smarter and in a manner that makes the organisation more efficient, more agile, and ultimately more operationally competitive.
As is always the case with these reports, this volume is intended to provide readers with an informative guide to making the most out of BI solutions and strategies. We recognise that not every factor will be relevant to all situations, and that some organisations will already be utilising some of the components and approaches that make up an effective solution. Therefore, the report has been divided into segments relating to the different guiding principles of exploiting Business Intelligence, to make it easy for readers to locate the Sections that are of interest.
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