Business Intelligence: Less haste, more speed

Believe it or not, BI`s roots go as far back as 1975, where, until 1990, the pure focus was in mainframes and basic reporting and there was a very limited use within an organisation, with only a few people making use of BI.

From 1990 to 2005, BI began to grow and become widely accepted. We saw easy-to-use client-server-based BI tools, a growing number of organisation employing BI solutions and a wave of market consolidation began.

Since 2006 we have been experiencing predictive BI that operates in a real-time environment. We are seeing a move from BI being considered as a purely strategic tool, to becoming a day-to-day operational necessity.

BI is also experiencing market consolidation as more and more vendors aim to make BI "available to the masses".

According to Gartner, BI platform revenue will grow 10% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2007 to reach €5 billion.

However, as with anything that is new and evolving, it does not come free of new problems. For example, often, smaller businesses are not as well equipped and do not have adequate resources or skills to feel confident employing a BI solution, and those that do, often fail.

"Organisational uptake of BI solutions has never been higher than it is today," explains Paul van Aswegen, GM of Informatica. "At the same time, however, many analysts say that more than half of BI projects experience limited acceptance or outright failure."

Key players agree that companies often fail to do proper research before rushing into a solution, both from a vendor point of view and from an internal organisational view.

Companies need to realise that BI implementation is a big step, and can only be successful if a proper company assessment is done. Companies are so eager to realise the return on investment on their new purchase that they end up getting a rush-job, which causes much less return on investment (ROI) to be realised.

As with many technological solutions out there, there needs to be a strong IT and business connect. And, of course, buy-in from top management throughout the project is of paramount importance.

Training is too often seen as less of a priority but staff can end up becoming resentful of their employer. This results in "data priests", employees who refuse to hand over their information, as well as high staff turnover.

BI also needs a dedicated team in order to thrive. These guardians are essential to making any company reach its full BI potential. Industry experts agree that this job should preferably not be outsourced. Who knows your company like you do? Companies are also faced with which approach to take - whether to do an industry-wide deployment, or to satisfy more pressing needs first, such as sales, and taking the point-to-point solutions route. Unfortunately, there is no right answer to this dilemma, and decisions should be based on what type of company is being run and what the needs are.

Whatever route an organisation decides to take, selecting the right tool can be very beneficial to a company`s BI, but very damaging if not done correctly. Companies often fall prey to aggressive selling and end up with a tool the company does not need. It`s best to figure out the basics first, get those in, and then relax a bit in the way of what niche tools are concerned.

Industry players all agree and have seen from their personal experience that BI is on a steady increase and not likely to go away soon. So it truly is a case of "if you can`t beat `em, join `em", but looking before you leap, especially for the smaller guys, is particularly recommended.