WHITE PAPER: Business Intelligence - For The Many or The Few?
“Business Intelligence Software” is moving beyond the oxymoron it once was. In its various guises over the years such as “Executive Information Systems”, “Data Warehouse”, “Corporate Information Factory” and now “Business Intelligence” or BI the computer industry has flattered to deceive.
The goal for all these incarnations has been the same: to put information at the finger-tips of the decision makers in a business. The focus of BI tool vendors in the past has often been on the higher levels of management, offering the sexy ability to drill up and down the data and across hierarchies. Fast analysis, digital dashboards and graphs were all targeted at this small group. This is all laudable stuff – but overlooks the way busy executives work.
Think about how CEOs operate. When they look at their BI tool and ask “why are sales in Europe down?” what answer are they looking for? Are they looking to be told to drill down by country and look for the biggest deltas and then cross drill to sales area and look at the underlying data or do they want to be told it is “because the supply-chain getting goods to the distribution points in France is clogged”
Both are factually accurate, but it is very clear which is the most useful. That is not to say that giving information to Chief Executives is a bad thing, but it should not be the main goal of a BI solution.
The target audience for a Business Intelligence solution should be a broad cross section of the business community. Look at the growth of the knowledge workers in any company – the need to analyse and act on information is now required in most jobs and at most levels of a company. In addition de-layering and empowerment means that many people who previously would have had little need for data analysis skills now need to acquire them in abundance.
The BI Solution
A modern BI solution must provide a number of different things:
· One set of numbers
· Allow open enquiry
· Consistent and simple analysis
One Set Of Numbers
If a BI solution does anything it must provide one set of correct numbers for the company – in all areas. Nothing is more frustrating than disagreeing about whether the number is right and who has the correct set. This is such a fundamental requirement that if this cannot be achieved then the BI project is doomed from the outset.
The areas the BI solution covers may develop over time, both for different subject areas (sales, finance, manufacturing) and reach (other business units, countries) but this fundamental requirement remains.
Open Enquiry
The BI solution must provide the CEO and the board the ability to ask more intelligent questions. In a fast changing business environment the sharper focus a question can have the quicker people can respond in a meaningful way. It must also provide the means for people to answer the CEOs questions, at least in part. A lot of the answers will come from business knowledge, but the numbers must inform this.
Consistent Analysis
A lot of the people who can benefit from BI solutions will not be professional statisticians or data analysts. The toolset chosen to do analysis needs to enable these people to do analysis and get meaningful results. This can only be achieved when two strands coincide. Firstly the software must be user-friendly, intuitive and all the things software is supposed to be. The second and more important is that the definitions of data, the calculations, and the way the data can be sliced and diced must be controlled, and controlled by someone who is a professional data analyst or statistician. Over time the role of this person (or group) will diminish as more people become familiar with the tasks and what can be achieved. However without this type of control people with all the best intentions will quickly end up doing bad analysis and reaching the wrong conclusions and making poor decisions.
Here the suggestion is not a departmental super-user who can help out others, but a fully-fledged data guru who is an expert in this field and not limited by being linked to one business area. This person may not be required for much more than the initial phases whilst the solution is bedding down – but may well be required forever as a result of the analytical needs always developing and changing.
The ability to perform more flexible analysis will come with training and experience, and the BI solution needs to evolve as the user base develops. This may mean adding further and more sophisticated analysis from the centre – or allowing more ad-hoc analysis in the field. One thing though is certain – the questions are always changing thus the analysis must change.
Conclusion
The business intelligence solution for today’s business really can be BI for the many. This can be achieved by making the BI tools available to everyone, whilst keeping a strong central analytical person/group to ensure data quality.
Ends – 836 words
