With the explosion of data sources, business intelligence (BI) becomes a very relevant concept.
This was one of the biggest findings from a recent BI survey conducted by YoungBlood Consultants in partnership with ITWeb to gain insight into the BI strategies of South African organisations.
BI involves the analysis of raw data, therefore making sense of information and enabling decision makers within organisations to be better equipped to make confident and informed decisions, says Glen Ansell, sales director at YoungBlood Consulting.
Well over half (62%) of respondents believe that BI is a very relevant concept given the explosion of data sources. Only a very small percentage of respondents (1%) indicated that they believe BI is no longer a relevant concept.
"The implication of this survey finding is that BI is important as an integration platform. This contradicts, in many ways, a growing view among software vendors and their services partners that quick wins off existing transactional systems are the main driver of demand," Ansell says.
He believes this finding means it is important to integrate data conceptually before delivery takes place. "In-depth modelling is essential to understand how the organisation's transactional data is structured. This is a key failing in most BI delivery."
Exactly half of the respondents (50%) stated that a BI roadmap/strategy is necessary for IT departments within organisations to regain control of data at all levels and from all sources. Only 5% said it was not relevant as their data warehouse journey was near completion.
"There seems to be a clear division in the market between companies that believe the BI journey is solved, and those who feel they don't yet understand it. Our experience is that a few weeks spent on assessing your BI maturity, and understanding where the most business value is to be derived, is extremely valuable."
The results were pretty much evenly split as 40% of respondents indicated that their organisation does have self-service BI in isolated pockets, 9% cited that self-service BI is a standard approach within their organisation, and 37% of respondents cited their organisation does not have self-services BI.
Ansell says that self-service BI is a very wide term encompassing a spectrum from charting in Excel through to deep analytics provided by researchers.
"There is also a misunderstanding regarding what self-service BI can actually do. We all use the term in marketing presentations, but clearing up the client's expectation at the outset is more important. There are a lot of disappointed users out there who thought the new age was upon them," Ansell explains.
According to the survey, 50% of respondents believe that cloud is a cost-effective alternative for hosting their data, and only 12% said cloud is way too costly to host their data warehouse and BI.
"It is interesting to see the evolution - for cloud doubters, watch this space - it is real," comments Ansell.
A small percentage of respondents (15%) indicated that their organisation has implemented a proof of concept for real-time BI, while 36% said that they have a compelling user case for real time BI.
Ansell believes that historically, much BI has been focused on financials or repetitive human behaviour, for which real-time BI is not a requirement.
"These days, if process decisions must be made by humans or systems, real-time BI is an essential requirement. So if your organisation is largely administrative, real-time BI is of little significance. If it deals with consumers, it is becoming vital," he says.
It also emerged from the survey that almost a third of respondents are planning to implement a BI strategy within the next 12 months, 20% indicated that BI is not a priority for their organisation.
"I believe that those organisations for whom BI is not a priority haven't had the benefits explained to them. For some businesses, the explaining is attempted as part of a sales process by software vendors who often have little understanding of the real-world money that can be made or saved by the proper integration and use of meaningful data," Ansell concludes.
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