Most businesses do not use business intelligence (BI) to its full potential, both in terms of breadth and depth, but next year should bring some major advances.
ITWeb's Business Intelligence Summit 2011
More information about the ITWeb's Business Intelligence Summit and Excellence Awards 2011, which takes place on 22 - 23 February at Vodaworld in Midrand, is available online here.
This is according to international BI expert, speaker and blogger Timo Elliott, who will be one of the keynote speakers at ITWeb's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 in February.
“I believe 2011 will see a great leap forward in business analytics. New technologies, including in-memory processing, hardware appliances, and 'noSQL' approaches are fundamentally changing the way we can access and interact with information, and will require a complete rethink of business intelligence.
“And after two decades of slow maturity, BI is finally coming of age, becoming embedded part of business systems,” he says.
Elliott says in terms of breadth; the value of information is multiplied by the number of people who have access to it, but the most recent statistics from analyst organisations indicate that at most 28% of the people who could be using BI in organisations are actually doing so.
“At one level, this is good news - this number was stuck at around 15% for many years, as only 'power users' were able to effectively access information. BI penetration has been rising increasingly quickly over the last few years, reflecting improved ease of use and deployment of more recent BI technologies, but there's still a long way to go.
“In an ideal world, the number should be over 100%, because the information you have available is not only useful to your employees, but also to the outside world: your customers, partners, and suppliers.”
Elliott adds that relatively few organisations are using the full depth of BI functionality available.
“Modern BI platforms cover much more than just query, analysis, and reporting. They are increasingly linked to other systems that are essential for managing the performance of the business, including financial planning and budgeting, strategy management, and governance, risk, and compliance,” he says.
Elliott says one of the reasons for this could be that it is not an easy exercise to implement a BI project that changes the way the organisation works.
He feels that to take BI to the next level, it needs to be made simpler, seamless, more social and more strategic.
The ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit and Awards will be held on 22-23 February 2011 at Vodaworld, Midrand. Click here for more information.
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