BI goes social

In 2011, BI will be looking to a model that empowers the business end-user through social media tools and tablet PCs, yet SA is still lagging in the BI field.

This is the view of Mark Stacey, MD of Aphelion Software and principal architect of Pragmatic Works SA, who says the real focus of BI in 2011 will be around BI being delivered on multiple mobile platforms.

Stacey points out that SA is about three to five years behind Europe and the US in terms of BI trends.

“We are still at a point where South African businesses are still discovering what BI actually is and SA hasn't yet reached the maturity stages of empowering the end-user. Overall, SA is still behind the curve.”

He explains that many organisations are integrating external social media statistics from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to determine the impact a company's product or marketing campaign is having on a market.

Stacey also adds that many BI companies, such as Microsoft Sharepoint and IBM, are already integrating social media tools inside their platforms. Another trend that will be increasingly seen in 2011 is using the cloud to analyse data that's residing outside the organisation.

“The concept of having a data within 'closed garden' is something that will grow enormously this year. People can start to collaborate with social media tools within the organisation.

“Having data residing outside of the organisation will be less to a degree in SA. We are already seeing Twitter becoming the social media monitoring tool for a lot of organisations,” he notes.

According to Stacey, one of the biggest challenges to look out for this year will see the proliferation of multiple tablets being rolled out, and these devices will need to support BI applications.

“People want their BI wherever they are,” notes Stacey. “However, how will this data be secured once it's on the device? Securing sensitive data and making sure that it is encrypted is another major challenge we will be seeing in this space.”

security on their mobile device such as smartphones and the iPad.

“A lot of the BI vendors, such as Sybase, are starting to deploy security solutions on mobile devices. But a lot of people still export their data to Excel onto their device, and they don't encrypt it and secure it with a password.”

According to Timo Elliott, a BI expert who will speak at ITWeb's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 in February, BI is finally coming of age after two decades of slow maturity, and is becoming an embedded part of business systems.

Elliot says modern BI platforms cover much more than just query, analysis and reporting. According to him, for BI to take the next level, it needs to be made simpler, seamless, more social and strategic.

Research analyst firm, Gartner says CIOs must ensure that BI programmes are treated as a cultural transformation of the business instead of an IT project.

However, using information to provide intelligent insight to improve business performance is a major challenge, according to the firm.

Gartner indicates that it's not about who owns the data, but also on departmental interest in the information that will be generated.

“Breaking down silos of data ownership will send information flows up and down management chains as well as across functions, which, in turn, will create decisions with higher impact,” states Gartner.

According to Richard Mullins, director at Acceleration, during 2011, marketers are expected to start using Web analytics tools in increasingly sophisticated ways as they look to drive better results from their online marketing investments.

“In addition, companies will begin to understand and manage their campaign data as a precious corporate resource,” says Mullins. “The more data they have about their customers and their campaigns, the better they will be positioned to drive results from their Web analytics environments.”