The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked both excitement and unease in the world of business intelligence (BI), but BI professionals who adapt to the new reality and adopt AI as a useful tool have nothing to fear and everything to gain.
So said Cailin Perrie, intermediate data solutions engineer at Entelect, when sharing her insights gathered from the recent 2025 BI & AI Innovation Tech Fest with the Johannesburg Power BI User Group.
Drawing on presentations from industry experts, Perrie focused her feedback on three themes she believes are most relevant to BI practitioners today: the evolution of BI through augmented analytics, addressing the fear of AI, and practical ways to work with AI productively.
Perrie noted that traditional BI often leaves organisations reacting too late, as dashboards are built on predefined KPIs and require technical intervention to adapt. “If an executive wants to interrogate data outside of the metrics already designed into a dashboard, they typically have to wait for an analyst or engineer to rebuild the report,” she explained. “That delay results in reactive, rather than proactive, decision-making.”
Conference discussions, she said, made it clear that AI-enhanced BI can help overcome these limitations. By embedding machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) and smart discovery into BI tools, organisations can identify hidden drivers behind trends, predict outcomes and empower more users to query data directly.
Perrie highlighted a framework presented at the event that outlines four pillars for next-generation BI: self-service visualisation, NLP queries, smart insights and predictive discovery. These capabilities, already emerging in tools like Power BI, Tableau, Qlik and SAP Analytics Cloud, represent the future direction of BI.
Acknowledging the unease many practitioners feel about AI, Perrie argued that the fear is natural but misplaced. “Our core skills – data modelling, curation and critical thinking – remain essential,” she said. “What changes is that AI allows us to deliver insights faster and at scale.”
She drew a parallel with the early days of smartphones: initially met with scepticism, they are now indispensable. In the same way, AI will soon be woven into everyday BI workflows.
Perrie urged BI professionals to experiment with AI now rather than wait. Practical applications include using Copilot in Power BI or Excel to detect anomalies, automating SQL or DAX query generation, summarising technical documents into business-friendly narratives and even outsourcing meeting note-taking to AI tools.
Quoting Shaun McGirr, chief AI and data officer at DevOn UK, she said: “The only wrong answer is to say, ‘I don’t use AI.’ We don’t have to build AI models, but we do need to practise with them.
“AI should be treated like a teammate,” she added. “It’s not about replacing what we do, but about freeing us to focus on higher-value, strategic work.”
Her closing advice was unequivocal: “AI is neither a threat nor a silver bullet. It’s a tool. Those who adapt will unlock new efficiency and insight. Those who don’t risk being left behind.”
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