BI needs planning

By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor

Johannesburg, 15 Oct 2007

Business intelligence (BI) can easily become a monster that is difficult to manage, and companies need to go back to basics if they want to get it right, says Estelle de Beer, BI product manager at Sybase SA.

"BI needs proper planning and a step-by-step approach to achieve a piece-by-piece good implementation."

Historically, BI started out with simple reporting, which was when organisations started to realise the value of the technology, she says.

"People started to integrate things like OLAP, analytics and data mining, which turned it into something of a monster. While all these things have value, we need to go back and ask the question: what does the CEO of a company want to know about his business?"

This has caused some scepticism around the implementation of BI in organisations, she notes.

Gaining impetus

The BI market went through a slump for a few years, De Beer says. However, the technology has gained a new momentum: "BI is in a very exciting phase."

SA is facing a particularly mature BI market: "There are now organisations on the second or third implementations of the technology and people are now starting to understand that it shows some real practical value."

The success of BI in SA is reflective of the country's IT mentality, she says: "We have a drive to use the latest and greatest technologies and many international BI practitioners say they are amazed at how cutting-edge SA's BI practice is."

The growth and maturity of BI in SA lies primarily in the development of good underlying data structures that will provide a solid backend and good data integrity, De Beer says.

Data first

According to De Beer, the biggest challenge is not in the presentation of information, but the management of it: "When companies grow, they acquire more information and managing that information will become more complicated."

She says proper planning and simplified implementation in phases can help business to accurately and functionally squeeze value from BI.

"The negativity around BI is slowing falling away, because people are starting to realise there can be huge returns from the technology," she concludes.