BI requires decision-driven focus

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 03 Dec 2009

For business intelligence (BI) to be more than just another piece of middleware, BI professionals need to focus on decisions, operations, and the future.

This is the view of James Taylor, CEO of Decision Management Systems, who will challenge the delegates at next year's ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit and Awards, on how to think differently about BI. The event takes place from 23 to 25 February, at the Forum, in Bryanston.

“Most companies are spending a lot of money on BI, yet far too many of the people involved talk about results in terms of the number of reports they run, or how fast they can build a new report, or how much data they manage.

“This is the wrong focus. BI professionals must focus on the quality of decision-making they enable; after all, that's why people spend money on BI. For BI to remain relevant, to be more than just another piece of software companies have to have, BI professionals need to take a different approach.”

Understanding decisions

Taylor points out that BI professionals need to focus not only on strategic management decisions, but also on front-line decision-making, such as those made at the call centre, which he notes, requires different analytic techniques.

He says BI must stop analysing the past and focus on the future. “Businesses cannot drive while looking in the rear-view mirror, so BI professionals need to learn how to turn their historical data into usable predictions about the future.”

Business transformation

Taylor adds that too many organisations see BI as a product category and not as a way to redefine and transform their business. “Organisations have more data than ever and this data represents a critical competitive advantage if it can be put to work.

“BI and analytics are the tools you have to turn all this data you have collected, the content of your enterprise application backbone, into something that can transform your business. BI in the broadest sense - intelligence about your business - is critical.”