Business intelligence (BI) only matters if it's used to make better decisions, explains James Taylor, CEO of US-based consultancy Decision Management Solutions.
Taylor gave the keynote address at the ITWeb BI Summit in Bryanston yesterday.
'Does BI matter?' was his provocatively titled presentation. “On one level, it clearly does,” he said, explaining that if BI doesn't matter, then summits like this would not exist.
But speaking on the value of BI, he said many companies seem to spend money on BI for the sake of it, giving a jumble of acronyms when asked what their BI value proposition is.
Others explain the value is timely, accurate, reliable data. Now, BI matters a little more, he said, “but we're assuming data is inherently valuable”.
BI should be used, Taylor explained, to make better decisions about the business. “If you want BI to matter, you have to think differently.”
To keep BI relevant, he noted, companies have to focus on action. He argued that businesses shouldn't focus on data for the sake of capturing data, but use it to take action. Action changes behaviour, commented Taylor, and just knowing about something is not enough.
He added that it's important for a company to focus on future developments, rather than just analysing the past. “Can we predict something? If so, is there a decision we can make or an action we can take to change behaviour?”
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