Synergy BI's Masterclass Series of breakfast presentations, held this week in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, were a teaser for future Synergy training courses to be held in 2013.
Speaking at the Johannesburg event, Synergy BI principal consultant Gill Staniland's presentation focused on terms and trends emerging in the BI space and what businesses need to do in order to get BI right. “BI has been around for 20-odd years and there are still so many different ideas of what it is all about," said Staniland.
While Staniland describes BI as being difficult, unpredictable and indefinable, she adds that it is also a catalyst that breaks the status quo in any department or business. For Staniland, however, there appears to be a wall between the technological side - being the collection, cleaning and storage of data - and the human aspect, which involves analysis, communication and making predictions.
BI buzzwords
“Three words are coming up a lot in the BI space - these being agile, analytics and insight,” said Staniland.
“Agile is about being open to change. It is a style of working, not a methodology or process,” said Staniland, adding: “It is not a quick-fix or shortcut and requires self-management.”
According to Staniland, analytics is a great way of helping a business analyse, but should not be confused with analysis. “Analytics uses statistic techniques and algorithms to identify things that we cannot see and enables a business to understand customer and market dynamics and predict future events and behaviour,” Staniland said.
A video that formed part of Staniland's presentation featured a representative from IBM who discussed the benefits that proper analytics can have for businesses in real-world situations. The video mentioned insurer Santam and how the South African company had used analytics to assess at what time of day most accidents occurred and then used this information to determine the likelihood of a claim being fraudulent. According to the video, Santam saved $2.3 million as a result.
While the success of Santam's analytics strategy is evident in its monetary savings, Staniland stressed that, in analytics, it is important to use the right tools and to remember that if the business uses the wrong analytics techniques, the results could be misleading.
The final buzzword is 'insight', which Staniland described as taking the knowledge and adding a bit of innovation in order to drive actions and decisions.
Areas of concern
Having discussed what is happening in the world of BI, Staniland went on to address some areas that are commonly underrepresented, some of which include business analysis, which is about understanding the questions, and data modelling, which involves storing the data in a way that mimics the business.
For Staniland, information delivery is also an area in BI that commonly needs more attention. “The thing is that all three things work hand-in-hand - so if one isn't done correctly, the others won't work either.”
When discussing requirements analysis, Staniland highlighted the importance of problem-solving skills. “Especially in the world of BI, where we are sticking things together all the time, we need to understand how things relate to each other. We need to think of different ways to solve a problem, gauging which solution is the best one, and then implementing that plan."
In line with this, Staniland pointed out that proper synthesis is an essential part of BI, as it involves the combination of two or more pre-existing elements to make something new. Ultimately, said Staniland, BI is not about the technology and the people working separately, “it is entirely about man and machine working together”.
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