Smart, smarter, smartest: The BI update

Demand for business intelligence (BI) is growing locally and internationally, yet end-users are still grappling with return on spend, efficiency and ease of use.

These issues emerged in last year`s ITWeb BI survey, and were examined in February by local BI experts, who gathered for a round table discussion at ITWeb`s Rivonia offices. The state of BI in the local market and how vendors and system integrators are tackling clients` concerns were topics on the table.

It was clear from the onset there would be some disagreements, although everyone was trying to vend almost the same offering in the market.

What emerged was now, more than ever, company executives require a coordinated, single view of business-critical data; in large corporations it is evident this information is still mostly being housed in disparate systems.

This phenomenon is more common with reporting and extraction, especially these days, when people are not only operating with data warehousing, but also real-time systems, according to SAS Institute spokesperson, Carel Badenhorst.

"If you look at BI locally, there was a false start initially, but now its resurgence has been motivated by compliance and legal reasons, and by the need for executives to better understand how their business works. A lot of companies have and will jump on the BI bandwagon," comments Julian Field, sales and marketing, Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID).

All companies want to make profits, and information can provide them with a competitive-edge in the space in which they play, comments Andrew Connold, MD of Synergy Computing.

Echoing this sentiment, Martin Rennhackkamp, information director at Prescient Business Technologies, says due to exposure to international markets as well as local and international competition, many local firms have been exposed to the benefits of BI and total performance management.

Essentially, the competitive business environment is catalysing the uptake of BI locally, he says.

A lot of companies will jump on the BI bandwagon.

Julian Field, sales and marketing, Knowledge Integration Dynamics

Alastair Jacobs, solutions manager at Oracle, says from a public sector point of view, the situation is slightly different. BI is centred on servicing constituents and monitoring how budgets are spent. "In addition to this, legislation has made it imperative for government officials, or anybody else in a position of power, to have absolute knowledge of what is happening in their businesses. In future, I see BI not even being a topic of discussion anymore, it will just be a given," he explains.

Softline Pastel`s MD, Steven Cohen, believes BI solutions are merely good report writers. His company has chosen to use Excel as a link to BI in its accounting software to allow users to do "what-if" analysis.

His argument is most companies only use BI for report generation, so even an application such as Excel is an adequate front-end.

Christo Nel, service solution manager at Cognos, adds there has been a certain level of maturity since 2000. He explains there are now two pillars to data - one being operational, where data is gathered in through the likes of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, while the other is the performance management pillar where the data is gathered and where a need exists to get relevant information from it.

"Once company managers are able get useful information from all their repositories, it will help to address issues of compliance and transparency," he comments.

Furthermore, Susan Andre, Alicornio Africa`s MD, says BI has reached a strategic position for many corporations, something which was sorely lacking the first time BI became popular.

On the other hand, Ampie Swanepoel, service delivery manager (CPM business unit) at Dimension Data, says many organisations have, to a large extent, been disillusioned by BI, because technology vendors have flooded the market with fancy technology with colourful dashboards. In many corporations, these systems sit idle because of the disconnect that exists between technology and business needs.

Although the systems themselves are good, there`s still a problem when it comes to maximising them for business benefit, and according to him, some of these actually end up providing executives with much more information than what is really needed.

Henry Adams, InterSystems SA country manager, says some of the technology out there is inappropriate for delivering the solutions in the right amount of time. "If you look at the complex type of data people want to work with, they need a lot of graphics in their reports. Vendors are now trying to deliver this from relational tables, but these are often in different applications, which all adds to the complexity," he explains.

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest customer issues in last year`s BI survey was quantifying the return on IT spend.

In most cases, Cohen says, return on spend is the hardest variable to calculate. According to him, these systems are only helping companies to make better business decisions, but when their earnings improve and GDP and currency rates get better at the same time, it is difficult to calculate.

BI will not even be a topic of discussion anymore, it will just be a given.

Alastair Jacobs, solutions manager, Oracle

From her side, Andre believes the best way to determine returns would be to turn off the solution and see how business changes, and make the determination from these results.

But the big question still remains: Is BI all about return on investment, or is it about attaining strategic advantage?

InterSystems` Adams comments that companies are obligated by certain legislations to keep much of their data for legal and other business practice reasons, and the only logical thing to do with massive amounts of data would be to try, as much as possible, to use it for strategic advantage.

"This is what many corporations are lacking right now - they keep asking what the ROI will be, instead of looking at the bigger picture and seeing what sort of advantage BI will give them over their competitors," he notes.

In addition, Amir Lubashevsky, director at Magix Integration, says because BI is not a total solution in itself, but rather part of corporate governance, it is almost impossible to measure the ROI accurately if using BI alone.

In contrast with the past, Connold says instead of middle management being the major users of BI solutions, the scenario today is that senior management is at the forefront of learning the system and integrating it into companies` daily operations.

However, there are still concerns as to whether the data used in BI systems is 100% reliable, believes Lubashevsky.

Added to this is the unanimous round table agreement that vendors and system integrators alike should not assume that their clients fully understand what BI is.

DiData`s Swanepoel suggests there should be readiness assessments, followed up with an education process, so the understanding of BI in the market is matched with the clients` view of what it is.

Furthermore, Cognos` Nel says vendors should be realistic enough to go into a BI project, incorporate partners and then let their clients know they are good in certain areas, while their business partners are better in others. "That`s the only way clients can be provided with the best solution available," he states.

It is also important that strategic partnerships between vendor and clients exist. BI projects can take up to five years, so it is essential for the vendor and system integrators to co-own the BI project for its entire duration and not just "install and leave".

SAS Institute`s Badenhorst says one of the biggest problems his company finds when selling BI solutions in developing regions like Africa and Asia Pacific is basic processes, like integration of systems, still seem to be problematic.

Although these are still global issues, he adds, his company is finding more and more that developing regions still have problems with the maintaining of "clean" data and having a single view of the enterprise.

"Integration is a problem at many levels, starting with data integration, which is not up to scratch. We also see the business environment in SA is not optimised for BI because the systems are inadequate at best," he says.

Swanepoel opines that such problems are common around the world and the only difference between first and third world countries is the amount of money that can be spent on solving these problems.

Yolanda Komen, Intellient spokesperson, says overcoming the issues of efficiency and ease of use is all about educating the end-user before and during the implementation of BI solutions. "If end-users initially fully understand how to use the systems in their environment, one problem is already solved."

Although vendors do develop easier interfaces and dashboards, she adds, it goes beyond that - one can have easy interfaces but the project still fails at the end of the day because users are not properly prepared to use them.

Most companies only use BI for report generation.

Steven Cohen, MD, Softline Pastel

Cognos`s Nel, on the other hand, believes the solution to problems around ease of use lies in the solution`s ability to deliver reports to multiple platforms, ensuring users always receive reports in a familiar format.

In support of this, Alan Cowley, Sybase CEO, stresses that system integrators should bear in mind that there are different levels of BI users who need to be educated differently. He agrees that giving them reports or notifications which they were comfortable with or used to, is also an added advantage.

The major issue should be data integrity, which calls for ensuring all the data involved in report creation is "clean", comments Cowley.

According to Badenhorst, ERP vendors have done a good job marketing and implementing their solutions because they have helped companies gather data effectively.

"We find that our clients have one problem in common - which is they actually have too much data on hand and are not deriving any benefit from it. What they need is to be physically enabled to get business value from it," he says.

Cowley adds the need for managers to make quicker decisions is another driver for the growth of BI locally.

Others factors brought to the fore included legislation, compliance and that South African companies are now competing on a global scale while simultaneously facing local competition from multinationals.

"Clients cannot afford to make uninformed decisions. To ensure they are always up to date with what is going on, they are going to need the power of a BI solution that can make sense of all their corporate data," Nel notes.

The need to have better service levels is yet another driver, in that BI allows companies to measure their performance, adds Field of KID.

According to Field, there are many advantages that come with the implementation of BI, like the ability to make proper forecasts while at the same time integrating what was previously a disparate system.

On top of which, BI had, over the past 10 years, been enabling vendors, systems integrators and their end-user clients to become more customer-centric and understand their business partners better, he says.

Consolidation is top of the list for most BI vendors, and Field sees it a major focus for the year ahead, in addition to the quality and management of data that goes into these reporting systems.

From a systems integrator point of view, the major focus is also to ensure customers get total solutions as opposed to disjointed systems.

Prescient Business Technologies` Rennhackkamp comments that vendors and system integrators alike should get involved in building the capacity of their partners, to ensure they get the best out of their solutions.