Social networking transforms data warehousing

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 10 Sept 2009

Companies are building data warehouses for a world that no longer exists, based on assumptions that are no longer there. So said Estelle de Beer, practice manager of the Sybase company, BI Practice, during the ITWeb Data Warehousing conference in Midrand, yesterday.

De Beer argued that IT solutions don't get socially accepted until they get technologically boring. “When something becomes valuable, people take it for granted and consumer innovation starts and this is where business intelligence (BI) is going to go.

“The real fundamental shift happened three years ago when Web 2.0 started with the rise of collaboration; that's what is influencing consumer behaviour and how customers want to consume information. Collaboration and social media is moving information at lighting fast speed and this is impacting BI.”

Driving innovation

According to De Beer, traditional advertising media adds awareness to a product or service but it doesn't motivate consumers. Social networking and peer interaction, however, are influencing customer behaviour.

She added that the social media space is influencing corporate collaboration and data warehousing, but cautioned that companies need to give up centralised control of their data when using social media, something which is not easy.

“What the business has to decide is whether social networking tools and applications will drive business value. The only way to get user application up is to give them the same communication channels as Web 2.0. We can already make comments on reports so there's already some social collaboration that's taking place. When the business side can use the technology without getting the IT department directly involved, then you have the ultimate BI application.”

According to De Beer, there are 1.4 billion Internet users; 45% have blogged, 80% have watched an online video, and 60% have joined a social network. These are the next-generation users, said De Beer, and the future leaders of BI.

“One of the biggest challenges to using a social networking strategy is to collect the data and verify the accuracy of the information. We need to form new ideas to meet new challenges and not use the same old ideas to try to solve new problems.”