Traditional business intelligence (BI) needs to be rethought and has to be a tool for the end-user and not solely IT-driven.
This is the view of Davide Hanan, MD of QlikView SA, who will be speaking at the ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit 2011.
“Traditional BI has its roots in the late 80s. More than 20 years have gone by since then, and there have been huge changes in technology: Internet, cellphones, 64bit, multi-core processors to name a few.
“Yet, most BI tools are still based on OLAP, data warehouses and paper-based delivery of information. To the end user, this means that there has been no change in more than 30 years.”
Hanan claims South African enterprises are not making the most of their BI because they do not have the right tools.
“The fact that the IT press still has to explain what BI is all about; the fact that there is so much unhappiness in the BI user base are a clear indication that traditional BI has not delivered on its promise,” he explains.
According to an ITWeb survey, only 19% of the respondents at the 2010 BI Conference viewed their BI solutions as a success.
In order to improve BI, Hanan says it's important for organisations to realise that technology has changed and so have BI tools.
“Many organisations are scared to change tools because it will imply that they made the wrong decision or failed,” notes Hanan.
“This is, of course, absurd and narrow-minded. Albert Einstein defined insanity as 'doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results'. People have to accept that they have delivered the best they could with traditional BI.”
He adds that it is now cheaper to deploy new BI technology than trying to maintain old BI systems.
“Information needs to be accessed from anywhere, on multiple devices and by anyone in the organisation. In addition, the time available to make decisions keeps on decreasing. This means that BI has to be a tool for the end user and not IT.
“This is one of the biggest failures of traditional BI as it has enhanced the productivity of the IT professionals, but not of the end-users.”