Courtesy of our contributor Starlie Vincet, articulates the evolution of business intelligence and the tools that are available for organizations to leverage. I have historically been a big believer of Business Intelligence, especially in the current age of data overload. Though, if we are able to utilize this data and create knowledge, marketers can certainly use this to create campaigns and conversation with their current and prospective consumer. As we are moving away from being control driven to collaboration in the digital/non-digital space, the BI strategy and tools enables an organization to have a meaning full and effective conversation with their target audience.
With that, Starlie explains the about her perspective to the evolution of BI and potential tools for organization to leverage.
Now decades old, the practice of “business intelligence,” or BI, has continued to evolve as powerful new analytical capabilities are developed and innovative new operational models are deployed. While the heart of BI – acquiring, analyzing and using enterprise data to make business decisions – remains consistent, the scope has expanded over the years to include not only traditional reporting and analytics tools, but now encompasses a broad spectrum of features and functions that includes new ETL processes, predictive modeling, budgeting and forecasting, business performance measurement, and sophisticated new interfaces and architectural strategies.
Taking a comprehensive view of the BI vendor marketplace, inclusive of software, hardware, and service providers, it becomes clear that it has seen considerable change in the past few years. Some of the most notable changes include:
Web-centric solutions: Solutions have been re-architected to be web centric, requiring virtually non-software to be loaded on client machines.
Expanded feature base: Vendors have expanded their BI offerings from just the traditional core BI features and functions to include features such as interactive reporting; ad hoc analysis and dashboards; budgeting, forecasting and consolidation solutions; BI search; and predictive analytics. Vendors expanded their offerings either through organic development with some minor acquisitions (such as Cognos with TM1) or mainly through acquiring the technology (such as Business Objects with Cartesis or Crystal or Oracle with Hyperion and Siebel Analytics).
Interface and mobility advances: BI vendors have improved the user interface, providing users a much richer visualization experience via the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX or Flash. “Mash-ups” which allow developers to combine BI content with other applications also are surfacing in some vendor’s line-ups. They are also delivering content to mobile devices and you can call sky telephone number directly.
Pre-built for enterprise and industry applications: BI vendors have introduced pre-built solutions for either the ERP applications such as Oracle Financials, JD, Edwards and SAP or other defined solutions for specific industries such as insurance or retail, addressing certain aspects of those businesses.
New open source and low cost entrants: New open source vendors such as Jasper Soft and Pentaho have entered the market, challenging the proprietary vendors with low cost solutions. These open source vendors are playing catch up in the marketplace by adding features such as semantic layers that they lacked when they first appeared on the market.
Emergence of Microsoft: Microsoft has emerged as a player in the BI space with its PerformancePoint solution that was released in September ’07. For companies that are Microsoft shops already, this low cost offering has most of the main features and functions of a core BI toolset.
Integration with MS Office: BI vendors that traditionally tried to steer companies away from spreadmarts have now embraced the Microsoft Office platform into their solutions, offering access to live data through not just Excel, but the rest of the Office products such as Outlook, PowerPoint and Word.
BI is still one of the key focus areas for corporations. Recent changes in the market have dramatically changed the options for companies, providing new opportunities as well as challenges. Most of these changes are likely for the better, ultimately integrating analytical models to provide more robust capabilities. Companies that consider these new options and leverage the change to their advantage can create BI environments that will satisfy both user demands, as well as create new operation efficiencies for their IT departments
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