Business Intelligence @ Crossroads

Business Intelligence (BI) is well & truly at the crossroads and so are BI practitioners like me. On one hand there is tremendous improvement in BI tools & techniques almost on a daily basis but on the other hand there is still a big expectation gap among business users on Business Intelligence’s usage/value to drive core business decisions.

This ensures that every Business Intelligence (BI) practitioner develops a ’split’ personality – a la Jekyll and Hyde, getting fascinated by the awesome power of databases, smart techniques in data integration tools etc. and the very next moment getting into trouble with a business user on why ‘that’ particular metric cannot be captured in an analytical report.

For the BI technologists, there is never going to be a dull moment in the near future. With all the big product vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP etc. throwing their might behind BI and with all the specialty BI product vendors showing no signs of slowing down, just get ready to join the big swinging party.

For the business users, there is still the promise of BI that is very enticing – ‘Data to Information to Knowledge to Actions that drive business decisions’. But they are not giving the verdict as of now. Operational folks are really not getting anything out of BI right now (wait for BI 2.0) and the strategic thinkers are not completely satisfied with what they get to see.

The techno-functional managers, the split personality types are the ones in the middle trying to grapple with increasing complexity on the technology side and the ever increasing clamor for insights from the business side.

Take sides right away – there is more coming from this space on the fascinating world of Business Intelligence.