In business intelligence, we all know and espouse the fact that data integration is the most time-consuming part of the build process. This is undeniably true. However, if one were to look at the long-term (me: not a full-time analyst, but observant of the implementations I've been in for a full lifecycle over the past few years), I believe most long-term costs clearly fall into the data access layer. This is where the reports, dashboards, alerts, etc. are built.
This is true for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is a short-cutting of the data modeling process, which, when done well, minimizes the gap between design and usage. This aspect of BI is receiving only modest recognition. The focus instead is on a new breed of disruptive data access tools that are architecturally doing side-runs around the legacy tools in how they use memory and advanced visualization. Specifically, these tools are Tableau, QlikTech, and Spotfire. These tools attack a very important component of the long-term cost of BI - the cost of IT having to continue to do everything post-production.
There are a few areas where these tools are getting recognition:
- They perform faster - this allows a user, in the 30 minutes of time he has to do an analysis, to get to a deeper level of root cause analysis
- They are seen as more intuitive - this empowers the end user so they can do more, versus getting IT involved, which stalls a thought stream and introduces delay which can obliterate the relevancy
- They visualize data differently - I won't expound on it here and I don't think it's necessarily due to the tool architecture, but many claim it's better
So why do I bring it up in opposition to outsourced business intelligence? Because to truly set up business intelligence to work in a self-service capacity, you would overweigh the idea of working closely with users in the build process, which is a lever that gets deemphasized in outsourced BI. You would see business intelligence as less a technical exercise and more as an empowerment exercise. You would keep the build closer to home, where the support would be. And you would not gear up an offshore group to handle a laborious process of maintaining the data layer over the years in the way users desire. You would invest in users - culture, education, information use - instead of outsourced groups. And this is just what many are doing now.
Posted August 14, 2011 10:52 AM
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