Business Intelligence
Myth #6
This issue continues our ongoing series of business
intelligence myths with #6 Standardizing
on a BI Tool will Solve the Problem.
Before we get to the myth, I want to share with
you some observations from a Boston
DAMA ETL tools panel presentation I attended
last week (4/8/04).
Andrew Mamby of Ascential Software
and Mike Hoskins of Pervasive Software
discussed where the tools market is now and where
they see it evolving in the next three years.
They both agreed that the data integration needs
of the marketplace were greater than just ETL
tools and that we are victims of the Gartner
Quadrants, which defines the ETL market too
narrowly.
Some of their observations on today’s marketplace:
- Data integration functionality includes data
quality, data profiling and metadata management.
- Data integration is the core of business intelligence
(BI), Business Performance Management (BPM)
and analytics projects.
- Many companies are realizing that they need
a single version of the truth even within their
ERP implementations with regards to product,
customer, supplier, and employee data. They
are referring to this as Master Data Management
but it is another flavor of data integration.
- Data integration is incorporating real-time
and message technology beyond the traditionally
batch-oriented ETL tools
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Some of their observations on
where the market is evolving:
- Data integration functionality continues to expand
and will include what has been traditionally application
integration. This will happen because the data is
more important than the application to run and manage
your business.
- Scale will continue to explode along three dimensions:
volumes, variety and change. Volume will be the easiest
to handle because of advances in chips, memory, networks
and storage. Variety and change are the difficult
dimensions because they will have to be dealt with
thought, design and architecture.
- Information management (the thought, design and
architecture mentioned above) will become the approach
of companies that successfully manage and use their
data.
- Rick
Sherman, Athena IT Solutions -
Myth #6 - Standardizing on a BI
tool will solve the problem
Most companies have purchased and deployed multiple
BI tools during various projects over the last decade.
Each BI project selected a BI tool that, at that time,
was perceived to be the best for its business users.
As companies examine the effectiveness and use of their
business intelligence efforts and review IT costs, they
are finding too many different BI tools spread out through
their organization. Many companies juggle more than
six BI tools being (without even counting Microsoft
Excel and Microsoft Access).
It appears to be a no-brainer for the IT group to initiate
a BI tool consolidation project to reduce IT support
and vendor software maintenance costs. In addition,
if there is an initiative to expand the use of BI tools,
consolidation can result in better licensing terms from
a single software vendor.
Two considerations: first, perform a total cost of
ownership (TCO) analysis and examine the hidden costs
of replacing existing applications, retraining and migration.
Second, keep in mind that this is a project that saves
IT costs but does not directly benefit business users
- especially those that may lose their familiar BI tools
during the consolidation.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it! If business users
do not perceive a significant benefit to them, other
than reducing costs, they are not going to embrace the
consolidation. In addition, change management always
adds more costs and time to projects than planned. Even
if the business users say they are not satisfied with
their existing BI tools, they still won't be happy about
having to learn a new BI tool (even if it is better).
Chances are, they are already working long hours and
won't appreciate having to learn a new BI tool on top
of their existing workloads.
It makes sense to standardize on a suite of BI tools
both for IT and the business users. Realize that you
will need multiple types of tools (although one vendor
may be able to provide them) in your BI portfolio, so
plan accordingly. In addition, you should incorporate
Microsoft Excel in your BI tool portfolio. Excel is
a strong candidate because:
- Every business person uses it
- It has the functionality for the business users
to be much more self-sufficient than with other BI
tools, and
- Every business person has it, so you can decrease
the overall investment needed to deploy BI across
your corporation.
Previous myths:
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