Business Intelligence Vendors Are the Problem
August 15, 2008
Accountants, like lawyers, give me goose bumps. Once in a while, an accountant will come up with a good idea that makes sense and saves money. On August 14, 2008, Accounting Web published “Business Intelligence Round Up: Good or Bad for SMEs”. You can read the interesting article which is part commentary and part interview here.
For me the most interesting point in the write up was this statement by Gary Boddington, managing director, Alchemex, quoted by Accounting Web:
… The biggest problem with BI vendors has been the BI vendors themselves and their collective inaudibility to hear the market demands of an emergent client profile that differs to what had become accustomed and lives in a different market altogether. An outdated view is that that the end user in this new target market is simply too unsophisticated to understand the multitude of multi-letter acronyms required to successfully conclude a system integration, and therefore should be ignored because they simply never have, and never will grasp the concepts. Traditional BI vendors continue to apply big ticket thinking to small ticket business …
Similar statements have been made to me by those burned by some enterprise search installations that manifested some very bad manners.
Business intelligence is drawing some search and content vendors the way a Chicago’s crime light draws night creatures. If vendors are a “problem”, it follows that the potential pay off from a boom in analytics could go sour.
I received a question from one of my two or three readers of this Web log, asking me for the names of vendors who are revenue challenged. Specifics of this type are not appropriate for this addled goose’s Web log, but you can locate some candidates by considering these criteria:
- Sudden repositioning. One day the company does X, the next R. No obvious logic, just the logic of a 30 year old MBA
- No releases for a year or more. The delay may be a lack of money for creating new gizmos or a management team that’s complacent, keeping its head down, or riding out the storm until a new port comes in view.
- Tie ups that are not quite acquisitions. Two companies become one new one, often with no fungible evidence other than it seems like a good idea.
- Accepting cash infusions. Established companies that obtain cash infusions need money or at least more money than is available from normal operations.
- Redefining an old product as a new product when little has changed. I see this quite a bit. Some of the companies in my April 2008 Beyond Search study are expert in this tactic.
- New words, same old technology. I know where English majors go to practice their craft–the marketing departments of technology companies.
Many vendors are upfront, organized, and generally consistent in what generates revenue. With business intelligence once again becoming fashionable, could the vendors undermine a potentially significant revenue stream?
What do you think?
Stephen Arnold, August 15, 2008
Stephen Arnold, August 15, 2008
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3 Responses to “Business Intelligence Vendors Are the Problem”
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[…] ScottGu Accountants, like lawyers, give me goose bumps. Once in a while, an accountant will come up with a good idea that makes sense and saves money. On August 14, 2008, Accounting Web published “Business Intelligence Round Up: Good or Bad for SMEs”. You can read the interesting article which is … […]
I totally agree. In fact, I was part of the “vendor problem” you refer to in your blog. When I was working on Siebel Analytics (now Oracle Analytics), it was very frustrating that as we would plan future product releases, the focus would always be on adding more and more advanced functionality for a smaller and smaller number of users who cared about that functionality. Any mention of trying to rethink what we’re doing to make it simpler and more accessible to a broader range of people was met with comments about how BI was really for people who were trained in analysis.
It’s because of this type of thinking that BI has only scratched the surface in terms of reaching its potential. Historically, it has been limited to only those companies who had the time, energy, money, and skills to implement a complex solution. One of the main reasons on-demand BI / analytics solutions are becoming so popular (and one of the main reasons I started LucidEra as on on demand analytics company) is because it makes analysis so much more accessible to a much broader company. If the traditional BI vendors won’t listen, then it will be up to the new breed of analytics companies to deliver the solutions the market wants.
Ken Rudin,
Thanks for your post.
Stephen Arnold, August 17, 2008, 446 pm Eastern