Battle of the BI Systems
October 20, 2009
I was in Europe and besieged by business intelligence of BI conversations. No one wants “search”. The user wants “answers”. The shortest way from a question to an answer is the next generation business intelligence system or BI solution. The only problem is that if a person does not know what question to ask, it remains tricky for a business intelligence system to provide much of an answer.
Not surprisingly, the BI vendors have approached this problem in a straightforward manner. The BI system is configured to provide reports on a number of standard topics. The most generalized collection of these standard components is called a dashboard. The idea is a user looks at a dashboard, recognizes a heading or graphic that provides the “answer”. The user has been changed from a person who asks a question to a person who recognizes a link that directs the user to an answer.
Search has become business intelligence. In my opinion, some customer sensitive search vendors are shifting their angle of approach to the market by several degrees. These vendors offer tools which an information technology department or a reseller can use to build dashboards.
One company that is in this business is Attivio, formed a couple of years ago by former Fast Search & Transfer professionals. In my meetings, Attivio was not mentioned, but in the airport waiting for my flight back to the US I read “Traction Software Selects Attivio to Power Information Access for Enterprise 2.0 Social Software”. The article was brief, but I clicked to the Attivio Web site and followed links to Traction Software. These companies are pushing into the social business intelligence.
One of the people who regaled me with business intelligence information provided a useful item of information—Yellowfin in Australia. I was not familiar with the company. The person who explained this company to me mentioned three points:
- Although a commercial product, some open source goodness flavors this solution
- The software includes analytics and some nifty graphics
- Geographical support is baked in
- The system offers social information support.
The Yellowfin site offers demos, and I signed up for additional information. Here’s an example of the type of dashboard one can make available to end users.
I saw one demo whilst in Europe which I will profile in a separate write up. (I have to check to see if the information is publicly available.)
Three observations:
- Search is shifting to the dashboard model
- The lines between business intelligence and UX (Microsoft’s buzzy term for a slick interface) are starting to look quite a bit like the intelligence community’s screen displays
- Users don’t have to know the ins and outs of either the data or the logic to get what’s needed from a system. In my opinion, this approach can “dumb down” some types of information access which may be a short cut to making some ill advised decisions.
The dashboard approach to information access is one that gets potential users excited and interested in spending money for a new approach.
Stephen Arnold, October 20, 2009
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One Response to “Battle of the BI Systems”
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Search is a rising star in the BI world but the main problem in search is what to search.
Many people which are not analysts but still need dashborads to understand whats going in their companies must have their dashboards pre configured, if they will need to search most of the time they will be left with no answer.