Business Intelligence: Getting Smarter, But Still Learning - ' Have Business Found BI'
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's Benefits Yet?">
IT managers are grappling with
the continued expansion of applications
and, subsequently, the growing amount
of data coming out of the applications.
In the past, businesses
turned to Excel and other
spreadsheet programs to gather
and analyze all that information.
But those options only
went so far.
Enter business intelligence.
The software tools under the BI
umbrella have quickly become
commonplace in enterprises.
Advances in capabilities and
usability, as well as integration
with other key components
of the IT infrastructure, have
led nearly three-fourths of
businesses to make strategic
implementations of the tools,
according to Gartner.
Worldwide revenue for
business intelligence software
in 2006 was $4.3 billion, and
the market is expected to grow
to about $5 billion this year,
Gartner research shows.
"Business intelligence holds
the promise of being able to
mobilize your people's minds
with information as they are
making their decisions," says
Bill Hostmann, an analyst at Gartner.
"Businesses realize the big, long reports
and complex sets of disparate information
they've relied on for years can no
longer get the job done."
But obstacles must be overcome for
business intelligence to reach its full
potential. For one, use of the software
often remains challenging for those
without specific analytical training.
Deployments need close scrutiny and, in
many cases, outside assistance for companies
to achieve maximum benefit. And
widespread use across a broad set of users
in any business can require significant tailoring
to meet the requirements and skills
sets of a diverse workforce.
While 72 percent of IT
executives in a recent survey
by CIO Insight, Baseline's sister
publication, say their business
intelligence efforts have had a
major and measurable impact
on their companies' bottom
lines, almost six in 10 also say
users don't know how to analyze
or interpret the associated
data. (See the CIOI survey data
and analysis.)
In recent years, IT managers—
and BI vendors—have
looked to expand use of business
intelligence tools, once
privy to a select group of
analysts and executives (aka
"power users") to a much
broader set of decision makers.
Still, even in many businesses that
have deployed significant business
intelligence platforms, hands-on use
of the tools often remains a function
of the IT department or specific data
analysts. Research analysts told Baseline
they believe as few as 20 percent
of workers who could
use the tools take advantage
of them, and those who do
only use the tools in a limited
capacity.
But a shift is certainly
under way as more users continue
to use BI tools. That's
because the software's let
susers capitalize on massive
amounts of data by making
it easier to understand. As
end users find relative information
and manipulate it to
provide insight, businesses
can improve efficiencies,
sales and customer service.
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