"In BI, strategy is destiny... or should be." With these words, Jill Dyche, a leading thinker and consultant in the business intelligence space, admonishes BI professionals to keep their work in perspective.
"In our rush to proselytize our existing capabilities, we forget what’s in the business’ pipeline. Most of this has to do with the lack of sustained and regular business requirements gathering." Jill hits the proverbial nail right on the proverbial head. All too often, the emphasis in solutions is on the technology, and efforts go into making sure all the bells and whistles are ringing and whistling as they should.
I see this as the greatest failing in service oriented architecture, and this is also a failing in data management.
To be sure, businesses suffer from failures in imagination, too. As Jill puts it: "it also has to do with the business’ failure to think big. After all, you’ve reengineered your supply chain and you now have query access into your ERP system. And your CRM project is finished, right? (The answer should be no...) Irrespective of your industry or market segment, your customers are very likely taking you for granted, and their likelihood to attrite is—as 2002’s popular colloquialism put it—only a mouse click away."
But, back to BI and data management side of things -- Jill observes that BI and data managers she has worked with have done stellar jobs in timely delivery of BI reports, speedy data loading, or changed data capture. However, she adds, how many can say they have effectively addressed any of the following business inititiaves?
- "Real-time individualization of customers, support of customer do-not-solicit requests, or customer and product hierarchy management"
- Customer support that is "tiered, fast, and relevant"
- Knowledge of "who’s profitable within and outside of a household"
- Knowledge of "ideal product mixes for an existing customer segment"
There are incredible solutions out there now in the BI and analytics market. However, they won't help the business if they're not being leveraged to their full capacity.
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