Business Intelligence: Bright Spot in IT Investment

October, 2008 from Computer Economics – “…According to our recent survey of technology trends, nearly 60% of organizations are investing in BI initiatives this year. Yet as our data shows, obtaining a positive return on investment is not easy--or at least it is not easy to demonstrate--and budget overruns are more common for BI than for nearly any other technology in our study…

BI applications deliver hard ROI through reduction of time and resources spent on gathering and reporting financial and other information. Soft returns are often more difficult to quantify. Most agree that having access to more timely and accurate data results in better decision-making and operational performance, but it is often impossible to prove with hard evidence…”

180 View – We also see a lot of interest from all our clients in business intelligence, but there is confusion in what is meant by BI. Our definition is turning data into information to make decisions. So BI could be a report writer, a query tool within a system allowing for easy retrieval of data based on multiple criteria, a dashboard or OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing). Most systems already come equipped with a report writer and a query tool. What’s hot today is a dashboard that is role specific and configurable without programmer involvement. OLAP involves easily analyzing data from different dimensions (customer, region, product type…), drill down and graphing results. OLAP initially was targeted to large companies but falling prices now make it applicable to small and mid sized organizations.