Where is Business Intelligence going in 2012
Business Intelligence in 2012.
Every day we meet people in organisations either using our business intelligence solutions or considering the purchase of a new BI solution. As 2011 draws to a close its worthwhile reflect on what we hear everyday talking with our business intelligence customers in Financial Services, Industry and Government.
Business Intelligence, Agile Reporting, Beautiful data.
The need is greater than ever, we want to reach down into data, analyse it and learn from it. Information must jump out of the screen not be just a line of data or a tabular report, dashboards must be clear and concise , analytical discovery should be at the speed of thought. Visualisation is here.
Beautiful data
More automation and Data Blending.
Some Business Intelligence systems involve hand feeding data from the source to the BI tool. Double entry of data into more than one system still occurs and is a feature of Excel use. For efficiency, speed and accuracy, data should be captured only once (and as automatically as possible). It should be possible to Blend Data from multiple sources without having to create a data warehouse. Manual manipulation of Data leads to errors.
Incorporate more Data Sources - 'Unstructured Data'
Business Intelligence systems interact with structured data sources such as databases and spreadsheets, focusing on numerical / alpha data. As the inherent 'structures' in 'unstructured information' (documents, emails, letters) are recognised, BI systems will interact with electronic document and records management systems and email systems to report data from unstructured information sources. This is logical next step, much of it already in progress.
Earlier this Autumn MXI ran an a very successful event about fraud detection in E-Mail in co operation with Tableau, Irish Life and Ernst and Young.
Aberdeen Study on Agile, Self Service BI/The future.
Alerts, KPI's, Triggered Events
Alerts are a major trend. BI systems need to alert key users when KPIs exceed their agreed tolerance, even leading the user to the subset of data that has caused the violation. More automated interaction between busy users and BI systems enable quick resolution of any problems, whether they are financial, technical or otherwise. Messaging being delivered to IPAD, Iphones, e-mails, Tablets, personal devices.
Next Issue on trends for Business Intelligence in 2012 we will speak to possibly the fastest growing element Predictive analytics and “What if” capabilities of Business intelligence software