The Intelligence is in the Data, not the Software

I am an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Business Technology blog written by Ben Worthen. In his post “Good Decisions Aren’t Easy” on December 19, 2007 he states that:

Business intelligence’ isn’t just an oxymoron. It’s also a hot new technology that your business is most likely trying or evaluating. But be prepared: One BI veteran warns that it’s not as easy as just installing software.

And concludes that:

Businesses that decide to buy BI and data warehousing software need to understand the effort it takes to ensure the integrity of the data that they’re hoping to base decisions on.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s not about the technology; it’s about the data. More precisely it’s about data integration. Tools help implement, but it’s the people, politics and processes that enable the definition of your data, business transformations and performance measures.

That means IT talking to business people and business people talking to each other to reach consensus on these definitions. If you don’t have data governance in the long run it won’t matter what BI software you are using, the business users won’t be getting value out of your BI efforts or maybe they won’t even be using the software.

As an aside, it’s funny to hear BI described as a “hot new technology.” Although it is hot, for the veterans who have been working on these solutions for a while (two decades in my case) new doesn’t seem to be the case.

Also, I’d modify the statement “…that your business is most likely trying or evaluating (BI software)” to say your company IS most likely using, trying or evaluating BI. Many companies already have a couple of generations of BI projects under their belts. But BI is NOT pervasive yet, even at many of the companies that have had BI for a while, so there is a lot of potential for growth.

The bottom line: Business intelligence is hot because business information is hot. You’ll need software to get that information to business people so they can use it, but you’ll need data integration to make the right information available.