http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/ The Intelligent Pathway blog is an informal channel for sharing our ideas and experiences in the areas of business intelligence, performance management, analytics, and data warehousing. This blog is intended to provide our business and technical perspectives on new developments and future directions of the fields. Our blog posts reflect a pragmatic bent that balances business and technical perspectives. As always, feel free to contact us or add your perspective if you wish--we're always willing to hear from people who may have had different experiences or who hold different opinions. Copyright 2012 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:56:29 -0700 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=4.261 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss In my last post about BI teams executing faster, Faster BI Execution: Four Practical Approaches to Improving BI System Quality, I looked at how quality impacts BI team performance, in this fourth post in the series I examine how slow BI systems can slow the performance of BI teams. Do users complain about how slow the system is? Do you have to create a summary table for many new reports? Do you test on sample data or only run tests... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/04/slow_systems_ca.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/04/slow_systems_ca.php Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:56:29 -0700 In my previous post, “The Analytics Blind Spot for Business Users“, I examined business users' perception of their BI capability, and how frequently they're not getting the value out of their business data.  This week, as part of our ongoing series on How BI is Being Used in 2012, I want to take a closer look at how well organizations are able to handle the three forces most responsible for the challenge of big data: volume, velocity and variety. In... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/03/are_organizatio.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/03/are_organizatio.php Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:18:50 -0700 In my last post "Analytics In - Business Intelligence Out?" I discussed one of the key findings in our new research brief How Business Intelligence and Analytics are Being Used in 2012. In our research, we examined the terms that most resonated with business users when discussing the process of analyzing business information to support better decision making and improve business results.  Surprisingly, "business intelligence" rated fairly low compared to the terms "analytics" and "reporting." As I noted previously, the... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/the_analytics_b.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/the_analytics_b.php Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:45:22 -0700 We recently conducted a survey of business users, IT executives and BI teams on their use of business data. We posed the following question to all business users: "Different terms are used to describe the analysis of business information to support better decision making and improve business results.  Which of these terms do you use? (Select all that apply)" The results were interesting: 87% selected the term "analytics," 80% selected "reporting," and only 47% of respondents chose the term "business... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/analytics_in_-.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/analytics_in_-.php Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:02:19 -0700 True story: last night, as I headed home, I was all set to write a blog post about our forthcoming research brief on the use of business data for analytics: essentially looking at how business people and IT people view the adoption and application of business analytics very differently. Once home, though, instead of staring at the warm glow of an empty blog page, I was staring at the three inches of water stuck in my bathtub. And my blog... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/one_perspective.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/one_perspective.php Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:06:38 -0700 The role of analytics in sports isn't a particularly new story. Back in 2003, Michael Lewis - in his book Moneyball - chronicled how the use of analytics helped baseball's Oakland Athletics win a World Series.  The story became so popular that it was made into an Academy Award nominated film in 2011.  While the application of analytics in football has been less publicized, one of the biggest success stories of analytics in professional football will be on display this... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/the_super_bowl.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/02/the_super_bowl.php Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:12:47 -0700 Last week, I posted “Can Organizations Get Business Analytics Strategy Right?” which looked at a recent Gartner report that predicted that more than 70% of companies wouldn’t be able to successfully connect analytics and business strategy. Gartner followed up this report with their 2012 CIO survey. One of the interesting findings was that business intelligence/business analytics jumped back up to the number one priority for CIOs after slipping to 5th place in 2011. There are a number of reasons why... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/01/cios_to_busines.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/01/cios_to_busines.php Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:31:23 -0700 Can Organizations Get Analytics Strategy Right? In a new report released by Gartner last week, the most salient finding was that more than 70% of BI initiatives will consist of analytics metrics that lack synchronicity with overarching business strategy.  According to the report: "Organizations often develop and deploy hindsight-oriented reports and/or query applications focusing on metrics that users may find interesting, but they don't represent the operational or strategic controls used to facilitate business performance." The report's author, Andreas Bitterer,... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/01/responding_to_t.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2012/01/responding_to_t.php Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:22:44 -0700 Earlier today, Merriam-Webster announced that pragmatic was their word of the year and the most searched word on their site in 2011. According to their press release "Pragmatic is not associated with any one event but instead describes 'an admirable quality that people value in themselves and wish for in others, especially in their leaders and their policies.'" As we move into 2012, and dozens of lists start to crop up predicting the future of IT in 2012, I figured... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/12/pragmatic_busin.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/12/pragmatic_busin.php Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:09:34 -0700 Part of the evolution of a company's business intelligence (BI) maturity is the ability to implement a true enterprise data warehouse. But, as we've often seen with our business intelligence consulting clients, that is not what the companies typically start with, for cost and time reasons. More likely, in an effort to realize faster BI ROI, companies will undertake smaller, focused BI efforts, and before companies realize it, they end up creating multiple disjointed BI stacks across the organization serving... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/12/5_steps_to_solv.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/12/5_steps_to_solv.php Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:40:16 -0700 We're grateful for all the responses we've received so far in our survey, "How are Companies Using Business Data?" and we're getting ready to close the survey on Monday, December 12.  So far we've heard from a wide variety of companies, ranging in size from below $100M to over $5B in revenue, and represent fourteen different industries including government, education, retail and financial services. As the survey is still open for a few more weeks, we can't tell you the... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/11/how_are_you_usi.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/11/how_are_you_usi.php Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:47:25 -0700  ”I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker This is probably one of the most famous - or at least most frequently used - quotes to reflect the notoriously vague world of marketing. How do you quantify the value of an impression? How much is your brand worth? These sorts of challenging questions have often made it hard marketing departments to be taken seriously at companies with data driven... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/11/how_are_markete.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/11/how_are_markete.php Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:35:09 -0700 I recently came across an interesting article on GigaOm entitled "The six data-savvy work personas." The post examines the research project done by Dow Jones' Factiva, in which business user behavior is broken down into six personas - each of which gathers, shares, and collaborates with data in a different way. These personas are: The Compass uses information gathering and research to help guide big-picture strategic decisions The Connector lives to pull together a broad range of information to make... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/10/the_data_savvy.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/10/the_data_savvy.php Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:50:06 -0700 It's a question we asked last year, and one we're asking again (in this survey). Last year we conducted a survey of business and IT executives to get their thoughts on how business data was being used (or not) by their organization.  The initial results provided us with some great information about how well companies are using their business data to meet key business challenges. Does Size Matter in Business Analytics? In this year's survey, we're expanding our questions to... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/09/how_effectively.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/09/how_effectively.php Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:00:31 -0700 We've been fortunate enough to have an article published in the upcoming issue of TDWI's BI Journal, due out later this month, that *spoiler alert* examines the qualities a successful business intelligence program though the lens of an Operations framework. Since there is often a disconnect between the business and IT functions of a company, we thought it would be good to get BI managers to see their work through the eyes of another department, while simultaneously speaking to business... http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/09/how_to_speak_bu.php http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/williams/archives/2011/09/how_to_speak_bu.php Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:36:08 -0700