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Posted February 2, 2009 by Anonymous

Hi Ramon -- I agree that today, most analysis is done by analysts. That's one of the main reasons for the low penetration of BI into companies, particularly midsize companies. You need to be an analyst to do the analysis, and most companies don't have many analysts, if any. Analytic applications are the way to address this issue. It doesn't meant that analysts will go away, but that you will be able to get analytic insight to help you do your job without being an analyst. Real analytic apps need several things to be effective, not just a prebuilt data model. Since the users aren't analysts, analytic apps need to include the questions that people should be / need to be asking about their area of business. It also needs to provide a way to help people interpret the results (even as a service provided by the vendor, which is becoming a more common solution to the problem that companies don't have analysts in house). Then a sales manager can be shown what types of deals they're most likely to win so they'll know where to focus. A marketing manager can easily be shown the combination of campaigns that works best. A finance manager can see trends in where their revenue is coming from. Only when we move from tools that must be used by analysts to analytic apps that are designed for business users will BI be able to live up to its full potential to help companies be more efficient and more effective.

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