Beyond Rows and Columns

I am hopeful. I see a kinder, friendlier BI world evolving.

In our research, the most strategic IT investment for 2010 is business intelligence (BI). These investments will drive the majority of the spending in 2010. As companies contemplate this spend, I would like for it to not be your standard, traditional BI thinking that does not serve the line-of-business buyer well.

Today, there are four market realities driving projects:

• The demand for industry-driven and content-specific analytics is accelerating.
• The line-of-business buyer is involved more than ever in BI decisions.
• There is a trust gap between line-of-business users and IT, and it is growing.
• The technology market will continue to consolidate. It will become more confusing.

 

The answer to closing the gap needs to be new thinking. Projects need to be about more than reporting. The solution is not more rows and columns. I am excited about new concepts. Three promising innovations are:

Search

Search is not new on the Internet or in office applications. It is new to enterprise reporting. In 2009, Lawson introduced search capabilities into its reporting applications. This is a good first step, but search has the possibility to have an even greater impact. 

Will search engine optimization (SEO) redefine traditional techniques for master data management? Endeca thinks so. Endeca is building search tools to flexibly assemble metadata elements on an as-needed basis. I believe that within two years the traditional approaches on defining master data elements will become obsolete. They are just too rigid and problematic.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis answers the question of "What do customers really think of my product?" This data mining is a new frontier. 70% of the data is unstructured. The goal is to mine unstructured data to gain insights on facts (Lora is an analyst for a company that just got acquired) and sentiment extraction (How do Lora's clients feel about the acquisition?). The power happens when this unstructured text mining is combined with rules to drive real-time customer feedback (What are Lora's customers concerns about their contracts?). I recently had one of these blow-an-analyst away briefings with SAS. (Many analyst briefings are incredibly dry; every now and then, you get one that is fabulous.) The mining of unstructured text is something that SAS does well. I believe that investments in sentiment analysis will be hot in 2010 in high tech and electronics, digital consumer programs, and e-commerce.

Mapping

The intersection of enterprise data with geomapping is an exciting frontier for supply chain applications. The combination of pattern recognition (this supplier has a consistent pattern of mis-shipping on the third week of the month) with geomapping offers unbounded opportunities. Recently, Cisco gave a presentation to our supply chain peer forum on real-time geomapping of supplier risk. It has the ability to see pattern recognition against real-time risk factors. It is also important for customer sensing. Imagine the possibilities to use pattern recognition while applying demographic filters to mapped data to see which retail outlets are out of stock and where new products are selling in real time. It is possible.

The battleground for IT spending in 2010 is BI. It is where strategic vendors—Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP—will face off. The competition between these vendors for mindshare will be fierce. In the middle of the fight, look for the friendlier, more user-friendly approaches to BI. They are evolving quickly. They will help companies see insights beyond rows and columns. I only hope that the innovations are not lost in the heat of the battle.

What innovations do you see happening in BI?