BI Giant has Clay Feet

Jean-Michel Franco opens his Information Management’s March 2009 Special Report by pointing out a problem with today’s corporate BI usage:

It took more than 30 years for BI to reach maturity, a little longer than it took for other key components like enterprise resource management and customer relationship management. But whilst the latter have seen the creation and redesign of entire information system landscapes in a big-bang mode, BI investments have taken place in a gradual and often ad hoc manner. In spite of unifying concepts such as the data warehouse, each decision support project often generated its own tools and selection of service providers, architectures, data models and standards. As a result, despite the fact that BI and performance management represent more than 10 percent of the typical IT budget, it can be compared to a giant with clay feet: strong footprint, but sparse foundations.

While uncoordinated, decentralized Business Intelligence implementations and usage may not have been an issue in the past, Franco says that has changed — BI now provides companies with mission-critical functionality that requires centralized strategy and management…

Jean-Michel Franco opens his Information Management’s March 2009 Special Report by pointing out a problem with today’s corporate BI usage:

It took more than 30 years for BI to reach maturity, a little longer than it took for other key components like enterprise resource management and customer relationship management. But whilst the latter have seen the creation and redesign of entire information system landscapes in a big-bang mode, BI investments have taken place in a gradual and often ad hoc manner. In spite of unifying concepts such as the data warehouse, each decision support project often generated its own tools and selection of service providers, architectures, data models and standards. As a result, despite the fact that BI and performance management represent more than 10 percent of the typical IT budget, it can be compared to a giant with clay feet: strong footprint, but sparse foundations.

While uncoordinated, decentralized Business Intelligence implementations and usage may not have been an issue in the past, Franco says that has changed — BI now provides companies with mission-critical functionality that requires centralized strategy and management.

Franco urges companies to “review and streamline their decision support architecture” and define “a cohesive BI roadmap.” As part of the strategy, Franco recommends establishing a corporate team dedicated to Business Intelligence.

Read Franco’s whole report at Information Management’s website and, if you have not already read it, see my blog on establishing good BI foundations.