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November 15, 2002

BI's Last Mile

Collaboration is narrowing the gap between information and decision-making.

by Justin Kestelyn

Message to business intelligence (BI) software vendors from end users: What have you done for me lately?

Sure, the BI industry has done a superb job pushing important information out to end users. Companies such as Information Builders Inc., Cognos Inc., and Business Objects SA give their customers an embarrassment of riches where query and reporting capabilities are concerned. Thanks to Web architectures, many enterprise reporting applications now reach tens of thousands of users, and in some (rare) cases, in real time.

But with scalability problems well in hand, the BI software vendors would now do their customers a service by working harder to close the gap between information distribution and improved decision-making — the latter being the ostensible goal of most BI software to begin with. Because of that wide gap, I suspect that far fewer business end users find these applications truly useful than is generally believed.

In a sense, many BI vendors are like piano-movers who deliver the goods to your front doorstep but don't bother about what should happen next. In reality, the ability to support improved operational decision-making — not just deliver analytic and reporting bells and whistles — is what will set winners apart from losers in the next few years.

Treasure Spot

That goal is an ambiguous one. However, a few innovators have hit upon the idea that supporting increased collaboration is the most achievable means of closing the gap between analysis and operations, and of moving the emphasis of BI solutions from information delivery to decision-making.

Spotfire is a leading example of this new "decision-centric" (a useful term supplied by IDC's Henry Morris) breed of BI vendors. Spotfire lives one layer above the information supply chain; its DecisionSite product is a user-focused environment in which existing, horizontal analytic capabilities are wedded to business- and role-specific processes. In effect, DecisionSite forges disparate data sources, analytic and reporting engines, and data integration infrastructure into a logical "utility" that supports common operational decisions. The user can focus on the familiar decision at hand, not on mobilizing complex IT systems. (DecisionSite was reviewed in the Aug. 12, 2002 issue; read it online.)

Now, Spotfire is taking this idea one step further by introducing the concept of "posters" — component-based, interactive Web pages in which users can embed DecisionSite models for the purpose of collaborative analysis sessions. These posters can include multiple models and business user annotations and support live queries; furthermore, they are stored in a shared repository. In essence, a poster is a specific decision process frozen in time for reuse. Have you ever heard a better example of knowledge management?

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Unfinished Business

Spotfire is just one of several companies heading in this direction; for example, Maya Viz Ltd. applies the whiteboard concept in its decision community software, which also supports the collaborative use of dynamic analytic components.

Expect the usual pattern: These leading-edge companies will inspire the larger, more mainstream BI companies to tackle BI's last mile problem in similar ways. I think their customers will appreciate that.