BI Branches Out

Doug's still out, so covering once again is Jeff Schwartz.

Last week, I moderated a webcast exploring the topic of business intelligence and the growing trend of enterprises rolling it out to the masses, referred to by some as self-service BI.

The majority of those surveyed in a quick spot poll during the webcast said they see it as a priority to extend BI throughout their organizations to give stakeholders the ability to query and share data. Still, that only represented 32 percent of those responding. Another 23 percent said they had no BI infrastructure to date and 17 percent aren't yet sure. About 21 percent will beef up their BI offerings for a more restricted user base.

Granted, this wasn't a scientific survey, but the results are consistent with what Forrester Research analyst and featured webcast presenter James Kobielus has observed. "That's the same results that we've seen in our Forrester polling of customers," Kobielus said.

Responding to a separate set of questions, 58 percent said they'd like to see BI tools made available to all internal rank-and-file staff, including sales, customer service and field workers. Sixteen percent plan to extend their BI infrastructures outside the enterprise to trading partners, customers and suppliers, while 14 percent say targeting management remains a key priority.

"That has been and remains the chief growth area for BI to become pervasive throughout the corporate world. You need to instrument more dashboards for more decisions made by more people from the ground up," Kobielus said.

Kobielus gave an interesting presentation on the webcast, called "BI Branches Out," which is available on-demand.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 14, 2009 at 11:53 AM