Moving Business Intelligence Forward

BM. How do you see the relationship between BI and enterprise content management evolving?

JF. They’re related, but their differences still make them tough to integrate. BI lets end users create content by using structured data; ECM manages content that someone already created, and it’s often unstructured.

They come together at the metadata level, though – the point at which we describe what we’re looking for. That’s what makes BI search, such as our WebFOCUS Magnify product, relevant. Good search products can tap into ECM systems to find relevant unstructured documents as well as structured data and reports.

JK. Business Intelligence can enable information in content management systems to be used more effectively. One example of that is a unique solution that uses data mining and BI technology to help sales people determine when and how to use specific sales and marketing assets to prospect and close business.

BM. BI software has been around in one shape or another almost as long as computers themselves. But why has business intelligence technology recently become such hot technology for the modern business?

JF. Slice any major initiative and it bleeds information requirements. That’s not new. But now we can provide information to masses of people, which completely changes our options. Ford, for instance, created a WebFOCUS application that showed 10,000 dealerships – using 14 languages – how they were doing compared to their peers. Healthy competition resulted, motivating dealers to perform better, which saves Ford $25 million annually.

JK. Many companies now recognize that the next frontier of competitive advantage is in management excellence. The key to achieving that comes from having defined management processes as well as software to support those processes. Just as ERP helped organizations put structure around operational processes such as ‘order to cash’ and ‘procure to pay’, BI can help organizations put structure around management processes.

BM. Not long ago, BI software was confined mostly to a small group of highly trained experts in the average business. But today, more and more business people have access to intuitive BI tools. What has driven that trend?

JF. It’s cliché, but the internet did it. People used to bow at the altar of the information keepers: bank tellers, analysts, stockbrokers, whoever. Now, everything is available and easy to use online.

JK. Oracle is bringing Web 2.0 concepts to BI in ways that simplify information access and facilitate collaboration in order to serve a much broader range of users. One example of that is the integration of BI and popular search engines. Today, using BI can be as easy as using Google.

BM. Do BI projects work more effectively when they are driven by the IT department or sponsored by the business?

JF. The business, but with a caveat. Sometimes business analysts, who are familiar with data models and slice-and-dice BI tools, lean toward solutions that are more powerful and harder to use than necessary. But non-technical end users need that eBay-like experience. So the business should drive the project, but the focus shouldn’t always be on the typical BI user.

JK. IT and business need work together as equal partners. Many of our customers have embraced the concept of BI Competency Centers to evangelize the use of BI, share and promote best practices, establish standards and implement governance processes for change management. Packaged applications that leverage lessons learned from prior BI projects can provide a great starting point for identifying requirements and implementing solutions.

BM. How do you think consolidation in the BI industry will affect the market?

JF. Tough call. Everyone has opinions, many of them contradictory or self-serving. Personally, I think that the acquired market leaders will gradually penetrate some markets as a de facto choice – as happens with any mega-vendor acquisition – but the independents will grow more quickly. For instance, systems integrators compete with IBM Global Services, and they’ll need to prove that they’re not deploying a single-platform solution to a multi-platform BI problem. They’ll need alternatives to IBM’s Cognos.

JK. With Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion Solutions last year, customers no longer must choose between a vendor offering best of breed products or an enterprise application vendor offering more integrated solutions. Today customers can have the best of both worlds. Our customers see tremendous value in having the ability to partner with a financially strong vendor who offers market leading, hot pluggable BI solutions that can integrate with enterprise applications, middleware and database technologies.

BM. What is the difference between BI and enterprise performance management and how do you see this evolving?

JF. EPM and BI – especially operational BI – should work fist in glove. Why do high-level performance management if employees can’t see how their work affects performance? Our performance management strategy integrates all levels of EPM and BI.

JK. Absolutely. ERP systems let you execute business processes faster and more efficiently. And now middleware technologies like SOA, data integration, BAM, and workflow engines are enabling BI and EPM to be embedded directly within business processes. Oracle customers see the value in having a single vendor that can bring ERP and CRM applications, middleware, and BI/EPM together in a way that lets people get insight in the context of their daily work, and translate that insight into action in real time.

BM. Are EPM and ERP systems becoming more closely aligned? How do you see these technologies and processes evolving?

JF. They should be, but they’re not. ERP systems, almost by definition, have a scope that’s limited to what they manage. Even when they integrate with other systems, they force those systems to conform to their processes. And as ERP companies integrate BI and EPM capabilities, they’ll be focused inward on their own models and processes ­– naturally enough for any acquisition process – which will make EPM proprietary. And proprietary EPM is a non-starter.

JK. They are really two sides of the same coin. When we meet with finance professionals, they tend to converse in the language of EPM and have an interest in financial reporting, planning, forecasting, scorecards and profitability analysis. When we meet with line of business and IT professionals, they tend to speak the language of business intelligence, and often are interested in operational insights. But ultimately, managers from all disciplines are interested in using these technologies to drive better business performance. And we see widespread recognition that operational reporting and analysis must tie back to financial system of record for planning, forecasting, and reporting. In other words, these two categories are converging.  

BM. What BI trends are you getting excited about?

JF. Search, because it lets ordinary people find exactly what they’re looking for. That will boost productivity massively over the next few years. The adoption of really effective handheld BI is coming, too, driven by cheap bandwidth, service-oriented architecture and better devices.

Our money is where our mouth is. We’re constantly enhancing our WebFOCUS Magnify BI search product, and our Active Technologies strategy is geared in part to achieve blockbuster effects on handheld devices.

JK. I’m excited about the application of business intelligence and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology to enable what we call ‘Insight to Action’. When you can embed business intelligence in business processes, you give people the ability to not only gain insight, but to actually do something about it right then and there. As time goes on, the lines between discrete business intelligence, ERP and CRM applications will become increasingly transparent.

Top five tips for integrating BI

1. Clean up your BI before trying to integrate it with any operational applications or portals
2. Establish a common BI platform of integrated tools from a single vendor for all BI development
3. Focus BI integration around achieving a single specific prioritized business objective
4. Do not assume one approach for BI integration. Recognize that there are different strategies for different roles
5. Establish a methodology to identify where BI is needed, who or what needs it and when they need it

Source: www.businessintelligence.com

John Kopcke, SVP, Enterprise Performance Management Global Business Unit at Oracle, and is the driving force and thought leader behind the company’s vision for BI and EPM.

Jake Freivold is VP of Corporate Marketing with Information Builders. He has worked in technical and marketing for 13 years, focusing particularly on integration and business intelligence.