Business Intelligence Tool Category

Business Intelligence (BI) is much more democratic over the last decade. BI is no longer reserved only for senior management decision makers, responsible for strategic and tactical business decisions. The BI is increasingly incorporated directly into the operations and has become an indispensable tool for many front-line employees.

To implement a Business Intelligence solution, today a wide variety of tools for end users has. Each of these tools meets the special needs of specific categories of users. We can distinguish several categories of users, each with distinctive needs and most distinctive abilities. Some technical knowledge, others do not. Some familiar with the data to operate, others are more oriented business processes.

Deploy a single tool and uniform for all categories of users is a mistake that could lead to any BI project failure. Impose the same tool at all could meet only one category of users. A compromise could have an even more disastrous consequence and meet people.

I attended a few days ago at a given Cindi Howson at the TDWI World Conference in Chicago workshop. With his permission, I present a very interesting chart. This diagram identifies the main categories of users of BI within organizations and identifies, for each of these categories, the most appropriate BI tools.

The diagram below contains several arcs, each representing a category of users. More arc, the larger the number of users in this category is important in a typical organization. From the centre (half-circle), there are statisticians, software developers, analysts and information professionals, executives and managers, front line workers and beyond organizational boundaries, customers, suppliers and various organizations such as independent administrative authorities.

Each black dotted in this diagram has a BI tool type. Each point is positioned on the arc representing the category of users it serves best. Without going to all the tools presented, we can still make some interesting observations.

Executives and managers are better served by the dashboards and scorecards. Surprising since this category of user is not necessarily a technical background and does not have a thorough knowledge of the data model of the organization.

Executives and managers against by an excellent knowledge of the workings of the organization and their job. They need to consult standard performance indicators in line with structural frameworks. They do not have much time, so they follow high-level indicators related to strategic plans and organizational goals.

Analysts and information professionals, however, need to handle more detailed information. They use spreadsheets (Spreadsheets) BI-oriented and business-oriented requesters. This type of requester uses a layer of business data (semantic layer) in contrast to conventional requesters that require knowledge of the physical data models.

Obviously, a semantic layer must be implemented. This category of user is more interested in advanced visualization tools (visual discovery). These tools allow you to manipulate the information in a visual manner (thematic maps, heat maps, etc...) To discover correlations, trends or to test hypotheses. These are also the classic OLAP users. The OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is used to analyse the data in many areas and make drilling in the data (e.g. drill years to months or departments to employees). The front line workers represent a very great share of BI users in sizeable organizations. Their needs are operational. They want to be informed of the possible solutions for each problem, and be assisted in the execution of their decisions. They do not necessarily have extensive technical knowledge or knowledge of data models. They need interactive reports tailored and adapted to their business processes.

Report developers (IT people) want access to tool's very flexible programming, requiring specialized technical knowledge. They are not considered users of BI but as producers of reports. Statisticians analyse data with specialized tools. A detailed knowledge of the data and statistical techniques is crucial for this category of users.

One of the challenges faced by large organizations is to find a solution that meets all of these needs. Is this possible? Is today a platform provider's BI covers the entire spectrum of needs? It would probably turn to one of the most significant software such as Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP and SAS to find a relatively complete solution.

However, each proposed by the leading software platform BI has its advantages and disadvantages. Organizations will be required to choose between a single platform and a combination of tools from multiple vendors (best of breed). Indeed, the small-market players, most nested, often offer more innovative tools. Again, we must be careful and make informed choices as each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

However, finally remember one thing: each user category must be best served possible because it is the success of your BI project is at stake!