As of today I will start to write a personal topic/column on friday where I want to share with you the articles I read that week.

This week my attention was attracted by the following articles;

• Future Shock: On the Pros and Cons of Data Modelling
• Choosing a BI Architecture for Mobile Devices
• Social network basis for knowledgemanagement (DUTCH)
• Business Intelligence to the Mass (DUTCH)
• ICT-Decisiontakers complain about BI shortage (DUTCH)
• TOGAF is going to be HOT !!! (DUTCH)
• SAS Institute turnover 15 percent above expenctations (DUTCH)
• ICT often underrated during takeover (DUTCH)
• Gartner: CIO Needs Business Experience (DUTCH)

Why these articles interested me? Let me try to explain in the next part of this post;

BI to the Mass

Why would this article interest me? Because it’s my message to the world. The article is about Microsoft by the way and the integration of their Office suite and contribution to the BI world.  

SAS Institute turnover above expectations

Since I have been working for SAS Institute in the Netherlands, the company still has a warm place in my heart. The had an increase in their turnover last year (2007) of more than 2 billion dollar. The biggest segments, responsible for this increase where the customer intelligence solutions and branch specific solutions for fraud detection (Financial) and application which help retailer better manage their assortment.

In 2007, SAS also made a strategic agreement with Teradata, to get a more integrated solution on both sides, and have a better working marketing and sales department. SAS also intensivated their cooperation with Accenture on in the Business Intelligence field.

In the netherlands they closed some new deals (EuroNext, Essent Energy Trading, Marktplaats.nl, Numico Research and Otto) and renewed some existing deals (Belastingdienst (Tax), ABN AMRO, DNB, Essent Retail, Achmea Holding, Astellas Pharma Europe and Generali), which provided them 19 percent increase of the turnover.

ICT often underrated in takeovers

Integrating Information Systems is mostly underrated when companies merge / are taken over by other companies. They are forced, by international laws, to deliver a integrated / consolidated financial report within 3 months, but mostly are not capable of doing so.

They often decide to integrate the infrastructures after the necessary financial reports are created. They start with building a temporary solution to present the needed information / reports. These solutions are expensive because the solution is not future proof. It mostly consists of a central data warehouse from which the reports are generated.

Reasons for this underrating are;

1. Gigantic time pressure
2. Too few people present
3. Too little knowledge own ICT landscape
4. A lot people are fired in takeovers
5. Too little documentation

Solution, according to Ten Bruggencate – Informatica, is to start integration as soon as the takeover starts. Don’t wait until the takeover has taken place, but investigate the system integration before the takeover.

CIO needs Business knowledge

Gartner has concluded in their investigation that there is more need for business knowledge (market and culture), when organisations are selecting Chief Information Officers. Where the CIO of the early days all technique driven, nowadays these people (or there substitute(s)) need to have experience and knowledge of the business they are working in.

Since my roots are in technique the article interests me, because someday I might become a CIO of a (large) company, so I need to gain more business knowledge than technical knowledge from now on

Decisionmakers complain about the lack of BI

A nice article about the need for Business Intelligence and Management Information. Only 7 percent of the decisionmakers has the right management information to take that important decision. They face the fact that BI is mostly not complete, contradicting and not integrated. Business Intelligence is still seen as costly, with no profit.

It seems most companies don’t see the goldmines they are sitting on. They don’t wish to invest in their golden eggs and in that way lose a lot of money and profit in my opinion. The lack of data quality and availability is the most common reason for this behaviour it seems. An other reason is the small amount of information that is available (detail level is to low).

Business Intelligence is seens as costs, not as a way to make profit. This is true in the first place. Starting Business Intelligence can be costly, but it also provides competative advantages in the (near) future of the company (if implemented right). Only if the Data Warehouses are delivering the right information, to take the right decision, the Business Intelligence investments are seen as profitable.

Within the whole playing field of this discussion, terms as Return on Investement (ROI) and Cost Of Ownership are important. Organisation want to have a feeling of the ROI, to seen the profitability of the Business Intelligence solution. If they see the profitability they are willing to invest in these kind of techniques.

Allthough there is much going on in Business Intelligence, the most important issue at the moment seems to be to deliver the right information of the right time. Only after that is provided (and quality is excepted) it might be wise to gain knowledge out of the information and become wise men …

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