Where is BI heading in 2009?
“When our economy is in a recession and most companies are looking to contain costs and run businesses effectively BI would definitely provides competitive edge. At the same time companies are desperate to cut back their investments in IT. This has created an interesting dynamic as to whether Bi will grow or shrink in this environment.”
No Nostradamus could give a pristine answer to a question like this one. But, at the wake of deepening recession, the time has arrived for Business Intelligence to share its services, to bring together all the resources, eliminate waste and increase the flow of information.
If you had been inspecting BI under a microscope in the recent past you would have noticed that the BI sector has been bustling with activity. On one side you see the substantial BI pure-play vendors like Hyperion, Business Objects, and Cognos being taken over by larger, non-BI vendors indicating that BI has become a strategic application and complementary to ERP implementations. On the other side you notice emerging trends in BI, like the development of new DW appliances, upcoming real time BI, Operational BI, MDM etc.
We at BI Insight thought it would be interesting to see what our own people at Systech thought about the future of BI in 2009 and their perspective of BI’s survival in times of economic doom-gloom. People that we spoke to were cautiously optimistic about BI and its potential in helping business under current market conditions. Only time can tell, how much of this optimism is proven right in 2009.
Aditya Gollapudi, Sr. Technical Lead.
Analytics is here to stay in business. Better reporting and analysis are indispensable in today’s business for finding hidden profits and increasing revenue. However, at times like this, businesses try to cut costs and do their analysis manually. A manual approach eventually leads to failure, as it is more expensive and cumbersome. This could be one of the fatal mistakes that businesses could make. The maturity of the BI industry is put to test now, as companies decide what to keep and what to discard so that they remain competitive. The fact that companies are running BI with improvements in speed and efficiency in real time is a testament to BI’s capability. So to answer your question, assuming that companies are wise – BI is here to stay and grow.
Anbu Swaminathan, Engagement Lead.
I see BI moving towards real-time data warehousing. Most businesses depend on analytics reporting at corporate level to make business decisions. Real time BI will co-exist with traditional data warehousing model in Financial Sector and Banking. In banking, transactions happen 24/7, and there is a constant challenge on how to report these live transactions. Traditional data warehousing would not satisfy these challenges.
Ashish Parikh, Chief Financial Officer.
I see BI go upwards and onwards. Industry specific BI solutions will emerge. New laws and new technology will arise. The US has to revamp Health Care and Financial Services industries, as stated by our President. And I believe BI would play a major role in this process. I also see lots of changes in BI technology as demanded by business. We need the best information to understand “what-if” scenarios for the events that have not occurred in the last 70 years. We should be capable of giving answers fast. Time has arrived for US to embrace Open Source Technology as it would make technology affordable and reachable to small and mid-cap companies.
Ramki Ranganathan, Sr. Architect.
Since its beginning, the role of BI was to provide information to the management so that they can get a clear insight into their business. I don’t think there is going to be any change in the core purpose of BI. But the way we implement BI might change in 2009. For example, before we had DW appliances like Netezza, executives were ready to wait for a couple of weeks or even more for an analyst to provide them with useful information from the huge amounts of data. All that is changing now. Real-time operational reporting has changed the face of BI. We have hardware appliances and new software technologies that help the BI team to provide meaningful information to the management at a faster pace. So the speed at which we provide information might change in 2009.
Systech for example has been there in the BI field for past 16 years. If we compare data warehousing 16 years back and right now, there isn’t a tremendous difference in its basics. Having said that, today every organization knows what BI is and what its role is in the business. How it’s going to improve the economy really depends on what kind of information the executives are looking for. If you know what you want, you can get it from BI. On the other hand, if you don’t know what you want no matter how fast your implementation is or how advanced your technology is, it is not going to matter. I believe the way business uses BI might change however, the fundamentals of BI will remain the same.
Shabnam, Sales Executive.
With today’s economic recession, a lot of companies look at cutting costs to save on multiple fronts. All the businesses are postponing spending money in Supply Chain, inventories, in IT etc. But on the other hand, in order to stay competitive and profitable you need BI to give you insight into your business and competitive edge. So in that way you need to invest in BI more than ever to know where your profit centers are. Solutions like Profit/SKU from Pi Solutions or say Smart I, that gives you an entire BI appliance running natively on an IBM machine help you save money and increase profits. Those are such viable options now because you get to invest in BI without spending huge amounts of money. The companies that support their business initiatives with appropriate BI solutions will definitely come out ahead in this economy.
Suresh Kumar, Manager, Finance.
BI is one of the key factors in finding profits for any industry. Today companies have realized the importance of analytics in the measurement and improvement of their performance. BI has made it easier to analyze figures at the core of the business and take guesswork out of decision making. At bad economic times like these, it could help turn companies around and help an industry grow positively. I see BI heading towards greater acceptance. If I owed a business I would count on BI to find me profits.
