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« BI Bellwether Cracks? | Main | 'Compete on Analytics'? Still a Dream, Say Some » July 11, 2007To 'Compete on Analytics,' Intelligence Has to be Shared
I just published an article in the latest issue of Database Trends & Applications on "competing on analytics," and wanted to share some findings and conclusions with you: The challenge: In theory, companies are now capable of capturing and analyzing the details of every minute transaction and event that occurs within their walls. Although businesses are being inundated with data, much of it is the wrong data. It's not timely, and it's not getting to the right end-users. This is perhaps one of the most vexing challenges to “ competing on analytics,” now seen as a key strategy for attaining competitive differentiation, and well- documented in popular books by industry experts such as Tom Davenport of Babson College. Consider some of the challenges cited in a recent survey of 296 data applications managers I helped conduct and analyze in partnership with Unisphere Research for the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). The survey, underwritten by Cognos, found that a paradox exists in most organizations today. Decision-makers are overwhelmed by information overload, but at the same time, there isn't enough of the right information available. Ninety-one percent of executives, in fact, said that their decision-making capabilities were stymied by a lack of complete information. Yet, three out of four also report they suffer from 'information overload.' Identifying and separating out the pieces of data that have the most value may be like looking for a particular piece of straw in a haystack. Add to this the fact that most end-users do not have access to the latest BI tools, and still have to go through IT or other departments. The majority of respondents to the OAUG survey, in fact, report that it takes more than three to five days to get a report out of IT. Overall, the survey found, fewer than 10 percent of employees have access to BI and corporate performance management tools. Marc Andrews, director of strategy and business development for unstructured information at IBM, told me that most companies are "still only touching the surface of business intelligence. The number of business processes and the number of users across the organization that are leveraging the technologies is still only the fraction of the population potential.” Mark Lorion, director of product marketing for the Spotfire Division of TIBCO, agreed with this assessment, noting that “companies have yet to find an effective way to deliver BI capabilities to more than a handful of ‘power users’ who have the technical expertise to leverage BI tools. Instead, their employees are using spreadsheets and other packaged applications because the BI platforms are not flexible enough to suit their analysis needs or pace. BI tools frequently are not intuitive, and require heavy IT involvement to reconfigure cubes or generate new reports. Because they require IT involvement, they do not work at the speed of frontline decision-makers.” I spoke with the folks at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee ( BCBST), who perhaps hit upon the best approach to broadening the reach of analytics -- they're employing multi-faceted approaches that leverage a wide range of data sources, and extend this capability to as many end-users as possible. BCBST, for example, offers account reporting to its largest groups, which allows the company to respond more effectively to RFPs to acquire new business and retain existing clients. In the article, I quote Frank Brooks, senior manager of data resource management and chief data architect for BCBST, who said that analytical capabilities currently delivered via the Internet to BCBST clients include utilization management through interactive reports and OLAP data cubes. BCBST plans to provide additional analytical capabilities for its account reporting packages, including national and regional benchmarking data from Blue Health Intelligence (a national data warehouse of BlueCross BlueShield Plans). “We’re now in the process of enhancing our business intelligence and analytical infrastructure to also support instant access to the results of text analytics and predictive analytics processing,” Brooks said. BCBST is taking a multipronged approach involving traditional business intelligence tools, as well as data mining, text analytics, and enterprise search to sift through a variety of company data sources to spot trends and patterns in service, claims, and utilization. Posted by joemckendrick in BI | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: |
