Understand The Business User Before Strategising BI Plans

Business Intelligence (BI) certainly needs no introduction to enterprises. But the way the dynamics of analytics has changed over last couple of years, CIOs need to understand requirements of every business user before they strategise any BI plan. Ramendra Mandal, County Manager, QlikTech India, explains the role of a CIO in leveraging BI amidst this complex environment of economic slowdown and enormous data growth.

What role does BI play in today’s volatile economic scenario?

BI is not a terminology that has cropped up recently. It was around earlier too but now enterprises have started to recognise its importance in business decision-making. BI is for all seasons, i.e., whether economy is doing well or not. Looking at the current global economic scenario, I must say enterprises are far more conscious in taking all the important business decisions than they were ever before. With huge amounts of data accumulating in datacentres, on cloud, and on various other storage devices, companies are now looking at how to get maximum value out of all that data. They don’t want to rely on guesswork anymore, when they can analyse their data and can come up with meaningful decisions. The BI tools we have today are much more sophisticated with more analytical capabilities, enough to fight fraud, waste and abuse within an organisation.

What are the key drivers that are fuelling this renewed interest in BI?

The most important driver for BI today is to have an overall view of business in order to facilitate more informed and faster decision-making. Secondly, data collection from various places is a major issue for IT teams. So to enable efficient data analysis and thereby increasing overall productivity, BI is something enterprises look up to. Another key concern for most of the enterprises is to speed up reaction time to respond to events in highly competitive environments. Finally, the knowledge worker section is on an unprecedented rise and enterprises need to empower them; BI comes in the picture in this regard too.

With data accumulating at never before pace and tools getting sophisticated, what role does the CIO have in this regard?

Unlike earlier times when CIOs used to be just the IT heads, today they are actively involved business decision–making. This is because a CIO knows about all the data, relevant or irrelevant, and the capabilities of IT infrastructure. It is the CIO‘s job to strategise BI implementation and look at how to future-proof the investment. It is no news that data growth is the most critical challenge, but it’s the different types of data, real-time, near-time, structured and unstructured, that is adding to the complexity.

So, how to address these complexities?

Although having the right kind of BI tools might solve these complexities, there are certain other aspects that need to be taken care of. One such aspect is the integration of all the business user requirements into service-level agreements that will support the business and its decision processes. A BI initiative is meant for all users in the organisation and their needs. Enterprises should be aware of the fact that business users might not have a deep understanding of the technology, but it is vital that they highlight the requirements of the business, before a BI plan is implemented. Also, it is highly recommended that enterprises should choose form a portfolio of technologies rather than opting for a single solution to provide comprehensive support.