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Where's BI Heading?

Posted by Antone Gonsalves
Thursday, July 27, 2006
8:23 PM

In its most recent analysis of the business intelligence market, International Data Corp. sees vendors through 2020 focused on automating more decision processes, and on expanding BI's reach to more people inside and outside an organization.

Continue reading "Where's BI Heading?"

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Posted by Antone Gonsalves
Thursday, July 20, 2006
12:15 PM

Some pure-play business intelligence vendors appear to be in a daze these days, as the battlefield gets crowded. Instead of remaining focused on building defenses against an eventual full-scale assault on the market by Goliaths Microsoft and Oracle, vendors Hyperion, Cognos and Business Objects have had to deal with self-inflicted wounds.

Posted by Jennifer Bosavage
Friday, July 14, 2006
10:18 AM

If you could peer into the very heart of your operation and learn where you are most- and least - profitable, it's obvious that you'd learn a lot. But figuring out just what makes your business a success, and where you need to turn up the volume, takes at least a little bit of time (often it takes more...) and a commitment to seeing the task through. That's where many businesses fall short.

In fact, it's probably one area that separates the businesses that are eeking out a profit from the ones that are superstars.

This isn't particularly shocking; most people you meet aren't particularly introspective. But knowing yourself means knowing how to use your strengths to offset (or possibly even build up) your weaknesses. Extending that metaphor, if you understand where your business is beating the competition, you employ those strategies to boost business in lagging areas. And, if things are going south universally, you can look to other companies as benchmarks to see what you ought to be doing.

This week, the Aberdeen Group released a report stating 89 percent of retailers are using business intelligence processes, including advanced analytics, enterprisewide. Further, more than two thirds of retailers indicated that senior executives, including CEOs, are actively engaging in the use of business intelligence within their organizations. Why the interest? According to the study, retailers are finding a need for a more rapid response to consumer demand. That is driving retailers to budget new business intelligence programs or to upgrade existing internal data management processes. The need to become more operationally efficient is becoming increasingly evident.

Despite the Aberdeen study's findings, BI still doesn't seem to be hitting its potential. For example, only 11% of retailers are looking at business intelligence data on a near-real time basis. So, for many retailers, information on purchasing trends is out-of-date by the time they receive it. And file this under "I" for "ironic": Forty two percent of retailers are using spreadsheets to manage their business-intelligence data, despite recognizing that spreadsheets are an inefficient means of doing this task.

Many business people think they don't have the time to look inside their companies. They like the idea of BI, but can't spare a moment to implement products to make it happen. Funny, the reason they can't spare a moment is because they are using their valuable time using inefficient processes, from which BI could free them.

Posted by Jennifer Bosavage
Monday, July 10, 2006
10:35 AM

One of the most difficult tasks for any business to master is predicting trends. If you could only read the customer's mind, your inventory would fly off the shelf and you'd have a few extra bucks in your pocket. Focus groups can help provide insight, but they can be expensive and time-consuming, and the results can be suspect (group size is small and if the members aren't highly screened you may not get a quality sample). A new tool that could prove useful in the arsenal for cracking the customer code is Google Trends.

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google Web searches to determine how many searches have been done for the terms entered relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. A search-volume graph is presented with the results. So, let's say you are in charge of inventory at a small to midsize company. Because your company isn't a behemoth, you likely wear more than one hat -- which is often overwhelming, but the flip side is you can often make decisions quickly, based on your own research rather than waiting for endless rounds of approvals. Your company runs three ladies' apparel stores, in New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. You're wondering how much floor space to give particular designers, for example, Vera Wang and Marc Jacobs. Simple type in "Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang" into Google Trends, and voila!, you'll see Jacobs in far more popular in New York, runs neck and neck in Miami and is slightly less popular in Washington. There are different combinations of searches that can be employed, too. For example, to determine how many searches contained the terms "Jacobs" or "Wang," you enter Jacobs | Wang. That type of information, in conjunction with the stores' sales data, can help a store manager with inventory and floor space decisions -- especially if there isn't time or money for formal marketing studies.

Google Trends help develop any number of trendlines, but remember, that this is a glimpse only at search results, not buying patterns. It's indicative of what's topical, sure, but should be considered an ingredient rather than the whole recipe for success. For instance, entering "bikini, one-piece swimsuit" brings back results that appear to make the one-piece suit as though it didn't even exist. And though some of you might like to believe that, I suspect there are many women who'd advise boutiques to take that marketing advice with a grain of salt.

Jennifer Bosavage is a freelance writer secializing in small business technology issues. She is sitting in for the vacationing Antone Gonsalves.