Giving Business Intelligence the Business, Part 2

User Adoption Rates

So let’s deal with the elephant in the room: the continuing low rate of Business User BI Adoption, which is the key BI metric that reflects the degree to which BI systems are actually being used in the course of real work (my definition). Google ‘Business User BI Adoption Rates’ and you will be overwhelmed with choices. Lottsa stuff has been written for years about this, and the list of opportunities for improvement has been pretty consistent:

• Executive buy-in (the cure for all ills), Business/IT Alignment, User Training
• Data Management (availability, quality, governance), New Tools and Technologies, Integration
• Ease of Access, Timeliness
• Etc.

All of the above are, of course, very important, and one should not imply otherwise. A comprehensive piece on this was written not too long ago by tdwi (Increasing BI Adoption). And yet Adoption Rates have remained flat. Is the advice wrong or are we simply unable to act upon it? What are we missing?

Because it’s not an IT problem and cannot be fixed if we approach it that way.

Think otherwise? Consider a typical, architectural view of Business Intelligence systems:

 

Source: Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App
Cindi Howson (McGraw-Hill; 2007)

But how would a Business User view the same set of capabilities? How many of us have tried to describe BI to our functional counterparts in this way – and then encountered glazed-over looks? They don’t really care, and they detach at that moment. BI becomes an IT project instead of a Business project. Is it any wonder adoption is weak?

Viewing BI from a business perspective yields an entirely different result. It, by nature, would result in an end-to-end process view. Technology (the beginning of such a process) would be defined by the use of the information delivered (the end of such a process). Business users would be much more engaged. From a business perspective, I’d propose an entirely different way of viewing BI Architecture:    

 

In this way, the Business Process would drive the requirements and the dialogue with business users. Yes, that moves us out of our comfort zone (technology and applications), but it is the secret to dealing with the User Adoption problem.

Regards,
Rick

Giving Business Intelligence the Business, Part 1

A Slightly Contrarian View of BI’s Progress

Business Intelligence is one of Quest’s major themes for the late part of 2009, and it has already received sufficient attention to extend the focus into early 2010. Activities thus far have included a workshop held at Circuit (a regional conference held in Washington, D.C.) and the first round of the online ‘BI Shootout,’ focusing on partner solutions, conducted earlier this month. And there are more activities under discussion – including a white paper based on Quest’s findings. BI is a hot topic right now, and for good reason.

But wait a minute. Hasn’t it been a hot topic for quite some time? Poke around this question a bit and something appears to be a little off. Things just don’t add up.

2009 marked the fourth consecutive year in which ‘Business Intelligence’ was the top investment priority in Gartner’s annual survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide (Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey). And yet, as Accenture recently observed from recent research, 40 percent of major corporate decisions are still based upon gut feel. Furthermore, a recent study by IBM revealed that two thirds of managers still “… rely upon error prone manual processes when it comes to dealing with data.” And research from Gartner has found that most companies still fail to link BI to the ‘last mile’ of business decision making, which results in BI investment going to waste. What’s going on?

One cannot question the degree of innovation under way within the software industry, advancing BI capabilities beyond the rudimentary Data Warehouses that began the explosion in BI capabilities fifteen years ago. It’s been truly remarkable. And yet Business User Adoption Rates, a key BI metric, have been flat – or even declining. For all of our success in advancing and delivering BI capabilities, the impact on business decision making continues to disappoint.

So what’s going on here? Are we underachieving as an industry, or does the bar simply keep rising? And thinking further, how do we measure the progress in the first place? While considering this, I remembered reviewing material earlier this year from tdwi, a research and education organization focused on the technology side of BI (tdwi). There was an article reporting on a recent survey involving business user adoption of BI. The statistics provided in the report are eye-openers.

While we always need to be careful of literal interpretation of statistics (think Disraeli … Mark Twain quotations – Statistics), the topic of user adoption comes up a lot and deserves further attention. More later.

Regards,

Rick