#1 Barrier to BI Success
By Ken Hilburn
November 20, 2008
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In case you missed it, Information Week recently released a report that listed, among other things, the "top 10 roadblocks to BI success" (skip to page 48 for the list). So, does anyone want to guess what IW found the top barrier to be?
As it turns out, it wasn't "data throughput", or "access to data sources/more data", or even "more features". The number one barrier to BI success, according to IW, is (get this) "Complexity of BI tools and Interfaces". That's right, it's not technology, but usability that keeps people from getting value from BI solutions. People actually want software that's easier to use, not harder.
In our eyes, this is just another example that the BI industry isn't being constrained by the technology. We don't need more tools, or even more features. The problem isn't going to be solved by technology. What we need are solutions that, for people who depend on information, make it easier to see, understand, and use the information that really matters. What we need are solutions that are designed for a purpose, that transform data into easy to understand information, and that are beautifully usable.
Oh. Wait a minute. That's what we do.
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5 comments
Brian Timoney said:
The heavy use of pie charts in a report about "Smart BI" qualifies as unintentional comedy.
Chris H said:
Your link takes me to a 30 page document dated Oct 2007
kbeer said:
It's ironic that an article summarizing BI uses such poor charts. Not only are there pie charts, but 3d pie charts displayed at an angle.
Ken Hilburn said:
Chris, Thanks for highlighting some potential confusion: If you scroll down to the bottom of the document after clicking the link, there's another report from Sept 2008 attached as an addendum. This report was apparently in print and I noted the number as shown on the print page (it's actually page 25 in the PDF document).
Brian and kbeer - You guys are awesome. Thanks for being vigilant and keeping our standards high. In all honesty, there were many things I wanted to nit-pick, but I decided to try to avoid too much criticism in this post. I'm reminded of this quote made by the character Anton Ego from the movie "Ratatouille":
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
Having said that... tomorrow's a new day ;-)
bobobbberson said:
I agree wholeheartedly. We have a simple BI and people cannot even understand how to take a measure and pivot it. Our salesmen are not hired on their computer ability and that's fine, they should be hired on their ability to sell. But most of the items in the BI menus are not used and some of the items arn't even USEFUL. Each BI should have two very distinct options, "beginner mode" which has no menu options except save and copy, just a box of categories and measures that only lets people drag and drop into a pivot table. Having an excel-like 100 menus of options confuses people who don't use a computer each day but need data.
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