Industry Insight: META Group's Mark A. Smith

PDF Download free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

IB Magazine � What's new in the world of decision support?

Smith � For the last four or five years, companies have been acquiring decision support tools in a fairly random fashion, resulting in many different information delivery tools within a single organization, and not much consistency. Today, companies are looking to partner with a single Business Intelligence vendor that can provide information across the enterprise and outside the enterprise.

IB Magazine � What are the challenges standing in the way of this objective?

Smith � What's lacking is a base understanding of what the business model is or how we measure the performance of the business. Because critical systems have grown up independently, data comes from multiple sets of sources. Standardizing around one business intelligence vendor is not easy to do without good back-end integration technology. I think Information Builders has a compelling story here. For example, if you are going to give customers, suppliers and partners access to critical information that enables a consolidated view, you need to have integration between your e-business systems and your traditional back office systems. "E" is important, but it's only one channel for traditional corporations.

IB Magazine � Can you give us a specific example of this consolidation?

Smith � Online procurement (B2B) and e-commerce (B2C) are driving new kinds of analysis by new kinds of users. In a B2B setting suppliers might be looking at inventory or purchasing data, and customers might be tracking orders or reviewing their payables history. By integrating the business intelligence, you can establish a cross-channel infrastructure to answer questions like, "Is my dot-com business going to cannibalize my traditional channel business?"

IB Magazine � How is Business Intelligence technology changing to accommodate these advanced needs?

Smith � One way we're seeing this is in efforts to move beyond report distribution as the only delivery mechanism. Users are overwhelmed with information, yet only a relatively small amount of the right information is required to make a business decision. The fundamental question is, what kind of action does a user take to get the information he or she needs? Traditional decision support tools and OLAP tools are very powerful, but passive. In most cases, users trigger the process to find what they need. The traditional data warehouse mindset says, give users access to the data in a usable format. And that's where the IT department's responsibility ends.

This same attitude pervades many of today's self-service applications, which might simply put a browser on top of the same old warehouse. Where does the intelligence come from? It's in the minds of the users � typically, a handful of analysts who are skilled with the decision support tools and have the initiative to go after the information. In most cases, that's a small subset of the corporate population.

IB Magazine � How do you bring business intelligence to the company as a whole?

Smith � Once again, it is a question of integration. Some companies are leveraging their investments in enterprise resource planning applications and data warehouse initiatives to arrive at a more consolidated view of the business. Users need to be able to excavate information from sources not well understood, and receive answers to questions not explicitly asked. It's not just historical analysis that they're after, but insight into how things might happen in the future.

For example, instead of having this huge warehouse just sitting there waiting for activity, we turn the tables and start breaking down the business problems that need to be solved, then figure out how to deliver the information in a business process workflow. For example, one business category might be strategic in nature, such as month-end performance data required by sales managers. Another might be more tactical, like daily click-stream analysis or shopping cart analysis.

IB Magazine � Once you understand the business requirements, how do you deliver data to these diverse sets of users?

Smith � Existing BI approaches intend to deliver the right information at the right time but do not deliver it in the right form factor and often don't align it with a business process. That's because most BI tools were devised as ad hoc systems for analyzing and publishing data, without much structure determining what you were publishing data to, and what kind of capabilities you were giving to business users. The customers and vendors that are on the cutting edge with business intelligence are starting to do proactive management rather than mere historical measurement. Ideally, we reach the point where we can target specific groups of users with information that fits their profiles, so they can make decisions based on information that is aligned to their needs. This eliminates the task of drudging through reports and drilling around for business information.

IB Magazine � Can you give us a specific example of where this is making a difference?

Smith � The drive for intelligence across the supply chain is happening in lots of industries. For example, in the automobile industry, the dealer network wants to have real-time reporting and analysis of the inventory available to them through a Web interface, most likely a portal. If you have visibility into your supplier data, you can ask yourself how much of something you purchased in the last year, month, week or day. You then can perform detailed forecasting and planning to negotiate a volume discount. That's real business intelligence: applying measurement, forecasting and management to optimize a business process.

IB Magazine � What's the big noise about Portals?

Smith � Portals give us a new way to structure information delivery. Users obtain a single point of access for many kinds of business information. The aim is to establish a single entry point to information that is customized and personalized to a specific job function. Also, thanks to advances in workflow and Internet technologies, we're starting to see analytical applications combined with sophisticated distribution and logistics to provide true business intelligence.

IB Magazine � What's the long-term vision?

Smith � Delivering content automatically based on a person's functional role in the organization, through any channel of communication desired: Web portals, palm devices, e-mail, and so forth. Information should be tailored to support the business process for any person inside or outside of the organization.

IB Magazine � Does Information Builders fit into this vision?

Smith � Information Builders is one of a handful of established vendors that have taken an early lead in combining next-generation decision portal technology with business intelligence reporting and analysis tools. What's unique about Information Builders' approach is the depth of its integration capability blended with its capability to provide intelligence about information from any source and deliver it through the right channels.

David Baum is a freelance writer based in Santa Barbara, CA.