Sunday, May 9, 2010

Successful Business Intelligence

I recently added reading notes for Cindi Howson's book on Successful Business Intelligence, a topic that has been in vogue for a few years but has not been widely recognized as an effective investment. The author's take is that the poor performance of BI deployments is largely the fault of business users, IT professionals, and even BI consultants who simply don't "get it."

After reading the book, I have a better grasp of the potential value behind the hype, as well as a sense of the various techniques to analysis that have the potential to provide a business with a measurement of the efficiency of present operations and gauge proposed changes, but I didn't get a clear sense of how BI can be applied effectively.

I have a sense that's partly because a "successful" BI deployments confers competitive advantage, and the author can't be expected to disclose privileged information about the companies with which she has consulted. It's also likely that the book is intended as a marketing tool, designed to communicate the potential value of hiring a BI specialist, and stopping just short of the mark where a reader would be given sufficient information to proceed competently without hiring a consultant.

Taken all for all, I'd say it's a fairly good introduction to the topic, but that it would require further study to gain the perspective necessary to apply the discipline in an effective manner.

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