Business Intelligence: The Real Challenge

Business intelligence tools have matured, but have IT's internal capabilities? A look at the real challenge CIOs face in executing their BI strategy.

Businesses have been accumulating data in digital form from business operations for more than 40 years now. In parallel with this accumulation, tools for organizing, categorizing and analyzing this data--turning it into the kind of context-rich information that can drive decision making--have been growing in capability and sophistication.

If you believe the vendor stories today, we can "empower" everyone in the business with the information tools they need to make better, faster operational and strategic decisions and thus please both customers--because we know who they are as individuals and can anticipate what they want and need--and stakeholders--because happy customers make for a profitable business. There are even credible "proof points" to back up the claims, such as case studies of businesses that do this really well.

Information-driven businesses do exist. They do work. And some of them even do better than the rest of the market they compete in. Shouldn't we all make use of the mountains of data in our warehouses and match the performance of these pioneers? Isn't it time for "Enterprise BI"?

If only it were that easy.

Continued at CIO Insight