A recent issue of Reseller News looked at the transition of some IT resellers from "moving boxes" to selling services - including Business Intelligence services.

But the article includes a cautionary comment from Stellar BI's Managing Director, Grant Broadbent (pictured).

"If you just drop the technology on the floor you might get some passionate soul to use it and show their fellow business unit [members] how great it is, but if that person leaves or if the business changes its focus, then a lot of those projects just end up dying. There’s a lot in BI that people don’t realise."

Paul Plester of Express Data adds that teaching users how to analyse and use data is a key part of a good Business Intelligence offering.

"That type of skill is going to be more in demand, it’s not a box move any more, there’s value add around it."

“With BI, you’re not really selling software,” says Richard Johnson,  sales director of consulting firm Cortell.

"I mean you are, of course. But you’ve got to understand [a customer's] data and then you’ve got to build the underlying data structure that you then report on and do your analysis.”

I was talking to the CFO of a medium/large Auckland-based organisation the other day about that organisation's experiences with Business Intelligence. He told me that the IS team had spent a fortune on purchasing one of the popular data visualisation packages which they proceeded to put on the shelf for a while, uninstalled. Why? Because the vendor offered a "never to be repeated price" at the end of its financial year.

A recent survey of more than 2500 CIOs worldwide shows that Business Intelligence and Analytics top the agenda when it comes to boosting corporate competitiveness.

The comprehensive study, conducted by IBM earlier this year, compares how fast-growth companies use technology compared with lower-growth companies.

83% of respondents indicated that Business Intelligence and Analytics were key to boosting corporate competitiveness - making BI the most popular initiative across the entire survey group.

Read the full article on Forbes.com

Having just put the phone down after talking to a customer about a product evaluation process, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on BI Product Evaluations or "Shootouts". Many companies in New Zealand have dedicated a fair swag of resource to this process over the years, so here are our considered thoughts.

There are two things about BI Tool Evaluations we feel should be highlighted:

1) They shouldn’t take too much time and their outcomes shouldn’t be a deal breaker for the project.

2) They must be heavily oriented toward the end user community, as they are the ones who will be actually using the tools, not the IT people.

It amazes us when IT shops spend several man years evaluating BI tools on behalf of and in isolation from their end user community. If the entire solution was going to be developed in this tool, and the solution was only allowed to use features that were provided by this one tool for ever more, then fair enough. In reality though, with an open BI architecture in place, there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. No end to end solution should ever be entirely developed within one product’s development realm.

Here’s Stellar’s editorial comment on tools evaluations: Don't waste too much time on tool evaluations. While the arcane mechanics of each tool are being dissected by technical people in white coats, the end user business community is demanding a solution to their problems "right now" before their window of business opportunity closes. So whatever you do, make sure these guys get involved early and buy into the tools chosen.

Tools evaluations should be done once the BI technical architecture is established and understood. We have seen several examples of tools being selected to perform roles that they are not really capable of doing. If they were evaluated against a mature BI architecture backdrop, where these roles are clearly documented, these mistakes would not have happened.

The BI Tool segment of the IT industry is churning out some great products. In its proper role, virtually any BI Tool today is rock solid and can provide 80 to 90 percent of the functionality required by the average kiwi company. There are some “horses for courses” situations to be sure, where one tool stands out above the others in a particular role, but as a general rule, they are all pretty good these days.

Give us a holler if you need help – remember, we are 100% product independent!

We've been receiving a lot of interest lately from customers wanting to construct "Executive Dashboards". I guess this stems from a growing need by upper level management to more effectively monitor core business performance in the wake of the global credit crisis. Whatever the case, the need for greater visibility and awareness of key performance metrics are driving renewed interest in executive dashboards.