The Business Value of Business Intelligence

Historically, many data warehousing and business intelligence (BI)initiatives have been IT-driven, and much of the focus within the industry has been on the technical aspects of delivering information to the BI user community. Having arrived at a point where many of the technical challenges and tradeoffs are at least well understood, attention has shifted toward expanding the ways in which BI can be used to deliver business value. As always, the BI vendors are key players in the market expansion process - through product innovation and their articulation of value propositions. Key vendor initiatives include: (1) offering preintegrated BI product offerings - generally known as packaged analytical applications; (2) advocating expansion of the BI footprint within organizations, often referred to as "BI for the masses" and/ or "enterprise analytics; and (3) positioning the use of their products as reflective of "BI best practices." As promising as expanded use of BI may be, there is still the need for careful and balanced discussion of the specific business and technical preconditions for capturing the business value of business intelligence, particularly in today's tight IT investment climate. The goal of this article will be to contribute to the emerging dialog on the subject of business value by extrapolating from BI lessons learned and from DecisionPath Consulting's experience working with Fortune 1000 customers and Government agencies.