When a user of a BI application complains about the application not being useful - something that I hear way too often - what does that really mean? I can count at least 11 possible meanings, and potential reasons:

1. The data is not there, because

• It's not in any operational sources, in which case the organization needs to implement a new app, a new process or get that data from an outside source
• It is in an operational source, but not accessible via the BI application.

The data is there, but

2. It's not usable as is, because

• There are no common definitions, common metadata
• The data is of poor quality
• The data model is wrong, or out of date

3. I can't find it, because I

• Can't find the right report
• Can't find the right metadata
• Can't find the data
• I don't have access rights to the data I am looking for

4. I don't know how to use my application, because I

• Was not trained
• Was trained, but the application is not intuitive, user friendly enough

5. I can't/don't have time do it myself - because I just need to run my business, not do BI !!! - and

• I don't have support staff
• I am low on IT priority list

6. It takes too long to

• Create a report/query
• Run/execute a report/query

My colleague, Holger Kisker, just posted a very insightful blog on the convergence of BI and BPM technologies. Yes, Holger, BPM vendors definitely have some BI capabilities. And so do some search vendors like Attivio, Endeca and Microsoft FAST Search. And so do some middleware vendors like TIBCO, Vitria and Software AG. And so do rules vendors like FairIsaac, PegaSystems. Should I go on? I have a list of hundreds of vendors that "say" they are a BI vendor.

But it’s not that simple. First of all, let’s define BI. In the last BI Wave we defined BI as “a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making”. To provide all these capabilities a vendor should have most of the necessary components such as data integration, data quality, master data management, metadata management, data warehousing, OLAP, reporting, querying, dashboarding, portal, and many, many others. In this broader sense only full BI stack vendors such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, SAS, TIBCO and Information Builders qualify.

Even if we define BI more narrowly as the reporting and analytics layer of the broader BI stack, we still want to include capabilities such as 11 ones we use to rate BI vendors in the BI Waves:

The following question comes from many of our clients: what are some of the advantages and risks of implementing a vendor provided analytical logical data model at the start of any Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing or other Information Management initiatives? Some quick thoughts on pros and cons:

Pros:

• Leverage vendor knowledge from prior experience and other customers
• May fill in the gaps in enterprise domain knowledge
• Best if your IT dept does not have experienced data modelers 
• May sometimes serve as a project, initiative, solution accelerator
• May sometimes break through a stalemate between stakeholders failing to agree on metrics, definitions

Cons

• May sometimes require more customization effort, than building a model from scratch
• May create difference of opinion arguments and potential road blocks from your own experienced data modelers
• May reduce competitive advantage of business intelligence and analytics (since competitors may be using the same model)
• Goes against “agile” BI principles that call for small, quick, tangible deliverables
• Goes against top down performance management design and modeling best practices, where one does not start with a logical data model but rather
• • Defines departmental, line of business strategies  
  • Links goals and objectives needed to fulfill these strategies  
  • Defines metrics needed to measure the progress against goals and objectives  
  • Defines strategic, tactical and operational decisions that need to be made based on metrics

How much does it cost to produce a single BI report? Just like typical answers to most other typical questions, the only real answer is “it depends”. But let’s build a few scenarios:

Scenario 1: Services only. Bottom up, ABC approach.

Assumptions.

• Medium complexity report. Two data sources. 4 way join. 3 facts by 5 dimensions. Prompting, filtering, sorting ranking on most of the columns. Some conditional formatting. No data model changes.
• Specifications and design – 2 person days. Development and testing - 1 person day. UAT – 1 person day.
• Loaded salary for an FTE $120,000/yr or about ~$460/day.
• Outside contractor $800/day.

Cost of 1 BI report: $1,840 if done by 2 FTEs or $2,520if done by 1 FTE (end user) and 1 outside contractor (developer). Sounds inexpensive? Wait.

Scenario 2. Top down. BI software and services:

Assumptions:

• Average BI software deal per department (as per the latest BI Wave numbers) - $150,000
• 50% of the software cost is attributable to canned reports, the rest is allocated to ad-hoc queries, and other forms of ad-hoc analysis and exploration.
• Average cost of effort and services - $5 per every $1 spent on software (anecdotal evidence)
• Average number of reports per small department - 100 (anecdotal evidence)