The Business Intelligence Blog

There’s been much discussion about ad hoc reporting, but few business users seem able to actually build a report themselves from scratch with today’s tools. Why is that?

In my experience, actually, most users can build reports from scratch, but it should never be the first step. Initially, users don’t have much of a comfort level with the data model or the tool. The best way to get them started is to create the initial five to ten reports for them and then show them how to customize these reports. Again, a five-minute video that they can return to later if needed is a great way to teach. If it takes more than five minutes to explain how to make a simple change to a report, your system is way too hard to use.

Once users are comfortable making the small changes they need on a day-to-day basis, they naturally start creating their own reports from scratch. They now both understand the tool and know where the data is. We’ve seen many cases where a dozen initial reports turn into hundreds of reports over the course of a year. In fact, IT is often shocked to find out how capable users really are if you just get them started with a good set of reports and some initial training.

Q & A with Sanjay Bhatia, CEO of Izenda, a company that offers integrated self-service reporting for the .NET platform. (As an OEM solution, it is integrated into hundreds of .NET applications with over 25,000 end users, including the U.S. Navy, WellPoint, BHP Billiton, JC Penny,the EPA, Volvo, and Gateway.)

News from TDWI Conference, Chicago -

At last week’s TDWI World Conference, held in Chicago, a bevy of vendors announced new DW appliance packages — with a twist.

In the past, several vendors have promoted the DW appliance as a technology which effectively sells itself — e.g., as a turnkey panacea for the performance, capacity, and cost issues that frequently combine to make high-end data warehousing so expensive.

At TDWI last week, however, three vendors (Dataupia Inc., ParAccel Corp., and Sybase Inc.) unveiled new DW appliance packages that they say are designed to address specific business problems.

Dataupia’s offering bundles the company’s Satori server appliance with best-of-breed data visualization software from Tableau Inc. ParAccel announced a new analytic appliance offering it co-developed with storage giant EMC Corp. Sybase unveiled an all-in-one, best-of-breed analytic appliance (complete with Sybase IQ, Sybase PowerDesigner, and Sybase ETL; BI software from MicroStrategy Inc.; and System p RISC/Unix servers from IBM Corp.). In all three cases, the vendors are emphasizing business practicality and business usability in addition to better and cheaper performance.

TDWI is running a series on developing and deploying Data Warehousing, frugally. It’s a 3 part series. Read Part 1 and 2.

Although seemingly difficult, you can make choices, which allow for the beneficial realization of data warehousing while also minimizing costs. By balancing technology and carefully positioning your business, your organization can quickly create cost-effective solutions using data warehousing technologies.

There are a few simple rules to help you develop a data warehouse on a shoestring budget:

* Use what you have
* Use what you know
* Use what is free
* Buy only what you have to
* Think small and build in phases
* Use each phase to finance or justify the remainder of the projects

It’s also a must read for businesses which have enough business sponsorship and enormous resources. Tough times in the marketplace like these call for an economical way of staying ahead on the business curve. And that’s exactly the point of this series.

I like the detailed approach Nathan Rawling towards this topic.

The Data Warehusing Institue’s World Conference is happening at Chicago from May 11-16, 2008. For more information on registrations, here. Here’s a PDF brochure.

The Data Warehouse Institute has an audio report aka podcast on How BI is considered Hot in the industry and how unfortunately, the useful tools to excel in BI are still not available.

There is still lack of fresh ideas and tools that can take BI to the next level. Flow your ideas, Float a Company and this could be you chance to excel in the BI industry.

Check out the audio report -

In a recent survey, more than 63 percent of IT professionals said business intelligence tools are important to their operations. However, fewer than one-quarter had the necessary tools in place. The survey, conducted at Interop New York by IT management provider ScienceLogic, polled systems and network administrators from a wide range of business sectors.

The survey also revealed that although IT managers clearly realize that they need help in managing information, there is a lack of interest in using standards such as ITIL and Configuration Management Databases, or CMDB, to help with that management.