hi my name's Nick Smith and i wanna talk about business intelligence and give a
brief
history about where we've been
where we are now and
where we're going and probably
more important to you why should you care so
what is business intelligence well I took a look at the Wikipedia page
and the definition a business intelligence was
pretty long and after reading through the definition
I was kinda like what so I just
read the first sentence and after reading the first sentence
I was still confused
BI seem tired and is that what it really took
for a business to be intelligent so i thought okay well
what is intelligence is it knowledge and understanding
is it about meaning and context
is about four side
to solve complex problems
to make better decisions well okay
who makes decisions typically people make decisions
unless you're the terminator well how people make decisions
well we make decisions all the time to go all in our fold
to hold seller by and sometimes we make poor decisions like this for example
or this or this
and there were some movies that probably we could have done without you can I get
the picture
so intelligence was all about decisions and decisions were made by people
what makes a good decision
how bout information and is intelligence
plus information equal the right decision
well what is information well throughout the history of time
information was used to share stories to learn with books which has made more
popular by gutenberg when he invented the printing press
it was used to discover things which helped christopher Columbus use this
to find this it help keep track of things in these types of situations
or appear in overtime
information help provide answers to unlock secrets
which allowed for innovation from something big
too small to smaller to help build something big in
so information was all about answers
and answers allowed people to make decisions
but how did businesspeople
get answers well they had something called data
not that it they had business data about people
products and about places they also had questions
which products are the best how r myself performing and how my people doing
but before they can get the answers
they needed inside into the data otherwise it was just guesswork like pin
the tail on the donkey
accept your the donkey data
had value it was precious and where do you put something precious
well it needed to be stored min before the nineteen sixties
data was stored here in a filing cabinet Mon computers right it started to go
other places like here and here
and that's right data that way worse kinda risky business
it was difficult to manage eventually
data would be stored in something that look like this which they called the
database which is invented by a good card in 1969
which is about the same time we landed on the moon so the database provided
a way to store business data about people
about products and about places but was not straightforward
to get the data in here required a lot of expertise
and the business needed way to enter data in the nineteen seventies
business application for created and so was disco
why business applications well they provided a better way
to collect dating you might be familiar with some unease
so the database was all about data storage and business applications
and the database were about he's a data entry
and more data what about access
data plus access provide answers
on the beginning axis was an easy for example you could drive up to a database
me like
a caps India please
was not easy and it was coming from multiple places
is coming from business applications and it was in the database
wanna access one at a time only tried that with reports but those were
one-dimensional
and could only provide access in silos
which meant the data was fragmented
they needed more insightful access across multiple locations
so they moved the data into data warehouse which was made popular by
these guys in the early 1980s
and there were other things going on in the eighties like Lionel Richie and lamb
was making it big
but now the data could be organised and it could come from multiple locations
to be managed and accessed and now the data could be
sir
so data access and management
equaled consumption and this is what I like to call business intelligence
1.0 where BI tools could report
and analyze on the data and in 1989 the term be I was born
BI vendors started a pop-up
and the promised more access across multiple locations to report and analyze
on the data
or why did they want to do this well they wanted to make money for one but
more data equal toward meant in the business wanted
data faster and at this point be I was all about performance
so what happened next well that didn't stop it along came the World Wide Web
and things began to move more quickly the business needed answers
and fast and in the nineties more BI tools popped up
there was a lot to them there was information management tools there was
query reporting and analysis tools are as performance management and data
visualization tools
they're everywhere and they still didn't work
because the data easily wound up here which became this
which eventually became this which prompted this guy to read this book in
clear all much frustration
because there was no single version I'll the truth
so in summary BI tools created more access and
more access allowed for multiple versions of the truth and more
frustration
there is a new challenge love data management
what about cost all these tools were expensive
and they're hard to maintain the BI vendors needed a way
to offer more functionality at a reduced cost
so this is when the BI platforms merged and that late to
acquisitions and all of these vendors
mosely wound up here
and this is what I call business in intelligence 2.0
where there are more BI tools more PI functionality
offline and online access and market consolidation
and at this point business intelligence was a top priority
there was big time
it was bigger than the Brian James
but it still didn't work something was broken
kinda like Charles Barkley's golf swing
business people were still confused
and if we go back to the definition a business intelligence
well things hadn't changed
what was working well the business
still couldn't get the answers
it wasn't about people it was about
systems and people accessing those systems
what was wrong with that well it required access
who provided access will typically it was I T
and what happens when eighty percent of the people call it. forty-a
a lot of frustration wanna go around eighty
well the BI tools were not intuitive and business people didn't have
the time it was about intuitive access
and timeliness %uh data be I was about usability
turning data into the right format so could be easily consumed
by more people and easily managed by it.
but it wasn't just about the data that was in here there was
unstructured data what's the difference well unstructured data came from places
like blogs and wikis and
emails it came from documents and presentations and videos
and there was a lot of it
so be I was all about getting the right data
at the right time to the right person
and be I needed to be people-centric where you're in the middle and you have
access to the rate information and I T can provide access to
more people the old school way of doing BI
didn't work because people make decisions
not systems it was time for a change
the BI have the nineties was I step
businesspeople needed to do more to collaborate to search
and communicate about their questions and their answers
and drive innovation all today there are new pressures
there's an economic crisis but times are changing
and be I can work the way that you do to provide
better insight and better decisions
for more people and drive innovation
how can you get it or you already have it
follow the new PI conversation here
thanks for listening