What is Business Intelligence?
A brief history of Business Intelligence

Where have we been?

Where are we now?

Where are we going?

Why should you care?

What is Business Intelligence?

According to

The Definition of
Business Intelligence is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, \"business intelligence\" may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

WHAT?

The Definition of
Business Intelligence is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, \"business intelligence\" may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

Still confused?

BI seems hard

Is that what it took

for a business to be intelligent?

What is intelligence?

Knowledge and understanding?

Meaning and context?

Foresight?

Solve complex problems

to make decisions?

Who makes decisions?

How do people make decisions?

We make decisions all the time

Go all-in or fold?

Hold, sell, or buy?

Sometimes people make poor decisions

Intelligence = decisions

Decisions = people

What makes a good decision?

How about information?

Intelligence + information
= the right decision?

What is information?

Throughout history information was used

To share stories

To learn

Johannes Gutenberg

Printing Press, 1439

And discover things

Christopher Columbus

Use this

North America, 1492

It kept track of things

In these situations
(jail cell, chalk count)

Or here
(castaway)

Over time

Information helped provide answers

To unlock secrets
E= MC
2

Which allowed for innovation

From something big

To small

To smaller

To help build
something big again

Information provided answers

Answers allowed people

To make decisions.

How did business people get answers?

They had something called data

Business data

about people

about products

And about places

And they had questions

Which products are best?

How are my sales?

How are my people?

But before they could get answers

They needed insight into the data

Otherwise it was guess work

Except you’re the Donkey

Data had value

It was precious

Where do you put something precious?

It needed to be stored.

Before the 1960s

Data was stored here

When computers arrived

It went places

Like here

And then here

But storing something precious that way was

Risky Business

And difficult to manage

Eventually data would be stored

In something like this

called a database
Invented by Edgar Codd, 1969

The database provided

A way to store

Business data

about the people

about products

And places

But it wasn’t that straight forward

To get the data in here

required a lot of expertise

The business needed a way

To enter data

1970s

Business applications were created
founded in 1972 founded in 1977

And improve business process

Why business applications?

Business applications provided a better way

to collect data

Database = data storage

Business applications + Database
=
Ease of data entry

And more data.

What about access?

Data + Access = Answers?

access wasn’t easy

For example

Can I have some data? Please?

It wasn’t that easy

Data was coming
from multiple locations

from business applications

And in the database

Why not access one-at-a-time?

They tried with Reports

But they 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 a data warehouse

Which was made popular in the early 1980s
Ralph Kimball
Bill Inmon

Now the data could be organized

And could come from multiple locations

To be managed

and accessed

Now data could be served

Data access + management = consumption

Business Intelligence 1.0

BI tools could

Report Analyze

In 1989 term BI was born
Howard Dresner, coined the term 'business intelligence' in 1989

BI vendors started to pop up
1990
1993
1985
1989

BI vendors promised more access

Across multiple locations

To report and analyze the data

Why?

more data = more demand

The business wanted

Data faster

BI was about performance.

What happened next?

The data didn’t stop

Things began to move quickly

The business needed more answers, fast

The 90s brought more BI tools

And there were lots

BI tools were everywhere

But it still didn’t work

The data usually wound up here

Which became

Which eventually became

There was no

single

version

of the

Truth

In summary

BI tools created more access

More access = Multiple versions of the truth

New challenge of data management.

What about cost?

Hard to maintain

BI vendors needed a way

To offer more functionality

The first BI platforms emerged

Acquisitions

Business Intelligence 2.0

More BI tools

More BI functionality

Offline and online

Market consolidation

At this point

BI was a top priority
(top priority for CIOs)

It was Bigtime

Bigger than Lebron James

But it still didn’t work

Something was broken

Business people were still

CONFUSED

Business Intelligence has not changed
The definition of BI is…
Skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, quality, risks, security issues and
practices used to help a business to acquire a better understanding of market
behavior and commercial context. For this purpose it undertakes the collection,
integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information. By
extension, \"business intelligence\" may refer to the collected information itself or
the explicit knowledge developed from the information.

What wasn’t working?

The business still couldn’t get the answers
Access to BI (20%)
No access to BI (80%)

It wasn’t about people

It was still about

Systems

What wrong with that?

It required access

Who provided access?

Typically it was IT

What happens when

80% of the people call IT for data

Why not go around IT?

BI tools were not

intuitive

Business people didn’t have

Time

It was about

Intuitive access

And timeliness of data

BI was about usability

To turn data

Into the right format

And be easily consumed by more people

And be easily managed by IT.

But it wasn’t just about the data in here

There was unstructured data

What’s the difference?

Unstructured came from places

Like blogs

Wiki’s

emails

Documents

Presentations

Videos

And there was lots
“80 percent of business is conducted
on unstructured information.“

BI = Right Data + Right Time + Right Person

BI needed to be people centric

Oldschool BI didn’t work

Because people make decisions

Not systems

It was time for a change

The BI of the 90s

was “Iced” out

The business needed to do more

To collaborate

Search

And communicate

About their questions

and their answers

To drive innovation.

Today, there are new pressures

An economic crisis

But times are changing

BI can work the way you do

To provide better insight

and better decisions

for more people

and drive innovation

How can you get it?

You already have it.

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This presentation style was influenced by
Dick Hardt