Business Intelligence 2.0
BI 2.0. So now I have your attention, as everyone wants to know about this 2.0 hype. Everything has to be 2.0 today and that goes for BI as well. And I can't wait for the first clever marketeer who thinks (s)he can introduce a market game change by announcing BI 3.0! Aaargghhh.
But what is BI 2.0? Most of all, it's ill-defined. BI 2.0 is supposed to be more interactive, collaborative and should take care that all users have the management information they need. So what's new? The old Executive Information Systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s had discussion threads, public folders and advanced interactive OLAP capabilities.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for technology advancement, to deal with increasing data volumes and complexity, and to satisfy changing user requirements. But hasn't the point of BI not always been about making information a corporate asset to be exploited like capital, labor, materials and facilities? And what is blocking you from doing that with current or previous generations of technology? Probably it's not BI 2.0 that would achieve this goal, maybe we should introduce Organizational Behavior 2.0, as collaboration, interaction and information democracy are more cultural issues than anything else.
If you want to achieve a solid return on investment with BI, these are things to consider. And that's not BI 2.0, but BI 101.
frank
