Your SpotOn the IBM Cognos Edge

Dimensions aren't the only things that sometimes change slowly.

After visiting a lot of conferences and listening to multiple BI vendors, it seems like the overall value proposition for BI has not changed much over the past decade or so:

“Access your corporate data to make better business decisions.”

Different vendors are using different words, but basically this is what the industry is saying, and they have been saying it for quite some time now.

It begs the question: what about those organizations that understood the value of BI 10 years ago, bought the software, and deployed it throughout their enterprise? What is the new message for them? How is BI evolving for them?

Admittedly there has been a slow evolution, with multiple vendors adding capabilities over time, such real-time monitoring, integration with predictive analytics, and analysis of unstructured data. Recently we’ve seen increased emphasis on visualization technologies, due largely to the fact that BI is finally being embraced and understood and embraced by business users as well as by IT groups. Business users want better and easier ways to understand what the data is telling them.

A high-value capability that’s too-often overlooked is geospatial business intelligence (GBI). GBI moves beyond traditional cross tab, static reporting or table based multi-dimensional analysis. It introduces powerful visual appeal to reporting and analysis using thematically formatted maps, but integrally combined with complementary charts, graphs, and more. Greater visual appeal leads to greater understanding of the data and increased use of your BI environment by your end users.

So, if you are one of the few organizations that have not deployed BI yet then “Access your corporate data to make better business decisions” is an important message for you. For everyone else, the message is “Increase adoption and effectiveness of your BI by making things easier and more appealing for business users”.