Johannesburg, 01 Dec 2008
Vying for a bigger slice of the business intelligence (BI) pie, the big contenders in the market are diversifying their offerings to bridge the gaps in their portfolio and provide holistic, end-to-end BI solutions that can be marketed to a wider audience.
"But defining an end-to-end BI solution is like defining the length of a piece of string," says Paul Morgan, managing director of ASYST Intelligence, a focused provider of BI and data management solutions to medium and large enterprises in South Africa.
"It all depends which vendor you talk to. A solution dubbed as end-to-end by one vendor might be entirely different to the end-to-end offering of another and, on closer inspection, neither could meet the end-to-end BI needs of a particular business."
Generally speaking, BI comprises a broad spectrum of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analysing and disseminating information to facilitate better, more informed business decision-making.
That`s why vendors offering capabilities across this broad spectrum can easily lay claim to providing an end-to-end or holistic solution.
But Morgan says companies looking for an end-to-end solution should not be blindsided by an impressive catalogue of tools or products that broadly cover all aspects of BI.
"End-to-end does not necessarily mean the same thing to every business either. While one business`s definition of end-to-end may be a set of lower-end BI tools that can be deployed across all the business divisions, from sales and supply chain to finance, another company`s definition of end-to-end BI might be a set of tools that deliver normal reporting, data quality and dashboard capabilities right through to more sophisticated and advanced analytical capabilities.
"How a company defines its end-to-end BI requirements can depend on its level of BI maturity. In the early days, end-to-end may refer to a solution that addresses the length and breadth of its BI requirements but as it becomes more BI mature, its end-to-end requirements become more sophisticated and deeper. That`s when end-to-end refers to the depth of capabilities their BI solution, or set of solutions, offers.
"When looking for an end-to-end BI solution, companies must therefore have a clear picture of what their immediate BI requirements are and what they are expected to be five years down the line. That will ensure that, at the end of the day, they have an end-to-end solution that meets both the length and depth of their BI requirements," says Morgan.
This, he says, is important even for a business which, for the moment, has very specific and sophisticated BI requirements but, may want to extend BI beyond analysts and data miners to users lower down the hierarchy and across all departments later on.
"There are certain issues and problems that can only be addressed with niche solutions. In these instances, it is essential that companies select a solution that not only meets the depth of their BI needs now but one that is also flexible enough to be integrated with other BI tools to meet the full scope of their BI requirements later on," says Morgan.
He concludes: "Companies must be careful to evaluate BI solutions according to their ability to meet their specific BI needs rather than the ability of the vendor to provide a bouquet of broad BI capabilities. A long list of impressive features does not necessarily mean that the solution can deliver on a company`s BI goals.
"Like the lengths of pieces of string, end-to-end BI solutions can vary quite dramatically. It`s about deciding from the outset how long your piece of string needs to be."
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