BI Reports Shouldn’t Blast You Into the Past

Business intelligence (BI) needs to evolve. Until recently, BI meant receiving periodic management reports that generally arrived monthly or quarterly. These reports were static and historical in nature. You could get some details about why your sales team didn’t perform last quarter, for example, but you couldn’t access any information that could change your business strategy in real time.

The format was very cumbersome. Despite spending billions of collective dollars on BI systems, companies weren’t gaining much insight from their data. In 2008, Gartner reported that only about 20 percent of business users proactively used BI.

Recently, however, big data is compelling BI to evolve. Old-world BI solutions simply can’t handle the high volumes of data that today have become normal. A new, more business-friendly class of analytics has emerged, generating not only a comprehensive view, but also actionable results from a daily fire hose of data.

GoodData is driving this new concept of analytics a step further by elegantly combining integrations, reports, analytics, key performance indicators and best practices into a visually stunning user experience. Bashes, our business analytics mashups, enable you to turn your data into a powerful business advantage, real-time, by giving you the ability to structure and contextualize your data.

That real-time component is changing everything. Going back to the sales management example, in the old world of BI, you’d receive your quarterly report and see why you missed your number. With real-time analytics, you can see what’s changing on a day-by-day basis and react to that change. Because you can immediately see where your team is falling short, you can correct course before missing your quotas. Maybe you don’t have enough of a pipeline, so you can focus on building that. If your pipeline is full, you might notice a shortage in closings and alternate your team’s focus towards closing sales.

Decision-making becomes iterative. In today’s busy world, you need that ability in order to keep up with the flood of ever-changing information from customers, industries, technologies and competitors. Historical data just isn’t as useful anymore. If your BI systems only let you look backwards, it’s time to depose of them.