There are two significant statistical “anchor points” of success for any technology I like to keep an eye on. One is adoption rate, the other is failure rate.  In both cases the numbers for BI (based on decades of historical data) are alarming. Exact figures vary depending on the source, but generally, BI failure rates hover around 65% while adoption rates rarely exceed 8-10%. These numbers have been improving, but they’re still pretty scary.  For eye-opening details, I recommend Claudia Imhoff’s recent webinar “What have we learned over 20 years in BI”. Suffice to say that the causes behind these metrics have long been discussed and analyzed in the industry. So the illness is well diagnosed, but the treatment plan has remained elusive. Until now.

Many vendors talk about solving BI pain points.  Some take the technology route (it’s a tool/infrastructure problem), others tackle it from a PM or workflow perspective (it’s a people/process problem).  In our opinion, a more comprehensive approach is needed in addressing both technical and “social” bottlenecks simultaneously.

This is essentially what GoodData brings to the table.  Successful BI-enabling platforms should let you be agile:

Start simply but ramp up quickly.

By making you productive from day one while providing natural paths to richer, deeper functionality as needed.

Prototype early.

By providing a flexible user experience encouraging “train-of-thought” experimentation and on-the-fly implementation to expose data problems early.

Turnaround quickly.

By letting you produce often and fast in a nimble way.

Wow customers.

By bringing together the BI and business world in a cooperative environment.

Manage change.

By allowing you to initiate, manage and absorb changes seamlessly.

Embrace Transparency.

By making it easy to involve stakeholders early and often, to collaborate openly in real time, and to share results frequently.

Integrate, extend and customize.

By talking nicely to external applications, and providing a rich open API.

Learn and have fun.

By leveraging past experience and tapping into a vibrant community of your peers.

The GoodData platform was designed with these agile genes in mind from the ground up. And in subsequent posts, I’ll show you exactly how. It’s a reasonable way to map a clear, well-defined path to BI success. And as GoodData is conveniently located in the cloud, winning at BI is now within everyone’s reach.  All it takes is a browser, business data, and a need to visualize, slice/dice, analyze, and share it.