The Future of Business Intelligence

Download this article in PDF

Business Intelligence (BI), as both a technology and a business practice, has evolved significantly since early adoption.

Today, the majority of companies using BI are doing so to make smarter decisions at critical moments. But if we look deeper, BI’s actual usage begs the questions -- has it really made companies perform better, or just become better informed? Do information workers have the ability to use BI to alter business performance by taking real corrective action? Is BI operating as the center of intelligence for the organization to enable true process automation?

A large percentage of companies are using BI reports, attempting to get the right answers to make the right decisions. But is it a case of information workers getting the answer they need or simply getting access to the information through a broad proliferation of BI tools?  And most importantly, are information workers spending their time where they can have the greatest impact?

BI’s Current Evolution

Business Intelligence is evolving from a set of tools that help users navigate vast amounts of new information to helping users focus on the truly outstanding and relevant. BI is becoming more about guiding people to the right course of action than simply allowing them to see more and delve deeper into the data.

The new generation of Proactive BI systems enables companies to:

Focus on the relevant:

Having access to more data does not necessarily mean having access to the right data, which is essential when making mission-critical decisions. Most current BI solutions deliver too much data, missing opportunities to present the relevant that can impact decisions and performance.  The complexity associated with most BI tools also limits the abilities of information workers to access relevant information.

With Proactive BI, users get the information they need in formats that they can use, either supported by easy to use BI tools or in common productivity applications. For example, users can get key metrics and KPIs as a simple view inside Outlook or any other office application without having to use specialized BI tools. When using a reporting tool, users can apply business rules and filter the report view instantly to uncover exceptions or specific behaviors without having to sift through vast amounts of data. 

Structured Actions:

Being able to access the right information is essential, but that information becomes more valuable when the user can take corrective actions in a structured way.  While action is almost synonymous with BI, no BI solution provides ways to take corrective action when required. BI vendors today assume that providing insight is enough and assume the user will know what to do to fix problems.

Proactive BI from Panorama provides organizations with insight as well as the ability to define processes and workflows required for corrective action.   For example, when a user identifies low product inventory, he can trigger a process to order additional inventory in a specific way. The process integration eliminates the need for unstructured corrective decisions to alter exceptional behavior.

Automate the routine:

If users are constantly devoting their time to routine, tactical tasks, they are not able to focus their efforts on the more critical tasks that drive better business performance. Proactive BI solutions from Panorama facilitate a corporate intelligence hub that integrates and supports organizational processes and workflows, freeing users to add greater impact through the work they do.  When exceptions are detected, Panorama launches processes automatically and routes workflows based on BI data until transactions are complete.  Users are not required to manage every step of the process.  

The Future of PBI

Panorama’s vision is to expand on PBI’s capabilities.  We are developing functionality that will enable BI to adapt to user histories and specific circumstances, offering targeted, situation-specific data to help users perform deeper analysis supported by relevant action.   By widening data resources to include unstructured data spread across the company and outside the organization, the power and scope of analytics will be improved immensely.

Proactive Business Intelligence will pave the way for a much-needed shift in focus.  Business decision makers will finally be able to stop searching for insight.  Instead, they will receive it proactively, gaining the advantage of identifying exceptions as they happen.  PBI will also enable information workers to eliminate routine tasks from their priorities, allowing them to spend time on information that has value for the business and can impact performance.