Itelligence Analytics Summit 2017
It’s hard for me to believe but September of last year marked the 20th anniversary of my introduction to the world of Business Intelligence. It was the first day of my new job, working on the technical support desk of a software distributor and I was being introduced to the products I would be learning over the following months. The first few were components for Visual Basic developers, you know the type of thing; prebuilt collections of buttons and widgets that accelerate development and add a certain polish to your application. However, in amongst the tidal wave, something stood out, a manual and a set of 3.5” disks for a product called Crystal Reports. The rest as they say is history, with Crystal being sold to Seagate Software, then to BusinessObjects and eventually on to SAP.
Over 20 years later the challenge of taking data from one or more source systems in order to prepare, present and share relevant insight continues to be a key focus of every organisation on the planet.
Some may call it Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or just simply Analytics. Whatever you call it the fundamentals remain the same.
It would be churlish to say that we haven’t improved and moved forward in the intervening years. We are all aware that technology advances along an exponential curve. We need only consider the impact that mobile and cloud technologies have had in the last 5-10 years in order to appreciate this.
With this in mind, I have to admit a level of bemusement, if not outright confusion that I still talk to so many organisations that own Business Intelligence tools but have not continued to invest in to get the most out of them. To be clear this investment does not have to be capital in nature, it could be as simple as spending time to enable and empower a Business Intelligence competency centre to help promote the value of using data to drive better decision making.
What frustrates me more than anything, is when I see organisations that neglect or fail to keep up to date with the Business Intelligence technologies they have purchased and deployed. More often than not, key new capabilities are being missed out on, enhancements that are often included for free within the suppliers software maintenance contract. A great example of this is the introduction of the Mobile capabilities to the BusinessObjects product suite. What could be more powerful than delivery of interactive BI content direct to the users hand, no matter where they are?
With this in mind we decided to organise a different type of Analytics event for 2017. An event that is focused on helping you move your Business Intelligence investment forward. We want to ensure you understand what you can do to make the most of what you have, and perhaps more importantly help you understand where you should invest if you can.
But don’t just take our word for it. Attend our 2017 Analytics Summit and you can hear directly from NTT DATA Business Solutions customer John Lewis as they discuss how they extracted even more value from their existing BusinessObjects solution.
So what do you think?
Why not join myself, NTT DATA Business Solutions colleagues and customers at our Analytics Summit, central London, February 23rd 2017.