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Business Intelligence isn’t a technical problem, it’s a social problem

Zach Gemignani

Yesterday I presented to an B-eye-network audience our perspective on why business intelligence is broken and what can be done to fix it. The full PDF-version (4mb) of the presentation can be downloaded.

A sampling of the fun:

“Chart-based encryption — data goes in, no information comes out”

Chart-based encryption

On the excessive emphasis on reporting over analysis…

Herding

“Technologists are looking to build an atomic-baloney slicer”…”Nobody ever got fired for adding more requirements”

Waiting

“Data analysis isn’t just for the data analysts anymore”

Typing is to...

“Have you ever working with a reporting tool that outputted to PDF?”Sheep

Hopefully we stirred the pot a little with this presentation. A recording of the B-eye-network event should be available soon.

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  • http://eagereyes.org/ Robert Kosara

    That was a great talk! I really liked the slides, the pictures were great and there were some very quotable statements. I think especially the points about reporting vs. analysis and data/analysis vs. presentation were good and are often overlooked. The remarks about BI being a social rather than a technical problem, and about “chart-based encryption” were also spot on: it’s unbelievable what visual nonsense is being produced.

    Your examples were also interesting, because they were unexpected. NameVoyager and WeFeelFine.org aren’t exactly what I would consider business visualizations. But they clearly illustrate what good visualization should do (though they are certainly more on the presentation than the analysis side, which also makes them so appealing: they tell a story, or at least give you the building blocks for one).

    What I missed was some kind of big final example at the end that would apply what you said to some real business cases. I am all for visualizing blogs and baby names, but how do these things apply to the typical BI or CRM application? And what does analysis vs. presentation mean in a practical example?

  • David A. Heiser

    I can’t understand business these days.

    Microsoft expanded the graphic “blings” in Excel, because business asked for all these realy wierd pyramid columns in pastels. Pastels!! Business asking for pastel colors for presentations??? I thought presentations were to upset the audience, not put them to sleep.

    What’s the relevance of cows? Is it related to a new advertisong campaign? Analysis is how you can distort the facts to pursuade the audience.If you have to wake up the audience with spectacular displays, why not just bring a wide screen HD tv set and do a surroung presentation with cows mooing in the background (7.1 sound).

    You could perhaps have a parade around the perimeter walls of the conference room, with a real brass band. Get everybody to join in. Signifies agrrement with the latest management program.

    DAHeiser

  • Michel Guillet

    The slides and discussion really resonated with me. For 10 years I I labored with the presentation of 1,000s of slides to execs about customers and statistics at The Coca-Cola Company, Thursday’s discussion finally answered my question, “what am I doing wrong?” The problem was or is a social one. My perspective is changed.

    Thank you for providing the enlightenment.

    Guillet

  • http://www.thetimoneygroup.com Brian Timoney

    Zach:

    Good job.

    I’m shamelessly thieving your approach with your PowerPoints and dropped $11 on iStockPhoto to get the appropriately resonating photos for an upcoming conference presentation.

    The “chart-based encryption” joke was made funnier since you had no way of knowing if any of the webinar audience “got it.” As an East Coaster transplanted west, I’ve had my share of lines during talks that were pure comedic gold be met earnest non-comprehension . (Another reason we’re so well liked…)

    Great stuff; I’ve already dropped the herding cats vs. herding cows distinction on a co-worker.

    BT

  • http://healthcareinformationsystemsblog.blogspot.com/ Jeff O’Connor

    Please come and give this presentation at my company. I and my coworkers have given similar ones for years now, but they don’t seem to carry the same weight as the ones that better-paid outside contractors give.

    As an outsider you’ll have instant credibility with my senior management, which I and my coworkers lack because we’re part of – you know – a cost-center.

    To ensure that everything you say to my superiors is taken as seriously as possible, I will disavow any knowledge of having made this post…

  • http://www.blog.methodsinexcel.co.uk/2007/03/26/reporting-and-analysis/ Methods In Excel » Reporting and Analysis

    [...] I was interested to read what Zack at Juice Analytics had to say on the matter. To paraphrase, reporting is for things we know well and are predictable where as analysis if for things that are unknown and erratic. Now I’ve only looked at the slides (check them out there good!) so I may have missed the context, but that’s not really the point. [...]

  • Fraser Moffatt

    interesting presentation. I am especially drawn to the Mindset|Skillset|Toolset paradigm and would be interested in the audio recording, an expansion of these ideas or maybe some reference to follow-up on.

    I’ve always thought that if you provide the tools, the mindset will follow. Sometimes is does and and sometime there’s a lot of kicking and screaming.

    I’m in an org where the tools are there (multimillion dollar BI/Datamart/Reporting “solution”, but the mindset is non-existent and I’m wondering how to overcome this.

    The concept of BI as a social problem is compelling and I would like to know more about your thoughts on this.

  • http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog Zach

    Thank you all for the feedback on the presentation. If you are interested in continuing the conversation, please send me an e-mail at zach.gemignani@juiceanalytics.com and we can set up a time to discuss in more depth. We always find it helpful to hear more stories about the challenges people face in the BI trenches.

  • http://andpointsbeyond.com Jay Jakosky

    Nice presentation and your example were excellent.

  • http://yajuarya.blogspot.com Yaju Arya

    Excellent stuff, awesome!!

  • Emily Breed

    Zach, the cows-vs.-cats comparison is a great one. Would it be all right to borrow that idea? (I work in risk management, and we deal with a lot of people who’d prefer to pay attention to the cows only, even though we have cats overrunning the place…)

  • Zach

    Emily, feel free…and use the pictures too.

  • Drew

    Nice work! Thanks for sharing this.

  • Charles Lumpkin

    Interesting. Would have liked to have seen it live.

  • hugo koopmans

    Hi Zack,

    this becomes more true as time passes…

    good work! thank you

    hugo

  • Anon

    There’s a grammatical error on Slide (page) 16. It’s fragmented.

    It says:
    “Reporting is useful it
    measures things that are
    well-understood and
    predictable”

    Correction:
    Reporting is useful IF it
    measures things that are
    well-understood and
    predictable

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