Big Data
We
do live in an exciting world today. Technology is rapidly evolving which in
turn is causing an explosion of information. I am blown away to think about the
amount of data that will be generated and is being generated now as I am typing
this blog. “We expect that the volume, variety and velocity of data being
generated in the world is going to exceed 35 Zettabytes by the year 2020 which is
45 times more over the coming decade.” Over
the years I have heard the term “Big Data” and I thought I knew what it meant
but I don’t think I realized all that it is as well as the potential.
Business Intelligence
In order to
take advantage of the potential of Big Data, Business Intelligence is used. Business
Intelligence allows organizations and companies to make informed business decisions, measure and manage performance, and to continue to make innovative
improvements. Ultimately, what is learned is that data is powerful
and if utilized can help transform a business by improved performance as well
as offering better services. Value...is it easily achievable?
Even though Business Intelligence can provide value, it can be hard to
achieve for some organizations. Currently at the organization where I work, we
have been working to develop and deliver a data warehouse for 2+ years where users
are able to build reports or queries using a BI tool to assist in making data
driven decisions, to find a way to measure performance, and to find areas of
improvement.
Data has not been readily available to our users in the past, but it is
now which should achieve the potential and benefits of Business Intelligence. Unfortunately, when the users were brought in for training it was determined
that for some the applications and tools were not easy-to-use and we had to train them on the data itself
(e.g. how it is captured, data dictionary, what data is available). The reason for such a complex
training is the users wanted direct access to the data to build their own reports
and create queries on the fly not only those that were built for them by the BI
team which moved us more towards a self-service BI model.
In the article, “New Solutions Simplify The Building And Consumption of
Big Data” speaks exactly of the above challenges business users face when
wanting to use big data insight and big data platforms are not accessible to
the vast majority of business stakeholders. It also indicates that a solution is
needed to extend and enable the value of big data/analytics to a business
user that would go beyond the SQL-savvy analysts and data
scientists. In looking back to the beginning of our data warehouse project, the idea was to make the analytical part easier for users and grow our user base to other stakeholders within the organization. Finding the ease-of-use and easy-to-access interactive visual
interface to plug information in to can be a challenge, but there are some products and we are investigating in order to better provide this service.
Even though we have had some challenges, it has been a very
exciting time of “releasing the data” and finding the value. As indicated
in the lecture, the BI Life Cycle is very much iterative and we
continue to go through the various steps in order to deliver a model that allows business
users to generate their own reports and visualizations to share with colleagues.
"It's Not About the BI. It's What You Do with BI that Makes a Difference."
I found the quote above and it is spot on. Business
Intelligence can make a difference for any organization or company, but until
you do something with the information/insight that comes out of it, can you
actually make a difference.
Resources
1. Junk, Dennis. 2015 April 15. "Business Intelligence vs Analytics vs Big Data vs Data Mining." http://blog.apterainc.com/business-intelligence/business-intelligence-vs-analytics-vs-big-data-vs-data-mining
2. Raghavan, Sri. 2015 July 28. "New Solutions Simplify The Building And Consumption Of Big Data." Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/07/28/new-solutions-simplify-the-building-and-consumption-of-big-data/
3. Ram, Sudha. 2013. "Introduction to Big Data and Business Intelligence." OMIS-MIS587, slides 1-29.
4. Wintermeyer, Chris. 2013 October 15. "The Very Real and Immediate Need for BI in Higher Ed." DOMO. https://www.domo.com/blog/2013/10/the-very-real-and-immediate-need-for-bi-in-higher-ed/
