In the recent Forbes article, Mobility and Real-Time Dashboards Will Make Business Intelligence More Pervasive in 2013, it was cited that by 2015, over 50 percent of mobile business intelliegence (BI) users will rely exclusively on mobile devices for insight delivery, and will grow BI users by 20 percent. We agree that the real force fostering this adoption is not mobility itself, although the widespread use of mobile devices does play a role.
The driving factor here is indeed fast access to relevant and timely business information, combined with the key aspect of delivering. We need systems that are constantly analyzing a wide range of data to accumulate the pieces of evidence that produce an insight and importantly deliver that insight to the right person at the right time in a format ready to be digested. The right format should also be considered as the closer we get to the front line of business the more we need to deliver the insight as opposed to the ability to find an insight. At the frontline there’s just not enough time (never mind how much analytical skills) to discover an insight from a graph or whatever. The insight needs to be instantly digestible to drive better decisions.
Another key prediction included in this article is that by 2016, more than half of real-time business dashboards will provide a panoramic view that provides information from multiple sources.
The article states that “a panoramic dashboard could supplement that KPI by showing other relevant facts, such as a notification that the corporate website had experienced an outage, or a competitor had dropped its prices.” We have seen that it is all a matter of considering as wide of a range of data as possible and assimilating the evidence to develop an insight. Similar to the popular TV show, CSI, using the power of keen observation combined with indicators and patterns of transactions and behaviors, a company can leverage data and analysis-generated insights for better decision-making and competitive advantage.
