In July 2007 I wrote a blog entry called Business Intelligence, what is it and what is it not? which turned into a bit of a rant about how Business Intelligence (BI) is perceived today. The main point that I was trying to make was that BI isn’t about tools and technology, its simply about bringing useful information to those that need it.
I’ve been working in the BI game for quite a while and one of thing I’ve always tried and failed miserably to do is sell the value of slice’n’dice capabilities to users. Today I was alerted (thanks Paul) to this coverage of the Obama –v- Clinton race for the Democratic candidacy for the US presidential battle. Here’s some screenshots:
Blacks versus Whites
![clip_image002[4]](http://blogs.conchango.com/blogs/jamiethomson/WindowsLiveWriter/BIWhatdouserscareabout_10A48/clip_image002%5B4%5D_thumb.jpg "clip_image002[4]")
College educated versus none college educated
I don’t think there’s going to be too much surprise that Obama garnered the black vote but I find it interesting to note that Clinton was more popular amongst none-educated people.
Anyway, back to the point of this blog entry. There’s no mention in this example of cubes, SQL, MDX, slice’n’dice, OLAP, data marts, BI or any other of the myriad of terms that users don’t give a monkeys about. Its plainly and simply a great visualisation that brings instant value to the people that are using it. That’s what we as BI practitioners should be working towards.
If I’m honest, this explains why I’m excited to be at Conchango at the moment. Good visualisation of BI data is an area Conchango are uniquely able to offer a compelling story given our BI and User Centred Design expertise. That is proven by one of our recent BI wins where the differentiator was our User Centred Design capabilities; my colleague Peter Hanlon has got all the details.
-Jamie