Traditional BI was all about numbers, charts and reports and it's been replaced by super whizzy dashboards that promise the earth but may or may not deliver value.
BI applications, along with email, are probably the only system that senior executives of companies actually use. As such they have visibility that's unrivalled from other IT areas and therefore why not make them a showcase of IT. A User Centred Design ( UCD ) approach can deliver a look and feel that exceeds peoples expectations, whilst avoiding the temptation to play with technology and overload on 'gimmicky' sliders and gauges.
Taking the time to sit down to map and understand the user journey can change the whole design of an application and deliver something that's really usable and adds value.
But isn't that just capturing the business requirements?
No, it goes beyond that. Understanding what the next move needs to be at each point creates new opportunities to link in deeper analysis, link to operational systems to action items as they are identified, memo issues so that they can be referred to later or trigger workflow tasks on the fly. Then have all of that designed by someone with years of experience in graphic design so that it looks fantastic. If you thought about it , why would you let a programmer design a front end that goes in front of the CEO?
Fantastic, I'll take two. Well, it's not that easy. Working with BI tools isn't the blank canvas that you have with traditional uses of UCD such as web design. The tools have bounds and limits that you can't go beyond, and varying degrees of customisation. At the top end you could re-skin app's published in Sharepoint and have breathtaking state of the art look and feel. At the other end of the spectrum, you can make seemingly simple layout and design changes that transform mediocre reports into clean, professional, visually appealing documents that speak quality.
We use highly skilled IT professionals to build BI app's, shouldn't we use highly skilled Creative professionals to design them?