Bi executives need to recognize a few big misconceptions about big data

Attracted by the advantages of new technologies, many business intelligence (BI) executives are starting to consider deploying the latest tools in the hope of efficient integration and management of decentralized data. For BI executives, the temptation to navigate the data ocean makes them willing to take risks, despite the enormous pressure challenges.

However, analysts warn that relying on the latest BI tools and emphasizing high-speed processing of data can lead to the wrong direction, because too much attention to data collection and consolidation will make the value of data being overlooked. Bi executives now need to rationally redeploy, stop sticking to technical fixes, and focus on data integrity.

Analysts point to several misleading common concepts that the BI team should pay special attention to.

Tools are omnipotent. Advanced technology processing often spans the value of the data itself, Athena Consulting Http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/5707.html "> company founder Rick Sherman said:" The biggest problem with BI deployments is , people are always affected by the vendor's campaign, mistaking the tool for the solution. While every generation of tools is easy to use, one ignores the point: data is the key to using tools. If there is a problem with incomplete data, or bad data or inaccessible, then advanced tools will not solve the problem. ”

Bill Brydges, managing director and consultant at Morganfranklin, points out that BI users themselves need to distinguish the hype about new tools. "There is an expected problem with the BI team because in the marketplace, the focus of supplier positioning and technical advocacy is that these systems work for you every day," he said. The BI supervisor is likely to end up finding that the data he or she reports is consistent with the underlying data, and that the tool solves some of the problems, but that's all. ”

External data dominates everything. The growing number of structured and unstructured data has led to widespread concern in the IT world. Analysts say it is difficult for BI executives to provide business users with external large data source access, such as social media data. However, the value of collecting this information is not only not able to make up for the input of manpower, but also need to invest more internal data mining personnel. Gartner analyst Douglas Laney calls these underutilized information "dark data."

"For most organizations, most dark datasets reside within the organization," he said. Dark data, such as documents and e-mails, are underutilized data. ”

Analysts point out that ignoring internal data causes some troubling consequences, such as data inconsistencies, hastily collated documents, and redundant reports. For Brydges, this is a waste of time.

"The main problem here is that people will quickly get the first data source they think of or create new reports without having a good understanding of what the enterprise already has, and that's not a new bi-specific problem," Brydges said. This problem will slowly evolve into multiple versions of the fact, and this situation will continue to evolve because as the version increases, we need to create more reports. ”

From a decentralized perspective to a unified, focused view, the first step is to create an enterprise data standard-which requires business intelligence executives to seek enterprise-level assistance, Brydges said.

"One of the problems with the out-of-the-box features of BI tools and distributed BI capabilities is that people can handle organizations in various ways," he said. However, sometimes the cost of doing so is to gain the support of the Central enterprise management function, at least in the main areas of the basic recognition. ”

Over-reliance on data. Analysts insist that the inversion of the horse's cart affects the entire BI management process, in which software tools push the report to the extent that BI executives and business users blindly gather information without understanding the problem-or even understand what the purpose of the data collection is.

"Because the data is complex, more and more variable, it is generally not clear to the business users what they want until they actually see the data," said Wayne Eckerson, head of business applications and architecture media techtarget and BI consultant. "The solution is to deepen collaboration," Eckerson said. "BI executives need to collaborate more closely with business users, and this is an important success factor because the best teams allow their developers to work with their business users to complete development, without having other roles among them," he said. ”

Data submission is Bob. Typically, users may not be interested in reports created by the BI team at all. Laney recalls that a company once complained that its bi reporting environment was not suitable for business. In order to test whether the report has not been read, he recommends inserting an error number in the report. Sure enough, no one questioned the rubbish data.

Even if you read these reports, there is a problem with the process of reporting data. Laney said: "Many organizations are not prepared to specialize in the operations of the discovered data." He added that BI executives should assume the responsibility of ensuring that reports are not idle because the cost of creating and supporting these reports is high.

"In the planning phase, BI executives should let end users work with them to determine how the analysis results are used, and then ensure that processes and training related to the use of information are made," he said. ”

Laney a movie as a useful lesson. In the 1992 film "Righteous Sea", starring Tom Cruise to Nicholson's role as General Xie to find out the truth behind the crime. "You can't Touch the truth," Xie said. Laney that when trying to get business value from BI data: lack of planning and effective synergy, the truth will eventually be compromised.

(Responsible editor: Schpeppen)