One of the recent significant events in business intelligence that affected manufacturers was Microsoft's first BI conference in May, where the software colossus officially launched a broad suite of BI and performance management (PM) products. A recent report (subscription required) from AMR vice president and research fellow John Hagerty suggests that Microsoft's already pervasive presence throughout the enterprise will naturally translate to sales as its new BI platform is rolled out. Whether or not Microsoft's BI strategy proves successful, there's no doubt that companies are taking business intelligence seriously as they move ahead with their own competitive and forward-thinking strategies.
AMR predicts that total spending across industry sectors for BI/PM will be $23.8 billion in 2007, an increase of 3.6%, with software spend alone increasing more than 8%.
Consolidation among enterprise software vendors is an almost universal trend, and BI is no exception. Just a few recent examples in the business intelligence/performance management space: Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion; Business Objects ' purchase of Inxight and Cartesis; business process integration provider TIBCO's purchase of Spotfire ; and SAP's acquisition of Pilot Software.
Technology Trends
Anthony Deighton, vice president of marketing at QlikTech, a BI provider recently named one of the fastest-growing BI companies by market analysis firm IDC, says that because QlikTech's customers are business users, not analysts, their number one requirement is a simple user interface. With each release of its QlikView software, in fact, the company decides which features to remove, as opposed to which it might add, Deighton says.
QlikTech also tailors its software to address the collaborative nature of today's businesses. "It's our view that BI in general has been far too insular an experience," Deighton says. "Traditional BI says that people sit alone in offices, and, by individual analysis, come up with perfect solutions. But we think most people work as part of collaborative teams."
Because security concerns often deter collaboration, however, QlikView provides secure access to a company's data, he says. For example, QlikView users can send links to data to other team members according to the recipient's level of access, while the system leverages a company's secure internal servers.
The number one thing QlikTech hears from IT users, according to Deighton, is that they face a perpetual bottleneck cycle when tasked with handling BI report building for executives. They start by building a static report based on a certain requested metric, but then spend many cycles changing the original report to reflect different metrics. This process can take months, as IT tries to get the "right" analysis to an end user.
According to QlikTech, the answer is to empower end users with the tools to create their own experiences with business intelligence data, based on their individual requirements. The company is currently working on adding the capability to QlikView for predictive, scenario-based planning for such applications as budgeting and what-if analysis, Deighton adds.
SPSS, a provider of predictive analysis software, finds that most of its customers (which range across vertical industries) are turning to predictive analytics for help with collaborative product design.
As growing online communities help evangelize manufacturers' brands in the global marketplace, "our customers are trying to build a community angle around [their] products' design feedback," says Heena Jethwa, product marketing manager at SPSS.
"[The manufacturing] organizations have a lot of information at hand, regarding part design and brand awareness, etc., and they're trying to consolidate that insight to a centralized environment versus keeping it siloed within separate departments," Jethwa says.
Another challenge SPSS customers face, she says, is coping with unstructured data — information that is contained within blogs or call centers, for example. SPSS analytic software, she says, contains text mining capabilities to glean patterns from such data.
See this month's Directory Listings Update for a look at the latest additions and updates to Managing Automation's online Business Intelligence software directory.