I gave a presentation in Finland earlier this year as part of the Nordic “Butterfly” tour, talking about the future of Business Intelligence:

Ever since the first abacus, information technology has been an essential part of delivering timely information, staying accountable to stakeholders, reducing inefficiencies, and flexibility when faced with fast-changing environments. But for the first time in history, consumer technology interfaces have been outpacing what’s available to the average corporate knowledge worker.

How can we combine the best of enterprise technology and Web 2.0 to build greater visibility, transparency, and accountability into the way organizations work? Business intelligence technology needs to meet the demands of tomorrow’s “digital natives”; integrate seamlessly with cloud data and platforms; align people, conversations, and data with business strategy; and make the most of the infrastructures we have today:

• Simple: the right interfaces for the right people at the right time
• Seamless: tightly integrated with data sources, applications, and business processes
• Social: allow people to collaborate around analyzing information and making decisions
• Strategic: closing the loop between strategy to execution

The feedback from the audience was very positive, and so we’ve taken the 45-minute presentation and posted it to YouTube as a series of short, single-topic sections (see below). The presentation is available for download as an Adobe PDF document, and as the original PowerPoint presentation file.

The conference also included a more detailed BI presentation (not recorded) that focused on more leading-edge future BI topics such as social network analysis and augmented corporate reality. It is also available for download as an Adobe pdf file, and as a PowerPoint presentation file

Take a look, and if you find it interesting, please share with others in your organization! (and if you are interested in a tailored BI vision presentation for your company or conference, please contact me at telliott@timoelliott.com)

[Update: There’s now a nice convenient viewer for the various videos available:]

Part 1 Introduction (3:12 min)

Summary:

• High-level BI trends
• Brief summary of BusinessObjects porfolio

Part 2  Simple (9:05 min)

Summary:

• Taking BI to the next level: Simple
• Roadblocks to success
• Taking cues from the consumer world
• BI interfaces that you don’t need training to use
• Japanese picnics

Part 3 Simple Continued (4:23 min)

Summary:

• Adapting interfaces to end users
• Other interfaces, including mobile devices
• Going faster

Part 4 Seamless (9:33 min)

Summary:

• Taking BI to the next level: Seamless
• The importance of data
• Bridging the gap between central and personal data
• Text analytics
• BI OnDemand
• Embedded BI
• “Automagical” Text to Query

Part 5: Social (5:07 mins)

Summary:

• Taking BI to the next level: Social
• Collaboration is important
• Spitfire Marine example
• StreamWork demonstration

Part 6: Strategic (9:26 min)

Summary:

• Taking BI to the next level: Strategic
• Budgeting and finance
• Financial vs. other Risk
• Sustainability performance management
• Business applications of the future
• Conclusion

Here’s a short overview of the what, why, and how of SAP BusinessObjects, whiteboard-style…