{"id":12401,"date":"2014-02-25T11:09:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T10:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=6462"},"modified":"2014-02-25T11:09:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T10:09:49","slug":"interview-the-power-of-collective-insight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/interview-the-power-of-collective-insight.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview: The Power of Collective Insight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"collaboration
\n\"waldemar<\/a>At the upcoming UK SAP Innovation Forum<\/a> in London on March 11th, Waldemar Adams<\/a>, VP EMEA Business Intelligence for SAP will be talking about The Power of Collective Insight<\/a>. I took the opportunity to catch up with Waldemar to ask him about the latest and greatest trends in analytics and SAP BusinessObjects.<\/p>\n

What is your background?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working in business intelligence since the mid-90s with Comshare and the Essbase OLAP system. Back then, cubes were typically updated once a month so anything updated daily was called \u201creal time\u201d — now everybody has at least daily updates. I then joined information management vendor Acta, which was acquired by BusinessObjects, which was in turn acquired by SAP.<\/p>\n

What are some of the big trends you\u2019re seeing in the market?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been doing BI for the last 17 years, but it\u2019s never boring because it\u2019s constantly reinventing itself. One core trend has stayed the same: BI allows organizations to be more successful. They can understand what\u2019s going on and develop in a better direction, and if they do something wrong, they do it for the shortest possible time.<\/p>\n

One of the newer trends among our customers is real-time analytics. When everything is perfectly aligned in the back office and the business processes, the only competitive advantage is to have better insight with less latency. Real-time analytics means two things. First, BI \u201cat speed of thought\u201d is still a very relevant expression: people want to ask whatever question they have and get an immediate answer. But the other side of it is accessing up-to-date data \u2013 being able to analyze data that includes the order that was passed a few seconds ago. Latency is a big issue for everyone.<\/p>\n

Have the barriers changed over time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. The barriers are still the same. The technology is there to better solve problems but the main obstacle with providers and consumers of IT still hasn\u2019t been answered. In the world of the business, there\u2019s a disconnect between IT and the users. It\u2019s like the tortoise and the rabbit: whenever IT delivers what has been requested, the business people already have a new request. And this problem has been accelerating over the last decade. Organizations need to set up an aligned strategy for BI and analytics that includes both IT and Business as a prerequisite to take advantage of the technology shifts. Otherwise the technology can\u2019t add value: having lots of data in memory doesn\u2019t matter unless you can span the bridge.<\/p>\n

What does \u2018the power of collective insight\u2019 mean? <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the collaboration aspect of business intelligence. Decision-making should be about more than flipping a coin, but it is like a coin in that it has two sides. One side is getting the insight, the other is the collaboration you need to turn that insight into a decision. Insight alone isn\u2019t enough. Decisions are made by a team, and there should be a transparent process that tracks why and how decisions are made. The latest agile visualization products<\/a> have brought self-service capabilities, but you also need to bring people together. We believe you should have seamless integration between tools to get insight and the tools to share feedback and make collaborative decisions.<\/p>\n

Today, when people make decisions, they have to send emails and spreadsheets back and forth. It\u2019s complex and inefficient, and it\u2019s hard to figure out what happened in the past if somebody new joins in the process. To help with this, we introduced a product called StreamWork<\/a> for collaborative decision-making several years ago<\/a>. This has now evolved and combined with technology from SuccessFactors to create SAP Jam<\/a>, and we\u2019ve integrated it with the business intelligence environment. We\u2019re finding it really makes a difference to customers.<\/p>\n

People are really amazed with the level of collaboration they can do \u2013 in part because it\u2019s not limited only to BI. Jam is much more advanced in overall collaboration, so you can use it as a portal for lots of activities. You can collaborate directly from the BusinessObjects Infoview to see follow reports and see people\u2019s comments and questions. But you can also see BI content through the Jam portal, where you have it as one of the facets of everything else you\u2019re doing. For example, a sales person can see some BI content in a sales analytics forum, post a comment, and that comment can be viewed from the BI system.<\/p>\n

\"jam<\/a><\/p>\n

Adding a comment to a report<\/em><\/p>\n

\"follow<\/a><\/p>\n

Following a report<\/em><\/p>\n

\"mobile<\/a><\/p>\n

Seamless collaboration in mobile environments<\/em><\/p>\n

\"jam<\/p>\n

Collaboration for business users, combining BI and non-BI content with SAP Jam <\/em><\/p>\n

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1<\/a> is a very mature business intelligence platform and\u00a0 the SAP JAM capabilities have been well-integrated for a smooth transition. To make it as easy as possible, we have a website SAPBusinessObjectsBI.com<\/a> that has all of the relevant information in one place: prerequisites, best practices, videos, specific recommendations for your landscape, and much more.<\/p>\n

And since SAP Jam is a full-scope collaboration system, we\u2019re starting to see large organizations use it as part of their BI Competency Center processes. IT and departmental business people can collaborate on a repository of prototypes, demo views, and specifications, and use the decision-making functionality to support the deployments decisions behind BI itself. It\u2019s early days, but it\u2019s an exciting area for the future.<\/p>\n

What do you find people misunderstand about BI and analytics today? <\/span><\/p>\n

The importance of governance. An analogy might be the use of smart phones in the business world. As a consumer, you just want to use your phone, and enjoy the apps. That\u2019s OK in your personal life. But in the business world, it\u2019s much more complex. You have to apply certain rules about data governance and security. Your business phone has confidential data. It would be a big deal if everybody in the pub can see the KPIs you\u2019re using to run the organization.<\/p>\n

The same is true of analytics and BI. People now expect to have powerful tool enable them to play around with data, and that is not a a bad thing. But we also need to be sure that in a corporate environment, it\u2019s not a tower of babel with many different languages. Everything has to be aligned: data discovery doesn\u2019t add any value if everybody is doing it on their own island.<\/p>\n

I think people think that a smart tool will fix all the problems. But organizations have been inadvertently creating more silos, with all the common problems that come with that. As one of our customers Gabriel Orthous<\/a> puts it: \u201cself-service BI is good, but it shouldn\u2019t be self-centered\u201d<\/p>\n

Why should people come to your session?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a lot of the discussion today on key trends like cloud, mobile, and big data. This are all very valuable, but analytics and BI is always the last mile which adds the value and brings the use cases for these technologies. CIO surveys show that analytics is always the #1 priority, now and in the past. This session is about how companies can REALLY benefit from using today\u2019s business intelligence.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your time! <\/strong><\/p>\n

Presentation details<\/a><\/p>\n

13:45-14:10. <\/strong>The Power of Collective Insight with BI. Waldemar Adams, VP EMEA Business Intelligence, SAP<\/p>\n

This session, packed with the latest SAP BusinessObjects BI roadmap information, takes a deep dive into the new functionality and offers insight into how this latest release can fit within your BI landscape.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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