{"id":13124,"date":"2016-12-12T13:04:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=13124"},"modified":"2017-02-23T10:55:39","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T09:55:39","slug":"predictions-a-cynics-guide-to-bi-in-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/predictions-a-cynics-guide-to-bi-in-2017.html","title":{"rendered":"Predictions: A Cynic&#8217;s Guide to BI in 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/BI-in-2017-fail.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-13125\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/BI-in-2017-fail-608x273.jpg?resize=608%2C273&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"bi-in-2017-fail\" width=\"608\" height=\"273\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been working in Business Intelligence and Analytics for over twenty-five years. With some confidence and a lot of cynicism,\u00a0here are my predictions for 2017:<\/p>\n<p>Business People<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Business people will be\u00a0dissatisfied with their BI systems (this is \u201cTimo\u2019s First\u00a0Law of BI\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>Executives will refuse to learn to use any other data tool than Excel (and not even the newer features of that).<\/li>\n<li>No matter how good the BI system, business people will make bad decisions based on gut feel.<\/li>\n<li>Executives will be completely unaware of\u00a0data quality problems. Unless their bonus depends on some value affected by it, at which point they will become experts.<\/li>\n<li>Business people will find it hard\u00a0to articulate what data they need &#8212; and then they will change their minds as soon as they get what they asked for.<\/li>\n<li>Some business people will get fed up with corporate BI, and take it into their own hands. They will build a loosely-connected set of different technologies resulting in\u00a0huge maintenance costs\u00a0and low compliance. They will then ask\u00a0IT to\u00a0take over the project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>IT<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IT teams will implement new ERP systems, then be surprised when business people ask for analytics. Providing the analytics will require expensive changes to the ERP system.<\/li>\n<li>IT teams will struggle to build business cases for BI. But as soon as the business people have access to the new data, they will change processes, create new opportunities, and save millions. They will\u00a0take all the credit for this.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Download to Excel&#8221; will continue to be the most-requested BI tool feature. Users will complain when they are unable to download the entire corporate data lake to their PC.<\/li>\n<li>Data quality, data integration, and metadata will be the primary barriers\u00a0to BI. But companies will continue to\u00a0invest less in these areas than in shiny executive dashboards.<\/li>\n<li>New data sources will outpace IT\u2019s ability to integrate them into core platforms (no matter what technology is used).<\/li>\n<li>BI Competency Centers will over-invest in technical skills and\u00a0under-invest in training, communications, and community-building.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Analysts<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some analysts will say BI and\u00a0BI competency centers are dead, much to the confusion of the millions of\u00a0people doing it every day.<\/li>\n<li>Analysts will say that there is only 15% penetration of BI. Nobody will understand where this number comes from, and why it hasn\u2019t changed in over\u00a0twenty years.<\/li>\n<li>Analysts will say that data should be treated like an asset. Companies will not treat it like an asset.<\/li>\n<li>BI success numbers will be \u201ccalculated\u201d using non-scientific samples of self-reported\u00a0estimates\u00a0without defining what\u00a0\u201csuccess\u201d means. Analysts will say these numbers are too low, and that you need help from analysts to improve them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The market<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Everybody will insist their definition of Business Intelligence\u00a0\/ Analytics \/ Big Data etc. is the only\u00a0\u201ccorrect\u201d one.<\/li>\n<li>New analytics\u00a0buzzwords will be coined. Thousands of articles will be written saying that the new buzzwords are meaningless and\/or wrong.<\/li>\n<li>New BI startups will be created. They will claim to bring \u201cBI to the masses\u201d for the first time.<\/li>\n<li>Newer vendors will call the older vendors inflexible\u00a0dinosaurs. Older vendors will call newer vendors immature and unsafe. Some newer vendors will suddenly realize that they are now considered the older\u00a0vendors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Your turn: what did I miss? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Did you find this interesting \/ useful?\u00a0<\/strong>Think about <a href=\"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/about\/subscribe-to-new-posts\">subscribing to get new posts via email<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/timoelliott\">following me on twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some cynical predictions for BI in 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[1187,100,160,1188,1189],"class_list":["post-13124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-1187","tag-analytics","tag-bi","tag-buzzwords","tag-predictions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3pG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}