Change in business is constant. How about your Business Intelligence strategy?

We’ve written in the past about making the best of difficult, often chaotic situations. After the Snowpocalypse and the tsunami that tore apart Japan, it was hard not to wonder what would happen if a similar unexpected event happened even closer to home. Just a few weeks ago it happened.

Our little corner of southern MD/ northern VA area saw Hurricane Irene roar through the area, to be followed just a few days later by a once-a-century 5.8 earthquake, and finally by a big round of rain and flooding.

Thankfully, these events did not begin to compare to those in New Orleans, Japan and Haiti. But minutes after my office walls stopped shaking I watched major news outlets (like the WashingtonPost.com) slow to a crawl. Cell services were swamped and largely useless. And I wondered about the business impact of unplanned events like these.

While most organizations have conquered the repeatable, predictable information needs of their decision-makers, we see precious few that have adaptable tools to help them cope with change. Sometimes it’s a natural event, sometimes it a competitor, sometimes it’s a technology trend, and sometimes it’s the economy. Change is a given in business. So why do we think we can freeze our business intelligence solutions in place?.

Change is relative, of course. The pace of change in certain industries and business processes can be measured in years or decades (some accounting standards date back to the 14th century). But other areas in those same organizations are much more subject to more change, both self-imposed (new business ventures, new products, new regions) and from external forces (technology, regulation, economics, demography, and, yes, even Mother Nature).

As a Real-Time Business Intelligence vendor, the folks here at JackBe certainly appreciate change. JackBe helps organizations deliver business intelligence solutions in dynamic, changing environments. Our software helps them assemble information, from both inside and outside their organization, to create live Apps and Dashboards that give them 'the big picture' with the latest information available.

Our customers sometimes call these solutions 'situational awareness', 'operational intelligence', 'common operating picture', 'real-time monitoring' and even 'real-time business intelligence'. And we help them do it fast because speed matters, often talking in terms of days or even hours.

And I’m sure everyone would agree that the general pace of business seems to be accelerating. Even the rate of growth of data is growing, the Internet has effectively removed the competitive barrier to entry in many markets, and things just seem ‘faster’ than a decade ago.

Luckily, my gut feelings aren’t required here. The brainy folks at Aberdeen Research have studied this idea quite a bit, with some fascinating results. Here’s a perfect example from a recent report:


That is an astronomical growth rate on the demand for ever-faster answers. Needless to say, the tools you might have used just a few years ago might not be all that applicable today.

I had the good fortune to chat with Gartner’s James Richardson a few days ago and he put it this way: the ‘operational pace and tempo defines the tool you need’ (I am paraphrasing James; he said it much more eloquently). So what tools, processes and procedures do you have to address decision-support demands in the more dynamic parts of your organization?

How well does your Business Intelligence strategy embrace change?