Is Your Mobile Business Intelligence Plan Aiming for only 25%?

Just last week my company announced the latest edition of our Real-Time Business Intelligence platform. The majority of the new capabilities focused on mobile access for Operational Business Intelligence needs. (Check out our new iPhone and iPad Apps on the Apple App Store).

In the months leading up to the release we took a very close look at the state of the industry. One of things that really left on impression on us was the '2011 Successful BI Survey' from the BI Scorecard folks. Among the many statistics was this: overall BI adoption is only at 25%. That isn’t exactly a sparkling number for a ~20-year-old industry.

There is an opportunity to take your BI beyond the 25% mark. However, before I share my bit of insight, I’d like you to try a little experiment. Close your eyes, think about ‘MOBILE business intelligence’, and then describe the picture that immediately appears in your head…

Does your mobile BI picture include the people you’ve already empowered with BI on their desktop or does it show people who have no BI today but might be served best by mobile access, a particularly location-independent group of employees like the always-on-the-run sales guy? Is your picture about a part of your organization that already has BI (such as the finance department) or does it show more active, moving operations like the loading dock, the warehouse, or the assembly line where BI might help but has been tough to deliver?

How you picture 'Mobile Business Intelligence' can tell you whether you are going to help 25% or 100% of your potential community. It can also help you understand where your biggest BI ROI might be hiding.

Are the people and business areas/problems that you pictured the SAME ones that already have BI on their desktop or in their portal? If so, you are missing a great opportunity. The potential of mobile BI is much greater than simply a new interface to your existing BI for your existing BI users, moving your BI reach well beyond the typical executive in a corner office suite.

As part of the rollout of Presto 3.2 we held a public webcast, ‘Mobile Business Intelligence: What, Why and How’. Our mobile BI team shared some of what we've learned in the past few years including best practices, tips, tricks, and pitfalls. One of the best parts was the discussion of the best places for applying Mobile BI, many of which seem to lie in the 75% 'don't have' camp today:

If your organization is planning a mobile BI implementation, ask yourself if you are thinking about the 'haves' (that 25%) or the 'don't haves' (the other 75%). The real ROI is in the completely unserved 75%, of course, because the improvements in their decision-making would be drastic, versus marginal improvements for that 25% that already have something.

So think outside the people and and/or business areas/problems that already have BI. The biggest ROI of mobile BI is in areas that have NOTHING now. These used to be the next-to-impossible-to-help folks because they were on-the-move or not-in-headquarters. Mobile BI removes those barriers. It’s time we finally aimed for 100%.