There’s a running joke that you never have a bad sales meeting in the BI world. Everyone wants better information, so it’s an easy sell.
The majority of enterprises—70%—are either running big-data projects or planning to deploy them, according to research by IDG Enterprise. Enterprises are slated to spend $8M on big data initiatives this year alone.
It is, however, slowly sinking in that placing a new BI system on the altar doesn’t address users’ needs. After tools are implemented, less than one-fifth of workers actually use them. The $1M or more you spend on user licenses isn’t justified if nobody uses the software.
Invest.
However, companies should be investing in BI. With data increasing every year, there’s no other choice—and there’s ample proof that being a data-driven business provides innumerable competitive advantages. Investing wisely, however, is a choice.
Businesses now stand at a crossroads with low engagement on one side, and the need to permeate actionable data throughout the enterprise on the other. The way ahead is to look at data from the user perspective and think about what will drive adoption.
Many consumer apps use push alerts and email notifications to share the most mission-critical data with users. It is personal and targeted to the user and it works—even Reverse 911®, which uses phone calls to notify residents of an area of an impending disaster, is a kind of push notification (through a landline). Users respond, take the appropriate action, and get on with their lives.
Such notifications, delivered with context, at the right time, in a way that tells the user a story, are the key to fostering engagement in BI Solutions. Alert users only of what they need to know, so that they can respond quickly. The ROI will follow.
Watch out for our new whitepaper which we will be publishing shortly, that discusses the value of being a data driven business and steps to increasing adoption of data within your organization.
