Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2006/02/22/rsinteract_bi_scandal/
The Business Intelligence (BI) scandal: why pay more to get less?
Ignorance is not bliss
Posted in Software, 22nd February 2006 15:44 GMT
Comment The eye-catching headline above recently appeared in a press release from “business data specialists ICS". What!? A scandal in the moral world of BI? Surely not.
It turns out that the burden of ICS's song is that it has a product that "puts information in the hands of the user rather than confined to business analysts away from the coalface". And the scandal is that "traditional BI systems are clunky and over-priced [and are] leaving the real business decision makers out in the cold".
Initially, it's a compelling argument. I have to agree that within many of the companies I see, BI use is confined to higher managers - those traditional "decision makers". BI often does fail to get down as far as those at the coalface.
But is this really a scandal? Is it actually appropriate for all companies to deploy BI to employees at all levels? That would be a No. There are, sadly, some coalface jobs where access to corporate BI systems has very little relevance. I know; when I was a student, I did plenty of them. I remember long summer days devoted to the taxing pursuit of removing chicken excrement from nesting boxes. The company wisely chose to issue me with a power hose rather than a BI system.
I also happily concede that there are plenty of coalface jobs where access to a BI system could make a huge difference. BI systems can detect real-time credit fraud; they can warn sales staff of potentially abusive or dangerous customers, it can alert shelf stackers to changing shopping requirements and so on. However, I also believe that deployment at this level is far more likely to be hindered by human/social reasons rather than technological ones.
For a start, many companies actively want the coalface employees to be cogs in the machine. They truly and actively do not want their waitpersons to demonstrate initiative. It is much safer, and the cogs’ performance is much more predictable, if they all simply stick to the script. I'm not defending this as a position; I’m simply explaining why the idea of introducing BI at the cog level is essentially ruled out, in some cases, by company policy.
OK, let's move higher up the food chain. At some point, even in the most cog-oriented organisation, we find a level at which managers are expected to make sane and sensible decisions based on the available information. Clearly such people will benefit from access to a BI system that helps them to extract useful information from the mass of data that confronts them. Technologically there is no reason why they cannot be given access, but someone has to decide to give it to them.
Why would anyone higher up the chain object? Well, for a start, good quality information might allow the lower orders to questions the decisions of their higher-ups. It might enable the great unwashed to see that some decisions (promotions for example) are based on favour rather than fact. The bottom line is that knowledge is power (as Sir Francis Bacon knew way, way before Business acquitted even a hint of Intelligence). If you hold the knowledge, and your underlings don't, then your power base is safe.
Ultimately, there are many reasons why BI is often restricted to the upper levels of management – simply providing a new tool will not, automatically, fix the problem.
Having said that, what does RSinteract, the product for which the above screaming headline was written, do? Well, it's still a potentially very useful tool, one that enables end-users to create reports based on Microsoft’s Reporting Services. Let’s assume that you have Reporting Services installed.
You load RSinteract onto a server and your coalface workers connect to it using a browser. RSinteract provides (via a totally thin client) a simple interface that can be used interactively to create Reporting Services reports.
OK, so that sounds like Report Builder which is still a relatively complex tool and isn’t “thin client”ICS makes great play of the fact that it has worked very hard to keep RSinteract simple, and it has succeeded. With a few drags and a couple of drops, you can create reports that contain grids, tables and graphs. Having battled to help users create reports in the past I have to say that RSinteract has some appeal.
That’s the good news, the bad is that this is very much a first release of the product and it has some very odd omissions from its feature list; and some, to my eyes, very odd additions.
It is easy to create reports and, as a welcome feature, it is easy to make those reports interactive. For example, your business is divided up into US, UK and Rest-Of-World. You want a single report that can be used for all three. No problem, RSinteract allows you to add a box to the report into which you can type the region. Fine. But you can’t use a combo box; you have to type in the name of the region. Would your coalface users really be up for this if the report was based on one of 20 bizarrely named regions?
And then there are the data sources. RSinteract will connect to SQL Server 2000 but it is also billed as a tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2005: “...new RSinteract tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 set to radically shake up BI market...”, the publicity says.
So why is it incapable of connecting to the UDM? You know, that linchpin of SQL Server 2005, the Unified Dimensional Model that’s designed to unify the user’s view of the data. You know, that logical layer that ensures that all users report consistently. That one. That’s the one to which RSinteract cannot connect. Instead it can connect directly to tables and views. You know, those objects that users generally find rather difficult to understand which is why the UDM was invented. Sigh.
I have no doubt that these features will appear in time but be warned that they are not in the product as I write. On the other hand, a feature that would seem to me to be way down on the list has made it to this first version. RSinteract can also use stored procedures as data sources. Whacky, but true. Personally I’d have gone for the UDM. You know, the UDM that……
Ultimately, then, RSinteract has the potential to be a good product; but, given the paucity of features that should be essentials, it is difficult to recommend at present. But at least it isn’t a scandal. ®