Business intelligence initiatives continues to top CIO priorities, as executives and managers demand greater visibility into business data much faster. Traditional business intelligence platforms have fallen short of delivering rapid analytics and insights. But that's changing. A new kind of BI is here: rapid-fire BI.
Rapid-fire BI is a new approach to providing true business intelligence. While traditional BI platforms perfected scheduled, parameterized reports, they do not do what they now espouse: provide self-service business intelligence.
How can you as an IT leader recognize rapid-fire BI that meets your needs but also delivers end-user benefits that your business lines will be cheering about? Rapid-fire business intelligence software has certain characteristics. This spreadsheet is a "buyer's guide" or checklist to evaluating the 6 characteristics of rapid-fire BI:
- Speed
- Self Reliance
- Visual Discovery
- Large and Diverse Data
- Ubiquitous Collaboration
- Flexible Configurations
Rapid-fire BI provides end-user freedom in an environment that leverages existing IT infrastructure and recognizes that not all data is in the enterprise data warehouse. It’s about where people can take advantage of the new generation of easy visual interfaces and visual intelligence that make trends and outliers easy to detect. And it’s about low cost of ownership. It grows to fit your needs on your timeline, leverages your existing infrastructure as much as possible and never requires long implementation phases or specialty technical skills.