Panorama Business Intelligence

Coming home on a balmy spring afternoon, you finger through the multiple envelopes haphazardly stuffed in your mailbox.  Your eyes are met with the usual junk mail, bills and ever-present grocery store leaflets, but an envelope from your internet service provider, a small company, catches your attention and results in a raised eyebrow.  Within it you find a nicely written corporate letter from a senior executive informing you that the company has been acquired by a large, well known communications corporation.  This letter was being sent just to inform their existing customers of this acquisition and to assure you that you could expect the same, if not better, level of service.  Fittingly, it wasn’t long after that you begin to notice slowdowns in your connection speed and customer service that has little or no answers for your many newfound problems.  The closest thing you get to an explanation is from a customer service agent who gives a clearly well-rehearsed line about how, while the company goes through a state of transition, your patience is greatly appreciated.

It is with the same curiosity that many in the business intelligence industry have raised their collective eyebrows at the sweeping changes that have taken place in the world of BI.  Consolidation has become the name of the game as major companies have bought major BI players with the intention of bolstering their positioning in the BI landscape.  While such acquisitions make headlines within the industry and are often heralded as great leaps forward, behind closed doors the story is significantly different.  On the most basic level, post acquisition, the pressure mounts for these companies to figure out how to integrate their products as best as possible due to the problem of overlapping technologies. 

SAP’s recent acquisition of Business Objects, for example, still has the industry buzzing but also has skeptics wondering what this means for the existing SAP customer base.  Does this mean that SAP will basically give up on BW and focus on the newly acquired BOBJ Universe platform?  While they would never admit that, certainly not to customers that has invested millions of dollars in BW, the reality is that we are clearly in times of uncertainty.  The most pronounced effect of all of this will be seen with respect to how existing SAP customers make strategic decisions.  How do you make strategic decisions for your company with so much ambiguity?  Do you continue to invest money in a product that will eventually be phased out?  Is it better to hold off and wait?  Making a gamble today could end up being a disaster that would yield a heavy hit on a company’s coffers.

There are basically two paths that any given company faces at times such as these: the strategic vs. tactical approach.  During times when there is an air of uncertainty, making strategic decisions may not be the best approach due to the aforementioned reasons.  A tactical approach however, one that involves a short-term investment that has minimal impact and weight, is one that should be examined carefully.  Companies that are experiencing the pain of trying to get more out of their NetWeaver BI investment should look at tactical solutions presented by smaller vendors that would help solve today’s problems while allowing them to keep an eye on the long-term strategic direction.

The focus and openness of niche firms may very well be worth the investment for companies that want to hunker down and wait for the proverbial storm to calm.  BI is the link that connects the end users in a company to the millions of dollars companies have devoted to information systems.  The world of SAP is going through some monumental changes and small variations in BI efficiency can have enormous impact the overall return on IT investment. 

Looking to small vendors that can add a light footprint to your BI infrastructure but still enable you to make key strategic decisions is a viable option that many companies are considering.  While the SAP continues to project an air of ambiguity amongst industry experts, decision makers within organizations are facing real pressure now.  There are thousands of customers out there getting ready to enter a world filled with confusing roadmaps and large gray areas.  Their respective strategies do not have to involve major financial gambles.  It is indeed possible to take a tactical decision making process to overcome the existing BI dilemma.