Thomas Wailgum has written an article at CIO.com in which he talks about continuing demand for BI, but adds that this, in turn, suggests that in many organisations BI has yet to deliver on its promise. As Thomas puts it:

“I see pent-up enterprise-wide frustration, aimed squarely at IT and CIOs for failing to give the business what it needs and deserves”

He sees the fundamental problem as being fragmented systems and stand-alone BI applications. This sounds like challenges that I have faced before. I agree that BI only realises it potential when a more strategic and wide-ranging approach is taken. Something I refer to in many places on this blog, but possibly most directly in Holistic vs Incremental approaches to BI.

My basic point is that while it is sensible to take a pragmatic, incremental approach to implementing BI (collecting successes as you go and building momentum), this needs to be within the framework of a more encompassing vision for what the eventual BI system will be like and do.

I don’t believe that you can do BI by halves and remain somewhat sceptical about the claims of some of the newer BI products to do away with the necessary hard work.