Dan Woods, chief technology officer and editor of Evolved Technologist, recently penned a piece for Forbes.com on the death of business intelligence. Traditional business intelligence, claims Woods, is really about “running your business on questions you planned on answering last year or last month.” This use of business intelligence as rear-view mirror management doesn’t deliver the results promised.
Instead, Woods argues, companies should turn from business intelligence to operational intelligence and analytics. As Woods describes it, operational intelligence is “analysis based on data collected as it flows through the network or as it appears from its source, before finding its way to a data warehouse.”
Essentially, Woods is talking about integrating business intelligence further into the organization, incorporating real-time data and streaming technologies into the process, and providing a single source for interactive “navigation” and decision making.
Either way, business intelligence and operational intelligence can provide key data for businesses – it’s just a matter of what, when, how and why.
Kelley Kassa
Spotfire Blogging Team
Image credit: chris.corwin on Flickr
