Tuesday, April 03, 2007

I Heard Search and Business Intelligence are Dating

It’s spring and love is in the air. What better time to talk about a relationship between two technology categories that seem to be budding in our midst, I’m talking about Search and BI. The love affair between Search and BI has really always been there and it’s the presence of Google and a topic analysts are calling Biggle (the combination of search and BI) reflects ways new technologies are tackling this topic. Just like any good romance story there are a number of truths and lies, here is an interesting article from Search Data Management that drills into some of the common myths about search and BI.

There’s no doubt that organizations are looking at simpler ways to access information and reduce costs. "Many companies are recognizing now that they need to provide business users with more access to BI information. Just the training costs [for commercial BI systems] are often quite expensive. Organizations are looking for easy and simple interfaces," said Dan Vesset, research director at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.

If we relate this back to performance management; yes… it’s all about simplifying the way users access information, increasing their productivity, and enabling them to make decisions… but are those the decisions the right ones? How do users know their decisions and the information they are searching on is aligned to the strategy of the business… perhaps Search should do some “searching” of its own for a new romance with performance management?

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