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Let's face it, managing data, whether it's in databases, data cubes or data marts, is expensive. And if the only way to get value of it is business intelligence (BI), then BI needs to be deployed as broadly as possible to earn a return on your investments in data, data management and BI.

But the problem is that in many companies, BI usage and adoption continue to be too narrow. Many is the CFO or CIO who suddenly realizes that even though they have invested heavily in BI, their returns are limited because BI is used by too few people and for too few projects. There are lots of ways to broaden BI adoption, improve the ROI on your investments and maybe even get benefits not typically associated with BI.

Empower the Ad Hoc BI User

For most organizations, virtually all employees are information workers who can benefit from BI. Insurance underwriters may not need full BI in order to build custom reports, but they are likely to need it when they need to answer questions of policyholders. With this in mind, companies should seek ways to extend BI benefits to as many users as possible while keeping minimizing the costs.

Alerts

With alerts, virtually any employee can be an ad hoc BI user. BI vendors and partners can enhance BI deployments that send alerts to employees when key performance indicators exceed some specified limit. A call center manager may not be a standard BI user, but the value of BI is increased when it is used to send that manager an alert telling him that he needs to call in more workers in order to handle a higher than expected sales level and not lose any sales opportunities.

Get Out of Report and Project Mode

Too often, BI adoption is limited to particular projects or reporting processes. BI competency centers should be available to IT departments and business users so that anyone with a data-oriented business need can explore ways that BI can be used.

Dashboards

Dashboards are lightweight, inexpensive and valuable extensions of BI deployments. They are lightweight because they access only the portions of data needed by a particular user and can be rapidly built by either consultants or internal IT staff. They are valuable because they immediately disseminate data to a large number of employees and eliminate labor-intensive data gathering workflows.

Scale Your BI Purchase Carefully

Vendor relationships should be managed with an emphasis on maximizing breadth of adoption. Companies with a broad base of information users should obtain enterprise-wide licenses, so that there is no limitation on the breadth of potential adoption. Companies with only pockets of potential BI users should find ways to leverage their initial BI investment that give more users access to data enabled by BI.

Two vendors with offerings that help users extend the value of their BI deployment are iDashboards and Spotfire, which was recently acquired by Tibco.

iDashboards. iDashboards has a solution that extends the benefits of data analysis to a broader population, primarily business users rather than analysts or report builders.

iDashboards connects directly to the data sources, including relational databases, flat data files, Microsoft Excel and a variety of reporting tools. End users view their data through a browser, in a variety of formats, including tables, 3-D views, geographic maps, metric tickers, animated speedometers and customized data displays through a browser.

What makes iDashboards powerful is the amount of data that is available from any given displayed data point and the ease with which that data can be explored. Every data point operates like a hyperlink. When a user hovers the mouse over the linked data point, the cursor changes to indicate that further information can be viewed by clicking - drilling down - on the data point. There could be multiple levels of drill down, enabling the user to change the granularity of the analysis so that a sales director can change his data view from annual to quarterly or division to individual.

In addition to being functionally cool, it is tactically valuable. When end users can interrogate data the way they want without wading through data or waiting for reports, they shorten the time it makes to make important strategic and competitive decisions.

Spotfire - a TIBCO Division. Spotfire's solution is a presentation layer that integrates with an existing BI deployment. The solution has prebuilt and highly interactive graphics for a number of verticals. For example, there is a module customized for the insurance industry that can be used to pinpoint anomalies in claims patters that indicate the likelihood of fraud. Like iDashboards, the graphics are interactive. If there is a cluster of claims in a particular ZIP code, an analyst can drill down to see if his plans were issued from the same underwriter or to see if there are weak spots in the company's underwriting policies. The value here is that BI can be extended to specialist areas without hiring consultants for costly customizations.

David O'Connell contributes to Nucleus Research's industry-leading body of research by performing interviews, writing research reports and building ROI tools. O'Connell follows a number of sectors, including integration, collaboration, business intelligence and workforce management. As a former commercial banker, O'Connell is particularly skilled in evaluating how solutions impact the roles of the CFO, controller and treasurer, and has been writing and presenting technology-oriented business cases for more than 10 years. He is the author of numerous ROI reports, evaluation reports, tools and case studies. You can reach him at doconnell@nucleusresearch.com.