Webb Insights: Business & Technology

Self Service "BI" (business intelligence) is one of the biggest technology trends this year. In this blog, I'd like to explain why this is more than just a trend - and why it's something that can provide a competitive advantage within a department, a business unit, an organization and an industry. In the traditional sense, BI is composed of an IT gatekeeper who architects and maintains a data warehouse through development (sorting, querying and blending data, defining facts and dimensions, creating cubes), testing, deployment (report server, access groups, policies, documentation), analysis (creating measures, defining parameters) and performing enhancements (DB upgrades, system maintenance, end-user requests). The business accesses these insights in a very controlled and decisive manner - commonly through reports or dashboards. The ability to perform ad-hoc analysis as well as share and collaborate on insights is typically quite limited. Furthermore, the abilit