Business Intelligence, (Business) Analytics … what’s in a name?

March 30, 2009 by Resa
Filed under: Forums & Blogs, Work 

First of all I like to emphasize that the opinions posted here are those of myself. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding on that. ;-)

Somehow the statements as made by Jim Davis (Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at SAS Institute) seem to have triggered a discussion on several blogs and in tweeter. I am sure I have not read all, but the ones that I read recently are:

This “discussion” seem to revolve about the statement made reference Business Analytics being the future:

Business intelligence is an over-used term that has had its day, and business analytics is now the differentiator that will allow customers to better forecast the future especially in this current economic climate.

Questions raised are whether according to definitions analytics is a subset of business intelligence and therefore the above statement can not be true. Even – but maybe the fact that English is not my native tongue is working against me here – it is questioned whether “intelligence” is a correct term. Since intelligence is something you have and not do.

To me, being a senior consultant mainly in data warehousing and BI, this discussion seems so pointless. I personally am not interested at all what it is called and why it is called that way. Even less interested am I in the fact whether the words chosen are “proper English”.

To me it seems that my job is to help and advise customers to my best knowledge on how the best use can be made of data (structured and/or unstructured) available within the company to achieve the goals that have been set. In my opinion the goals as set by the customer and the requirements that derive from these goals are leading. The name of the concept, or “route”, used to achieve these does not have my main interest.

I agree with the idea that trying to determine as best as possible what may happen can be supportive in the decision taking process. However, in order to do this as good as possible, in my opinion you also need to have good insight in what has happened and what is happening now. Whether predictive analysis is always required … that is something I am not sure about. For me that depends on the expectations and targets of the project I am involved in. But also in this case, my main interest is not what it’s called as long as I have a way and/or tool to achieve it.

So concluding I think I mostly agree with the statement by Ajay Ohri

Call it Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or business as usual.

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Comments

2 Comments on Business Intelligence, (Business) Analytics … what’s in a name?

  1. Ajay Ohri on Tue, 31st Mar 2009 13:10

    2. Cool site. Thanks for the pingback !

    :) )

    Ajay

    ps Why dont you register on http://www.smartdatacollective.com It is a moderated blog community on these topics, all you need to do is add RSS feed, you retain all copyright for your work.

  2. Resa on Tue, 31st Mar 2009 18:45

    3. Thanks for the comment Ajay.
    With regard to your suggestion … as you can tell I am quite new to this “blog thing”.
    Furthermore, I am already registered on so many (at least that is how it feels) communities. But then again … who knows …
    –Resa

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