The SaaS Business Intelligence Forum

Purists Go Home
By Bill Copacino / December 20th, 2011 / (0) comments
Many companies have the right intention: Let’s have one place where we keep all of our data, and we will ensure that it is accurate and reliable (fresh and pure). That’s a nice sentiment, but unrealistic. I wish I was 6’4’’ and had a full head of hair. While fun to dream about it, beither is likely to happen. Excuse my cynicism but I see too many IT departments killing users by demanding purity, yet these same departments never delivering the goods. They spend forever (literally) preaching their gospel while the congregation starves. Sure, one needs to have reasonable data quality and integrity (and by reasonable, I mean 99% correct), but for IT to spend the time and resources to get all the data into a centralized repository and then ask thousands of underserved users to wait their turn for it to made available—unacceptable!! This is where the real Tea Party revolt should be happening. Now IT will say, we...
Leading BI analyst says mobile will become dominant BI platform
By Anil Chitkara / March 23rd, 2011 / (0) comments
Caught up with BI industry legend Howard Dresner the other day, and the boldness of one of his comments really resonated with me. When we were talking about the impact mobile devices such as the iPad will have on business intelligence deployment and usage, Howard said he was on record predicting that mobile “will become fundamentally the new platform for business intelligence.” Lots of people are talking about extending BI to mobile devices, but Howard may well be right that the impact will be much more significant. As our new white paper on mobile BI points out, the new form factor and performance pioneered by the iPad have not only removed key barriers to information access but also created significant demand for easy-to-use business intelligence applications from executives across a wide range of industries. So it’s easy to see how this user group and platform could become the driving forces for widespread BI adoption. What do you think? Is mobile...
Positive feedback on benchmarking news
By Steve Morandi / March 4th, 2011 / (0) comments
Had a great call earlier this week with a leading consultant/analyst about our recent announcement that Oco is incorporating supply chain benchmarking data from Tompkins Associates into our analytics offerings. He’s focused primarily on SaaS today, but also has deep experience in the benchmarking space, so it was gratifying to hear his perspective that the time is right for SaaS BI vendors to deliver key operational metrics. He also said offering benchmarking was “a terrific way to add new value” for Oco customers, and that doing so is like “creating a club that customers will feel good about joining.” We couldn’t agree more and look forward to working with Tompkins to deliver “Supply Chain Intelligence” for companies in a wide range of markets, including CPG, industrial, hi-tech, retail, pharmaceutical and logistics services. - Steve Morandi, SVP, Analytic Solutions
451 Group report cites strengths of Oco analytics
By Steve Morandi / February 16th, 2011 / (0) comments
In a recent report on Birst’s newest product enhancements, industry analyst firm The 451 Group cited Oco as a possible BI competitor and noted that “Oco’s portfolio of hosted analytic applications are similar to Birst’s so-called templates, which combine ETL capabilities and a schema within a modifiable data model, supply reports and metrics, and are targeted as specific usage scenarios, such as sales analytics and customer analytics. That said, Oco has a broader array of SaaSy analytic apps with industry-specific as well as business-specific slants.” We don’t see Birst a lot in customer engagements, but we’ll take the compliment! Targeted analytics that address specific issues, and provide the required insights to run a business, is the ultimate end game. We are thrilled that the market recognizes this. Frankly, we feel folks are a bit fatigued with broad, general-purpose data solutions (all data for all people for every possible question) that have failed to deliver on the promise of enlightened visibility...
More Support for BI going Mobile
By Alex Carleton / February 9th, 2011 / (0) comments
Following up on my blog last week, it looks like TDWI’s Stephen Swoyer shares our perspective on BI and the iPad and similar devices as the catalyst that could make mobile BI a reality – and soon. “A mobile device will almost certainly figure in your BI future — either as a complement to or replacement for the traditional (desktop) or transitional (laptop) PC.” In Swoyer’s blog, 3 Action Items for the New Year, he makes the case that the technology is in place…and the only thing missing to make 2011 the Year of Mobile BI is “a top-down imprimatur.” We are starting to hear from some of these companies – are you making it happen? We’d like to hear from you.