Chapter 1 - Article Review

I found an article titled ‘Five Steps to Business Intelligence Success’ by Danny Bradbury. This article can be viewed at http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/maximising-business-intelligence/five-steps-to-business-intelligence-success-39429814.htm .

This article seemed to tie in everything I learned from chapter one. The article summarized some of the key points in the textbook, reiterated the main points in the webinar, coincided with the video source I viewed in my first blog, and even supported the company I choose to analyze in the internet exercise.

The article focused on some of the main points also in the webinar. One of the ways to succeed was to set your goals. It is extremely important to make sure your goals are set so that you can align the BI program to the business. Another point mentioned in that article was the importance of funding. The webinar showed graphs in detail from surveys and studies that proved that companies with committed funding where more opt to succeed.

The importance of nursing your users was also stressed in the video source posted in my first blog: The History of Business Intelligence. Sometimes these great intricate programs are made to help the business, but no one knows how to use or understand them. In the internet exercise from chapter 1, I analyzed the BI approach of Microsoft. They integrate the BI program into their already familiar Microsoft programs. This allowed more people to be able to use the program because it is easy to use and familiar.

The other main point this article stresses is to ‘think big but start small’. The textbook provided many cases and situations to show that BI is intended to better the entire company. It brings all of the data together in order to maximize results. The article agrees with this holistic view, but also realizes that too much too soon can be a problem. By starting off small, companies are not overwhelmed and can slowly add on more projects.

I really enjoyed this article because it seemed to tie up all the loose ends from chapter one. I would recommend reading this article as a study guide for the introduction of BI.