'¿Problemas tecnológicos? ¿Qué problemas?'

Usabilidad
miércoles, 15 de octubre de 2008

Otro interesante artículo de Gartner. En esta ocasión, Gartner presenta los 9 errores falates de un sistema BI… Destaco los siguientes puntos:

Flaw No. 3: "Data quality problem? What data quality problem"

Data quality issues are almost ubiquitous and the impact on BI is significant — people won’t use BI applications that are founded on irrelevant, incomplete or questionable data. To avoid this, firms should establish a process or set of automated controls to identify data quality issues in incoming data and block low-quality data from entering the data warehouse or BI platform.

Flaw No. 4: "Evaluate other BI platforms? Why bother"

"One-stop shopping" or buying a BI platform from the standard corporate resource application vendor doesn’t necessarily lower the total cost of ownership or deliver the best fit for an organisation’s needs. BI platforms are not commodities and all do not yet deliver all functions to the same level, so organisations should evaluate competitive offerings, rather than blindly taking the path of least resistance. Integration between the application vendor’s ERP/data warehouse and BI offerings is not a compelling reason for ignoring alternatives, especially as many third-party BI platforms are as well integrated.

Flaw No. 6: "Let’s just outsource the whole darn BI thing"

Managers often try to fix struggling BI efforts by hiring an outsourcer that they expect will do a better job at a lower cost. Focusing too much on costs and development time often results in inflexible, poorly architected systems. Organisations should outsource only what is not a core competency or business and rely on outsourcing only temporarily while they build skills within their own IT organisation.

Con las demás no estoy completamente de acuerdo, ya que asumen que los problemas no suelen ser tecnológicos. Seguramente será que han preguntado a los departamentos de IT… Yo creo que muchas veces el problema sí que es tecnológico y de las herramientas BI, y que los usuarios no son tontos al preferir el Excel.

Que en muchas ocasiones los problemas en un sistema BI sean tecnológicos no debería extrañarnos, ni avergonzarnos a los que nos dedicamos a esto. Un sistema BI debe tener un "frond-end" para el usuario extremadamente sencillo, pero detrás de esta sencillez tiene que existir una arquitectura tecnológica que lo permita...