BI on demand

One of the trends that's been gradually building speed over the last couple of years is on-demand business intelligence.  Like the web-based services that I write about here every so often, it's business intelligence when and where you need it, without all of the difficulties of building the solution yourself, or hosting it yourself, or even maintaining it yourself.

Like many other on-demand services, on-demand BI is gaining ground, because it's appealing to smaller companies that can't afford to invest in a full-blown BI solution, and to larger companies that are looking for some simplicity.  And there are the two benefits that seem to draw most companies to on-demand BI.  What keeps them there is a whole different story, though.

On-demand BI seems to 'stick' because once a company implements it, the benefits become clear (usually).  For example, on-demand BI usually means you have the answers to your BI questions when you need them (and where you need them) without having to devote an entire army of IT professionals to pulling those answers from mountains of data.

Of course, even on-demand BI requires that you have a good understanding of what the benefit of BI will be to your organization.  In other words, you need to know the business problem that you're trying to solve.  It seems basic, but the truth is, most BI implementations that fail do so because the business problem wasn't celarly defined.

On-demand BI is a great way to implement BI capabilities without devoting too much of your budget or resources to the implementation.  However, even on-demand BI should be based on solid business needs, just like any other technology that's implemented in a business environment.  If it's implemented just because it's what others say should be done or because it's the latest and greatest technology, it won't work.  Plain and simple.   It always comes back to solving the business problem.