Dresner: Mobile the new platform for Business Intelligence (Part One)

Highlights from the Howard Dresner Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study 2011 Webcast (Part One)

Howard Dresner officially launched the updated Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study for 2011 in a live webcast on February 17.

The webcast, sponsored by InformationWeek, discussed the results of the survey described as “the ‘Bible’ that every serious Business Intelligence user, Solution Supplier and Service provider MUST own” on the paper’s official website – The Business Intelligence Study.

A paradigm shift: BI goes mobile

“We are in the midst of a profound shift, a paradigm shift, in favor of Mobile Business Intelligence, and things will never fundamentally be the same again,” said Howard Dresner, report author, former Gartner Research Fellow and President and Founder of Dresner Advisory Services.

“The majority of [representatives of] industries [that participated in the survey] found Mobile Business Intelligence critically important or very important.”

Mobile BI: Wider audiences and applications

The benchmark report confirmed recent industry research, suggesting that the Business Intelligence (BI) and Mobile BI markets are growing rapidly, as businesses across all industries realize the potential benefits.

“The research suggests that Mobile Business Intelligence now applies to a range of industries and users,” said Dresner.

“I had been thinking in my mind that the typical user was a road warrior – someone who spends a lot of time away from the office, that is, great distances away from the office.

“Conversations [with survey participants] suggest that Mobile Business Intelligence applies to an entire range of users out there, that may not be travelling great distances, but might be in an office campus. So in the case of a health care organization, going from an office to a conference room – being able to take the information with you is very important.

“In manufacturing, the ability to take the decision-making process right down to the manufacturing floor. And that was also true in speaking to retail organizations – they want the manager to be out there on the floor, and Business Intelligence to be available to them. And then the consumer products companies, this is more classic, their senior leadership team, who do travel a lot, want to have those key business drivers and metrics available to them at all times.”

Greater numbers of employees to have access to real-time analytics via mobile devices

Dresner said that one of the biggest shifts encountered in the 2011 study was the increase in the number of BI users who were set to become exclusively mobile consumers of reporting and analytics within the next 24 months.

“Only 3 percent [of survey respondents] said they’re not going to have any [users using Mobile BI exclusively],” said Dresner. “Seventy percent of respondents said [that] 25 percent [of their current BI users would be exclusively mobile users within 24 months]. 23 percent said that half of their Business Intelligence users would be exclusively mobile.

“In the future with Mobile Business Intelligence, there’ll never be cause not to know something. That’s the direction we’re going in; information will literally follow the end users.”

What are the most important features and functions of Mobile BI platforms as stipulated by end users?

According to the report, the most basic abilities remain the most important – the ability to view charts, monitor KPIs and receive alerts via mobile device.

“These haven’t really changed,” observed Dresner.

“The biggest change we saw was the emphasis on KPI monitoring, which we didn’t see back in June. KPI monitoring has become [much more] important than it was before.”

Dresner attributed this change to an increased desire to keep executives informed on key metrics and performance indicators.

Stay tuned

Look out for part two of this two-part blog series - Dresner: Mobile the new platform for Business Intelligence (Part Two) - available from Thursday 24 Feb.