the past - the history of business intelligence
TRANSCRIPT
The past of business intelligence.What it is today is not what it has always been.
The past.
CHAPTER 1
BI as it was.The ability to collect, process and act upon the information gathered was from the earliest days and still is the BI soul.
THE PAST
1800s.THE GENESIS
1800s.Using data to make data-driven decisions can be traced back to the 1800s
Florence Nightingale, an English social reformer and statistician, pioneered the use of applied statistics and created visual ways of displaying data. Image source: Wikipedia
THE PAST
1960-70s.EARLY TIMES
1960- 1970s.
THE PAST
Fast-forward to the 1960s and the first computer applications were developed for transaction processing.
Although the reports of processed data assisted decision makers, the information they offered was hardly conclusive.
THE PAST
Due to the demand from corporates and early work by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard, data-driven intelligence platforms began to evolve.
University of Georgia’s Ph.D., Hugh Watson asserts that it was the work of Michael Scott Morton (MIT) in 1967 that led to the development of management decision systems to assist managers in making fact based decisions.
These systems were developed across the 1960s and 1970s primarily by academics with management backgrounds.
Image source: MIT website
1960-1970s.
1980-90s.A LONG PROCESS
1980- 1990s.
THE PAST
By then, if a decision maker wanted a business intelligence tool, they would often go to an enterprise BI vendor.
A complicated project plan would often need to be created which may involve speaking with internal departments and deciding on what their needs are.
THE PAST
In addition, the Information Technology (IT) team would need to be trained on how to use the business intelligence tool and expensive consultants would often need to be hired.
It would often be 6-12 months before a BI solution would finally be introduced into an organization.
1980-1990s.
After the business intelligence solution was introduced, there were many difficulties.
For example, once the IT team or Project Manager put the BI tool in the hands of business users, most couldn’t use it. Very few could create their own reports and they had to go to the IT team who were highly trained and ask them the questions they need answers to. It was not unusual for it to take 5-7 days before the IT team produced the report.
By that time, the user has often forgotten the question they asked in the first place.
THE PAST
1980-1990s.
PROJECTMANAGER
BUSINESSUSER
IT GUY REPORT
5-7 DAYS
The new term.
THE PAST
“A broad category of applications, technologies, and processes for gathering, storing, accessing, and analyzing data to help business users make better decisions.”
The term ‘business intelligence’ or ‘BI’ was devised by industry analyst Howard Dresner in 1989.
Business intelligence can be defined as:
It has all changed.
THE PRESENT
Get a grip on your data.
With immediate access to the exact data you need, you make the best strategic, tactical, and operational decisions.
Phocas allows you to drill deep from high level dashboards right down into the underlying transactions. It’s not just turning data into pretty pictures, it’s about seeing the data that makes your business tick.
Stay tuned and don’t miss the next part of this series to learn more about the present and future of BI
Learn more.THE PRESENT
Don’t miss the next part of this series to learn more about the present of business intelligence
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