BI Portfolio & Standardization

In BI the term 'standardize' is often misused and too narrowly defined to mean ONE single tool or platform or report template. This is a false reality and one our user base will either outright reject or comply with frustration. As technologists, we too often want to become part of the story rather than just providing the tools to tell it. Standardization needs to not be narrowly defined as ONE single thing but a set of things (tools, conventions, templates, processess, etc) that can address each business use case.

Of course there is a fine line we straddle here from being streamlined to fragmentation. Most of us can speak to this in our every day lives as users of iPhone and Android devices. One'e greatest sell is providing a single consistent user experience. The other promotes customization and flexibility. A great debate, albeit out of scope for this post, but something we also face on our DW/BI projects. A standard consistent user experience can happily coexist with the flexibility to customize and adjust to changing business needs, though it certainly will require more thought, discussion, and caution.

This is facing us in my current project. We have purchased SAP Business Objects Edge platform and are building our user base and training offerings on the Webi Rich Client. There is this thought though that "Webi" is now our standard BI tool that everyone will use in all (ok most) situations. This is not reality. Webi does not fit every analytical use case nor should one try to make it do so.

We will aim to standardize at the Portfolio level not at the one Tool level around a robust set of options in:

• Reporting
• Ad hoc analysis
• Data visualization, dashboards, mashups
• MSFT Office integration

We'll be looking at SAPs offerings in each category against some additional players like QlikView, Tableau and Microsoft PowerPivot and PowerView.  It will raise the great Best-of-Breed vs Integrated Solution debate.

I'll update as we go.