Business intelligence skips strategy: Gartner

Speaking to iTnews, the managing vice-president of Gartner's BI team, Ian Bertram, said that next week's BI summit in Sydney would focus on helping businesses address this discrepancy.

"Lots of people slap a tool in and say ‘we've done BI'," Bertram said.

"They've got all this technology. They understand the schematic diagram of how data flows but how many have actually got a BI strategy behind it?

"Things like governance, skills, and processes can't be fixed by throwing technology at them," he said.

Bertram said that many BI project failures aren't caused by the technology but by more basic issues such as lack of an executive sponsor in the business or establishing a BI competency centre with just technical users.

"Some organisations still don't have key executives in place," Bertram said.

"If your CEO doesn't value information as an asset how are you going to be able to justify getting additional funds for the system?"

Bertram acknowledged issues such as executive buy-in had been on the table for a number of years but also said the popularity of BI systems hadn't decreased in the last four years.

This has kept many of the same issues in the spotlight, he said.

In addition to focusing on these issues, the Summit will also include an awards evening on the first night.

Packaging giant Amcor is the main Australian contender in a field that also includes ICICI Bank and Singapore's Tetra Pak.

The Gartner BI Summit kicks off in Sydney on 24 February.