BANGALORE, INDIA: If BI tools can’t stop people who still go by the gut, who is not able to see the thin line clearly? In an interview with Venkat Iyer, BIM Head, Capgemini on what is Business Information Management (BIM) is shaping up to be; we discover some of his interesting views and arguments on tools and tools men.

Business Intelligence has been burgeoning as a market in the recent past. With every new vendor eying this fertile space, there’s a new avatar of BI we see around. With BIM, is it the same wine in a new bottle again?

It is not something new. But yes, what we are doing is certainly different. BIM (Business Information Management) existed with us earlier also. But in the middle of last year, we decided to create some service lines which are global in nature, specially for domain-specific solutions.

In the BI space, it is not just about structured data. Unstructured data is also important. From a futuristic point of view, unless one brings different components, it can’t work. Just internal information won’t suffice, you need potential customer information, you need unstructured data as I said, you need information from different sources to make better and faster decisions etc.

All this can not come from traditional methods. This needs a holistic view and the ability to leverage it effectively.

Some surveys lately have given a new spin to BI. There was a Forrester survey pointing out how agility is an issue with BI apps. An Accenture survey highlighted how 40 per cent of major corporations still prefer decision-making based on guts. Would you agree that stuff like exception-reporting, intuitive elements, real-time insights etc are major challenge areas for BI?

I opine that tools are just enablers at the end of the day. Data collected, its accuracy and other attributes of data actually define what happens. You can not blame a tool if business is not leveraging information. Technology has progressed a lot but it all still boils down to implementation. Real decision-making has to come in the data part of organization and unless BI is implemented, it’s hard to comment this way or that way.

But doesn’t intuitive decision-making matter enough?

Either one on its own won’t have a good chance of success. If something is indeed your recipe for success and you have good data to back your decisions, then it’s good. But decisions based purely on intuition are not good or any better.

What about agile BI?

In today’s world, you can’t wait that long. Information has to be available real time and to the right people and at the right time. That will drive fact-based decision-making.

Would you agree that growing IT infrastructure complexity is making things harder?

Yes. What we clearly advocate is about traditional pillars of IT organization – people, process and technology. People constitute the center, driven by information foundation. Process and technology make a better organization.

Why BIM?

BIM is a set of services that support enterprises in managing their “information lifecycle”. By using analytic tools and a BIM program effectively, organizations can gain real business value through your information.
A good BIM strategy considers unstructured data too since it is almost 80 per cent of all data in an organization.