IT Consolidates BI Tools As Use Expands

Computerworld - SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- As companies look to extend business intelligence capabilities to growing numbers of end users, IT operations are consolidating multiple BI tool sets and forging closer ties with business units.
Attendees at last week's Computerworld Business Intelligence Perspectives conference here said tool consolidation should make BI tools easier to use and reduce IT support requirements.
For example, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide is replacing six reporting and analysis tools and standardizing on Information Builders Inc.'s WebFocus software. An official at the hotel operator in Minnetonka, Minn., declined to identify the six products that are being replaced.
Carlson will use WebFocus for reporting and to deliver business scorecard applications, which monitor adherence to corporate goals, to each of its 870 hotels.
The company started the effort to whittle its list of BI tools in January. Since then, the hotelier has cut its count of report templates from 210 to 70, said Robert Richards, Carlson's director of application development.
Two months ago, Carlson stopped using one of the six reporting tools, and it plans to eliminate the rest during the next 18 months, he said.
Having multiple BI products made it difficult for users to find data, and supporting all of the tools left Carlson's development shop backlogged, Richards said.
"The key is making sure you don't do the development more than once," he noted. "We'll be able to display information to the business much faster because IT won't have to support multiple tools."
The new scorecards will allow the company to provide users with metrics they can use to adjust operations when necessary, Richards added.
Partners Preferred
Union Pacific Railroad Corp. in Omaha began an effort two months ago to consolidate its lineup of BI tools from Hyperion Solutions Corp., Information Builders, SAS Institute Inc., Siebel Systems Inc. and SPSS Inc., said Rich Dickeson, director of business analytics at the rail company.
"I am looking for companies that will play well together," Dickeson said. "The fewer things I have to support, the better. If it is going to be two or three, I want those two or three to have partnerships with each other."
Dickeson said he expects a bit of pushback from users, since some departments have five- or six-year investments in specific products.
Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said BI has reached a tipping point as companies move to expand access to decision-support data beyond power users to a new and much larger realm of users, such as business executives and frontline managers.