#IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story

Jason Davis -

Sometimes love isn't fair

A teenager, just emerging from an awkward growing phase drives a tendency to spew non sensical permutations of varying cringe worthy affections toward their love target.  The data points behind the intent are solid.  Let’s go Boolean now:

Intent of good = 1 ;

attracted to target = 1;

ability to provide for target = 1;

time available  = 1;

prior or current committed relationship = 0.

So here we are with all the solid intentions in the world and the variables all align to an optimal outcome.  Except one thing:

love target hates your face = 1;

Exit(0)

Assuming that this is a hierarchical value chain with face hating as the parent, we are at an impasse.

The above is not intended as an affront to teenagers spitting game at their prospective boo.  It is though, an analogy to the fantastic time and effort spent in integrating, transforming and presenting Business Intelligence to the enterprise with all of the proper best practices and technology.  Only to have the user subtly tell us that the information is “great but… I don’t know what I am looking at and I was looking for it to be in 3D” (AKA, I hate your face).  There have been some great books out there about visualization and we have read a LOT of them.  Best practices aside, visualization is about taste.  The love target above may well have a completely different opinion of facial beauty than Mr. or Ms. hottie-mc-toddy that sits next to you in your advanced Kafka course (seriously, it might happen).  Love at Kafka training happens, I swear it does, really and when it does, it involves unicorns and ends of rainbows.

So now I have to figure out my end user’s tastes in visualization?

Yep, accept and move on.  

You wouldn’t saddle up with a love interest if you hated their face.  Why would an end user sign up for something they don’t want to use.  Of course, you being the BI practitioner that you are know your BI stack up and down and are well aware of all of the available visualization options.  These end users don’t know what they are talking about…right?

—they don’t have to.  

Lots of the big BI players have been losing ground in the industry of viz because new competitors are building attractive viz capabilities.  The new guys in BI are going to the end users with something the end users want…pretty and flexible visualizations.  Both the viz provider and end user need not worry themselves with data integrity, governance, or how they got the data to start.

Welcome to Enterprise BI 2.0

What if I could use my existing enterprise platform and allow users to integrate more data sources, mash it up and then have an almost story telling approach to BI?  You can and the next releases from the big BI vendors are all focused on that.  Clearly at Rittman Mead we have an affinity for OBIEE and with 12c, the dream of viz has become a an out of the box reality.  Data visualization is core to new functionality with more on the way.  So my advice is upgrade to 12c ASAP to get your new face on.

Rittman Mead has less invasive facelift versus replace options with viz for 12c and 11g.  Visual Plug in Pack (VPP) extends the native charting in OBI into dynamic attractive hollywood level viz.  We also have an User Engagement offering  that comes with that visual facelift all the girls at the salon are talking about.  Shoot me an email if you are interested in our streamlined OBI 12c upgrade service or VPP. Jason.davis@rittmanmead.com