BI Experts' Perspective

A question on what topics related to business intelligence (BI) will BI director Susan Stephenson discuss during a local college's fall management information system banquet, is answered. Just retired as director of big data marketing for Teradata, Dave Schrader advises that Stephenson should begin by explaining the differences between traditional BI and the hot new areas. Traditional BI is about the use of traditional data by back-office business analysts -- with the help of IT -- to track product sales, inventory, costs, customers, promotions, and campaigns. Ron Swift, managing partner at International Management Consulting, mentions that what might be most important is to keep the students' attention through actual examples from her career or others' experiences from her career or others' experiences to enlighten and also entertain the audience. Coy Yonce, product owner for software solutions from EVtechnologies, believes that Stephenson needs to ensure that she sets proper expectations about why organizations implement BI and how they go about creating successful deployments of a BI suite.