Successful Business Intelligence, Second Edition: Unlock the Value of Bi & Big Data

Revised to cover new advances in business intelligence―big data, cloud, mobile, and more―this fully updated bestseller reveals the latest techniques to exploit BI for the highest ROI.

“Cindi has created, with her typical attention to details that matter, a contemporary forward-looking guide that organizations could use to evaluate existing or create a foundation for evolving business intelligence / analytics programs. The book touches on strategy, value, people, process, and technology, all of which must be considered for program success. Among other topics, the data, data warehousing, and ROI comments were spot on. The ‘technobabble’ chapter was brilliant!” ―Bill Frank, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Program Manager, Johnson & Johnson

“If you want to be an analytical competitor, you’ve got to go well beyond business intelligence technology. Cindi Howson has wrapped up the needed advice on technology, organization, strategy, and even culture in a neat package. It’s required reading for quantitatively oriented strategists and the technologists who support them.” ―Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor, Babson College and co-author, Competing on Analytics

“Cindi has created an exceptional, authoritative description of the end-to-end business intelligence ecosystem. This is a great read for those who are just trying to better understand the business intelligence space, as well as for the seasoned BI practitioner.” ―Sully McConnell, Vice President, Business Intelligence and Information Management, Time Warner Cable

“Cindi’s book succinctly yet completely lays out what it takes to deliver BI successfully. IT and business leaders will benefit from Cindi’s deep BI experience, which she shares through helpful, real-world definitions, frameworks, examples, and stories. This is a must-read for companies engaged in – or considering – BI.” ―Barbara Wixom, PhD, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research

“With customer stories, surveys, and hot topics such as BI-business partnership and BICC, this is a must-have updated BI book for your library. I most liked Chapter 7 and the ideas of business-IT partnership, which rarely gets discussed in books these days, but a real-life everyday issue we all face. The first edition in 2007 introduced me to concepts such as Agile BI and master data management. With the updates in technology of big data and cloud, and with new case studies, I highly recommend this book.” ―Tamara Powlas, Senior Business Analyst, Fairfax Water

“Given the trend to expand the business analytics user base, organizations are faced with a number of challenges that affect the success rate of these projects. This insightful book provides practical advice on improving that success rate.” ―Dan Vesset, Vice President, Business Analytics Solution Research, IDC

Expanded to cover the latest advances in business intelligence such as big data, cloud, mobile, visual data discovery, and in-memory computing, this fully updated bestseller by BI guru Cindi Howson provides cutting-edge techniques to exploit BI for maximum value. Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data, Second Edition describes best practices for an effective BI strategy. Find out how to:

• Garner executive support to foster an analytic culture
• Align the BI strategy with business goals
• Develop an analytic ecosystem to exploit data warehousing, analytic appliances, and Hadoop for the right BI workload
• Continuously improve the quality, breadth, and timeliness of data
• Find the relevance of BI for everyone in the company
• Use agile development processes to deliver BI capabilities and improvements at the pace of business change
• Select the right BI tools to meet user and business needs
• Measure success in multiple ways
• Embrace innovation, promote successes and applications, and invest in training
• Monitor your evolution and maturity across various factors for impact

Exclusive industry survey data and real-world case studies from Medtronic, Macy’s, 1-800 CONTACTS, The Dow Chemical Company, Netflix, Constant Contact, and other companies show successful BI initiatives in action.

From Moneyball to Nate Silver, BI and big data have permeated our cultural, political, and economic landscape. This timely, up-to-date guide reveals how to plan and deploy an agile, state-of-the-art BI solution that links insight to action and delivers a sustained competitive advantage.

Cindi Howson is the founder of BIScorecard, a website for in-depth BI product reviews, and has 20 years of BI and management reporting experience. She writes and blogs for Information Week, and is an instructor for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). Howson was a manager at Deloitte & Touche and a BI standards leader for a Fortune 500 company. She has an MBA from Rice University. Howson is the author of SAP Business Objects BI 4.0: The Complete Reference.