For years, business intelligence solutions have given companies the power to develop more successful strategies and make better, more informed decisions. By tapping into the data that is locked away in enterprise systems, BI tools give companies greater insight into how their businesses run, and the factors that affect success.
But, do BI systems that access only internal data present the whole picture? Or does additional intelligence exist in other sources beyond corporate walls?
The emergence of Web 2.0 is transforming the face of business intelligence, offering new and more innovative ways for companies to leverage information to boost overall business performance. The ability to take data from back-end business applications, and combine it with unstructured information from sites across the Web, gives new meaning to the word insight.
The concept of combining structured and unstructured data is nothing new. Some of the more advanced BI tools on the market provide the ability to report on information contained in emails or documents, while others can analyze the content of audio files. But, many companies are beginning to realize that the world of Web 2.0 has generated a variety of new information resources, such as blogs, RSS feeds, and wiki pages.
For example, a company is conducting in-depth competitive analysis, to identify critical marketplace trends that may impact future sales. It can use its existing BI solution to pull data about competitive deals from its customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) systems, such as those that were won or lost when another vendor was involved. It may also be able to combine that internal information with the content of analyst reports, in-house research, and other documents.
But Web 2.0 takes it even further, providing a wealth of additional information that can shed new light on the perceptions that potential buyers have about the company, and its competition, and their likelihood to buy from one over the other. The online communities and social networking sites that encompass Web 2.0 give companies unhindered insight into what their target audience really thinks, needs, and wants, and as a result, can make traditional business intelligence activities such as competitive research, sales forecasting, and marketplace trend analysis more accurate and more valuable.
Or, perhaps a company wants to better assess customer satisfaction levels. Survey data can be pulled from help desk and CRM systems to better understand if clients are satisfied with the products or services they purchased. But, by combining that data with product reviews, ratings, and other customer-generated content from across the social networking spectrum, organizations can gain the most complete and accurate picture possible.
In fact, the additional context that this approach can add to standard BI is so important, that Aberdeen Research claims that more than half of best-in-class corporations are investigating ways to pull data from Web 2.0 sources, and combine it with other information assets – while almost one-third already to so.
The need is clear, but the technology is just now catching up. While document and content management solution providers have already begun introducing related capabilities, the BI tool vendors are frantically trying to rush to market with applications that can locate and pull data from Web 2.0-based sources. What the future holds remains to be seen.