Where is Your Focus?
With all the tremendous interest around BI, new vendors and tools are emerging almost every day. In general, you can approach your BI needs in two ways.
- You can try a top-down approach starting with the presentation layer, hoping that a cool data visualization tool and self-service BI will somehow solve your challenges. Lots of vendors out there would love to take you on that path.
- You can follow a bottom-up approach that starts with a solid data foundation and semantic layer that enables a single version of the truth and it is supported by most popular visualization tools.
I had the pleasure to teach a class this week for the HR department of one of the largest and most successful companies. They have an ambitious goal to establish a modern data analytics platform in order to gain insights into all aspects of their workforce. Their manager told that they have tried unsuccessfully the top-down approach and multiple vendor tools until they realized that the focus should be on the data first. And, I agree completely. There are no shortcuts.
On this note, join me for a full-day precon session “Deep Dive into the Microsoft BI Semantic Model (BISM)” at SQL Saturday Atlanta on May 2st to find out how the Microsoft BI helps you deliver a modern BI platform, as well as discussing the toolset strengths and challenges.
