Dimensional Insight was one of the Premier sponsors at this year’s Gartner Data & Analytics summit in Frankfurt, Germany along with all the other major BI competitors and a couple of new market entrants.
In addition to the vendor trade stands, Gartner arranged many seminars discussing its views on future trends in the technology as well as some real customer experiences about how they are using some of the BI products that were on display.
Whistl from the UK told us how it is using Dimensional Insight’s Diver Platform to help it manage a high volume business that covers an estimated 25% of all postal items handled in the UK.
How Gartner Selects Vendors for Inclusion
Gartner also explained how BI vendors are chosen for inclusion in its Magic Quadrant and, contrary to my belief that it was based on functionality, I discovered that it’s primarily based on vendor turnover and geographical reach. I’m not sure how Gartner marries this requirement with privately owned companies like Dimensional insight who, unlike publically quoted companies, does not release turnover figures.
It may help to explain how Microsoft has jumped up the list with its “free” product Power BI and Salesforce’s newly arrived status after it purchased a BI company last year.
The Future and Automation
Another trend that was discussed at the summit was an interesting talk on how as the time taken by humans to do a job drops that it’s more likely to be replaced by an automated procedure or robot.
An example might be that as BI tools get faster and faster, it takes a person less clicks and time to see problems or opportunities in a report or dashboard. The inevitable next step is that the process of finding the problems or opportunities is handed over to a computer, which just delivers the finished product to a human who can immediately begin to work on the results.
DI Measure Factory
As part of this trend, Dimensional Insight showcased its new product called Measure Factory, which is intended to trap the analytical skills of human experts and allow them to be automated, or at the very least reproduced, by people with less experience.
The new concept is aimed at minimising the effects of staff turnover and reducing training/on-boarding time for new staff as they use the “measures” setup by their predecessors or more senior colleagues to fast-track their way to higher productivity.
Analysts shouldn’t fear that they will soon be out of work because all the signs are that the BI industry is expanding at almost 10% per annum, so they days of robotic consultants is still a bit away, and as we all know once you solve one problem there is always another one waiting to be done.
About John Spillane
John has been Technical Director of DBI since 2004 and has been working with the product since 1994. He was IT development manager in Dairygold Foods where he designed and implemented ERP systems for the food processing sector and integrated Diver across all business units. Since joining DBI, he has designed & implemented Diver applications across a wide variety of market sectors for a large number of organisations.
