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So, can't BI tools be as easy to use as Excel?
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5 Answers
Excel is easy to use in certain ways, but quite difficult in others. For example, I've seen entire departmental applications developed in Excel without data services or even indirection, so some poor slob spends two weeks every month updating the spreadsheets for distribution.
For individual users, since many aren't computer scientists, they name things in crazy ways, lose things, end up redoing something they only stumble on later.
Today's version of Excel is a complete ecosystem, but so bloated with features, that it requires perhaps an even steeper learning curve than BI to get to the more interesting capabilities.
But there are approximately 450 million copies of Excel out there, and at least a third of them were paid for (LOL), so it has the advantage of presence and familiarity.
So in many respects, BI is far easier to use than Excel.
But BI is too limited to be useful for most people as it only informs people, at best. It doesn't allow people to pose questions or scenarios that resemble their real-life problems, just a stilted request capability that is circumscribed by data and database thinking. People think in metaphor, scenario and what-if. BI fails at this completely. I think people would be happy to go back to command-line software over current BI if it could provide these capabilities. It once did: Express, Comshare, EPS, IFPS, etc.
-Neil Raden
I believe that most BI vendors strive to provide features and functionality that makes their products easy to use for the average business information consumer. When you reflect upon the differences between BI tools and spreadsheet software, you have to consider the following:
- Starting point: Spreadsheets allows users to start with a blank page, customize and then enter or import data. With BI tools, you need to access a data source to start and then manipulate.
- Modeling data: Spreadsheets allows users to model data in any manner that they want. BI applications provide limited modeling functionality, which is often difficult to use.
- Design: Spreadsheets were designed for free forming analysis. BI applications were designed to access structured data sets for reporting and analysis.
As spreadsheet software vendors extend the data integration and access capabilities, we will see greater use of this technology as a replacement for traditional BI applications.
Neil is terribly right
I've been writing something about here
http://straysoft.posterous.com/then-what-is-newbi
and here
http://straysoft.posterous.com/im-not-original
I think BI tools can definitely be easier to use than Excel, in some cases. For example, BI tools often have a pivot table which is a more visual way of creating queries than entering formulas into an Excel spreadsheet, and can therefore be easier to manage for a lot of people. Not only this, but BI apps are often more flexible in terms of analysis than Excel.
The ideal is a BI tool that works on top of Excel, so you can keep your original data in Excel but be able to analyze it better using a more advanced/easier to use app.
The new generation of Self-Serve BI tools is so intuitive to the user that little or no training is necessary. This is a great feature since, according to Gartner, BI users do not want to read manuals. They demand intuitive BI interfaces, in line with the internet experience they are accustomed to, like Google searches or iPhone apps. http://blog.strat-wise.com/2011/08/04/what-is-bi-30.aspx
Regards, Bill
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