There will always be a need for business decision makers to access business data in order to understand what is going on in their organisations. The Business Intelligence (BI) tools available for this need have changed significantly within the last few years. This article looks at 3 issues that can be seen to be contributing towards the changing BI Landscape. First of all, there has been a shift of power from IT to the end business user. Secondly, there is a move from traditional BI to Business Discovery and lastly the changes in how businesses now actually operate and make decisions can be seen to be making an impact.

To start with, let’s look at the new business user. Business users are increasingly becoming more vocal and demanding. The way that we consume, explore and share information has been redefined by the way we search on the internet, the easy to use consumer apps we access, new mobile technologies and social networks. Users now expect business software applications to be as simple, intuitive and user friendly as the applications they use outside the office. Business users are now seeking out tools themselves with or without the help or consent of IT.

Next let’s look at Traditional BI. Originally BI was IT driven. Business users would request reports from IT and they would do the necessary work involved to extract, manipulate and present the required data. The Data requirements were pre-determined. IT could often take weeks or months to create the dashboards and reports required.
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