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Actionable Intelligence for the Agile Enterprise December 2010 Andrew Borg, David White
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Executive Summary
BI usage among organizations with mobile BI has doubled compared to those companies that have not mobilized their BI. By extending the reach and usage of their existing BI infrastructure to mobile devices, organizations respond more rapidly to market changes and customer needs. This accelerates time-to-information for critical business decisions, while improving customer satisfaction and retention.
Research Benchmark Aberdeens Research Benchmarks provide an in-depth and comprehensive look into process, procedure, methodologies, and technologies with best practice identification and actionable recommendations
Best-in-Class Performance
Aberdeen used the following two key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies: Employees able to access the information required for decisionmaking via mobile BI 87% of the time 92% of their customers report being extremely or very satisfied
Required Actions
In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must: Make data security a corporate mandate. Organizations often lack basic security mechanisms for mobile devices, such as password authentication and "lock and wipe." Providing these and other security mechanisms, such as data encryption, can help to engage business managers who may otherwise have concerns around the confidentially of data. Wake up to alerts. Automated alerts are an excellent way to ensure the prompt attention of decision makers when some type of corrective action is required. Go mobile. Consider making mobile devices the primary platform for BI deployments. Top performing organizations rely on secure access to up-to-date management information, anywhere, anytime.
2010 Aberdeen Group. This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for Telephone: 617 854 5200 objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897 and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................2 Best-in-Class Performance .....................................................................................2 Competitive Maturity Assessment .......................................................................2 Required Actions......................................................................................................2 Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class ....................................................5 Business Context......................................................................................................5 Increasing BI Adoption in the Organization.......................................................6 The Maturity Class Framework ............................................................................7 The Best-in-Class PACE Model.............................................................................9 Best-in-Class Strategies........................................................................................ 10 Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success ................................ 12 Competitive Assessment ..................................................................................... 13 Capabilities and Enablers ..................................................................................... 14 Chapter Three: Required Actions......................................................................... 24 Laggard Steps to Success ..................................................................................... 24 Industry Average Steps to Success.................................................................... 25 Best-in-Class Steps to Success ........................................................................... 25 Appendix A: Research Methodology.................................................................... 27 Appendix B: Related Aberdeen Research ........................................................... 29
Figures
Figure 1: Beyond Email in Mobile Applications.......................................................5 Figure 2: Mobility Increases BI Usage .......................................................................6 Figure 3: Pressures Driving Mobile BI Adoption....................................................7 Figure 4: Impact of Mobile BI on Executive Performance....................................8 Figure 5: The Customer Wins from Improved Information Access .................9 Figure 6: Top Best-in-Class Strategies................................................................... 10 Figure 7: Speeding Information Access.................................................................. 11 Figure 8: Key Mobile BI Processes ......................................................................... 15 Figure 9: Best-in-Class Commit Management and Resources ......................... 17 Figure 10: Key Knowledge Management Capabilities ........................................ 18 Figure 11: Mobile BI Data Management Technologies....................................... 20 Figure 12: Best-in-Class Technology Capabilities ............................................... 21 Figure 13: Ability to Measure Mobile BI and Device Performance................. 22 Figure 14: Browser-based Versus Native App..................................................... 23
Tables
Table 1: Top-Performing Organizations Earn Best-in-Class Status.....................8 Table 2: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework........................................................9 Table 3: The Competitive Framework.................................................................. 13
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Table 4: The PACE Framework Key...................................................................... 28 Table 5: The Competitive Framework Key.......................................................... 28 Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework ........................................................................................................................................ 28
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By extending the reach and usage of their existing BI infrastructure to mobile devices through the use of mobile visualization tools such as dashboards, charts and graphs, organizations can more agilely respond to
2010 Aberdeen Group. www.aberdeen.com Telephone: 617 854 5200 Fax: 617 723 7897
market changes and customer needs. This accelerates time-to-information and improves customer satisfaction and retention.
Definition of Terms Mobile Business Intelligence (Mobile BI): The capabilities and technologies that allow access to reports and charts while away from the desk, out of the office or in the field Devices used to access Mobile BI include smartphones, tablets, laptops and netbooks
Business intelligence has its historical roots in the provision of information to the most senior management in order to assist strategic decision making in the executive suite. In recent years however, the use of BI to inform operational, day-to-day decision making by line-level employees has grown rapidly. Aberdeen's August 2010 report, Operational Intelligence: Boosting Performance with "Right-Time" Insight, found that over 340 employees (on average) in each organization were using operational BI to help them with daily tactical decisions. For operational BI to be truly useful in guiding daily decisions, information needs to be updated frequently, and disseminated to decision makers in a timely fashion. Aberdeen's December 2009 benchmark report Data Management for BI found that 55% of Best-in-Class companies had operational data updated in real-time, or near real-time (within a few minutes of changes occurring).
We are able to easily develop and distribute mobile reports that ensure our executives and sales force are always connected to the pulse of our business. ~ Manoj Prashad. Vice President of Enterprise Architecture, Global Applications and Testing Life Technologies, Inc.
Broadening BI Access
The limited deployment of BI to executive decision makers, the so-called "C-suite," was initially necessitated by the relatively high cost of software customization that entailed deep integration with legacy enterprise application servers such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Sales Force Automation (SFA), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM); as well as by traditional corporate culture that equated knowledge with (executive) power.
Times have changed, and the broad dissemination of knowledge throughout the organization has emerged as a hallmark of top performing organizations. The May 2009 study Executive Dashboards: The Key to Unlocking Double Digit Profit Growth revealed that three-quarters of the Best-in-Class deployed dashboards to managers, and more than half put BI in the hands of customer-facing staff - almost twice the rate of all other companies.
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This belief is logical in the macroeconomic context described above; the rise of enterprise mobility, and the drive to differentiate in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. The globalization context also correlates with the organization's need to increase mobile employees' productivity. Just under a third of respondents described the delays in delivering critical information to key decision makers as a driver, highlighting the theme of "time-toinformation" that emerges as a key competitive differentiator in this study.
"We started with the sales force, providing them with analytics on CRM related data. So when sales people were going to visit their customers they would be able to download critical account information and history, as well as some key performance indicators such as customer uptime, issues and resolution metrics, and customer reliability. ~ Vice President, Product Strategy, Enterprise Software Provider, USA
Being able to find the information required to make critical business decisions (meeting the "time-to-information" requirement) is a hallmark of the Best-in-Class BI initiatives, mobile or not. A core finding of this study is that mobile BI is an accelerator of time-to-information, with 87% of Best-inClass organizations able to find the necessary information in the time required, 40% greater than Industry Average and six-times that of Laggards. Overall, 72% of survey respondents have provided executive management with mobile BI. Figure 4, shows the impact on the performance of executives that use mobile BI. Figure 4: Impact of Mobile BI on Executive Performance
% of personal KPIs achieved % of planned revenue goal achieved Change in revenue from prior fiscal year 0% 21% 12% 6% 10% 20% 30% 40% Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggard 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 84% 72% 69% 81% 74% 73%
As shown in Figure 5, Best-in-Class organizations' end-user customers directly benefit from the increased responsiveness enabled by their BI practices, with the top performers consistent in their ability to improve and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
2010 Aberdeen Group. www.aberdeen.com Telephone: 617 854 5200 Fax: 617 723 7897
Very or extremely satisfied customers Change in customer sat over prior 12 months -5% Change in customer sat over the year prior to that -10% 0%
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10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Percentage of Respondents, n=143
Actions
Provide timely information on critical decisionmaking data to frontline employees
Capabilities
Managers using mobile BI are fully involved in implementation Management and security policies exist for all mobile devices Executive-level support for mobile BI Mobile BI is part of integrated BI strategy Customer 360 degree view exists Drill-down in mobile devices Role-specific BI reports and/or dashboards Ability to measure information access times on mobile devices
Enablers
Mobile BI delivered via native application Mobile BI delivered via browser Data integration capability Custom mobile BI solution developed in-house Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) BI Data cleansing Mobile Device Management (MDM) software Systems integrator or service provider used to build mobile BI applications Data warehouse
Source: Aberdeen Group, December 2010
Best-in-Class Strategies
In response to the business drivers described above, 44% of the Best-inClass agree that the overriding strategy to increase the effectiveness of their mobile BI deployment is to propagate its use beyond the executive suite, by providing timely information to front-line employees (Figure 6). Figure 6: Top Best-in-Class Strategies
Provide timely information to frontline employees Provide senior management with mobile dashboard showing KPIs Create a single centralized view of all critical decisionmaking data 0% 10% 20% 30%
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"Were starting to see that mobile is becoming more business-as-usual. So, when we build a BI dashboard we need to consider the mobile device as a platform for viewing right from the start." ~ Vice President, Product Strategy, Enterprise Software Provider, USA
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The broader dissemination of BI insights through the provision of mobile access is a key strategy of the Best-in-Class. They are: Increasingly deploying mobile BI to front-line employees, such as field sales representatives, line of business managers, and field service employees Achieving faster "time-to-information" and shorter "time-todecision" for executives and managers that have mobile BI access
Forty-one percent (41%) of Best-in-Class organizations already provide senior staff with a mobile dashboard showing the status of the organization's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), representations of the general health of the business. Thirty-seven percent (37%) have determined that in order to maximize the impact of their mobile BI investment, they need to consolidate their BI assets under one centralized view of decision-critical information, often called "one view of the truth." As Figure 4 and Figure 5 show, mobile BI can have a powerful impact on both management and customer performance. Best-in-Class companies are looking to build on these early gains by propagating mobile BI throughout the organization.
Aberdeen Insights Accelerating Time-to-Decision The agile enterprise is able to respond rapidly to, and best capitalize on, changes in market conditions and the general business landscape. Best-inClass organizations approach this ideal by diminishing their time-todecision, defined as the elapsed time between the appearance of a business challenge or problem requiring a decision, and its resolution. Best-in-Class organizations in this study have achieved a time-to-decision of 3.8 hours, 70% faster than the Industry Average, and over 5-times faster than Laggards (Figure 7). Figure 7: Speeding Information Access
100% 90% 80% Percentage, n=434 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 14% 20% 10% 0%
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Frequency of finding Portion of day you needed information carry mobile BI device Industry Average Laggard
Best-in-Class
The fact that they are much more likely to find the information needed to make those key decisions (87% of the time versus 55% and 14%) and are more likely to carry their mobile BI device with them during the working day are both key contributing factors. In the next chapter, we will see what the top performers are doing to achieve these gains.
Fast Facts 75% of the Best-in-Class can drill-down to detailed information from summary reports in Mobile BI This is more than 2-times the Industry Average and more than 3-times the Laggards.
"Weve found that staff doesn't want a 360-degree customer view. What they actually want is more like a 36-degree customer view, with the ability to get other slices of information on demand. ~ Chuck Schaeffer, Chairman, Aplicor
Case Study Aplicor Security is also an important consideration as data on mobile devices is inherently more vulnerable. Schaeffer continues, Mobile devices will get lost - left at airports, left in restaurants, and so on its inevitable. Weve integrated a third party product so that if a device is unaccounted for we can remotely wipe the data from it. Overall, the mobile BI solution has proved invaluable for staff in the field. Its been extremely useful to be able to access up-to-date information on a customer or prospect immediately before meeting with them. This is especially true when meeting several different clients in a day. As Schaeffer concludes, Because we are a very virtual and de-centralized organization, mobile business intelligence just makes a lot of business sense for us.
Competitive Assessment
Aberdeen Group analyzed the aggregated metrics of surveyed companies to determine whether their performance ranked as Best-in-Class, Industry Average, or Laggard. In addition to having common performance levels, each class also shared characteristics in five key categories: (1) process (the approaches they take to execute daily operations); (2) organization (corporate focus and collaboration among stakeholders); (3) knowledge management (contextualizing data and exposing it to key stakeholders); (4) technology (the selection of the appropriate tools and the effective deployment of those tools); and (5) performance management (the ability of the organization to measure its results to improve its business). These characteristics (identified in Table 3) serve as a guideline for best practices, and correlate directly with Best-in-Class performance across the key metrics. Table 3: The Competitive Framework Best-in-Class Average Laggards
Managers using mobile BI are fully involved in implementation 56% 43% 34% Device management and security policies exist for all mobile devices 64% 50% 68% 63% 2010 Aberdeen Group. www.aberdeen.com 35% 25% 58% 40% 32% 22% 44% 30% Telephone: 617 854 5200 Fax: 617 723 7897 Standard project plan in place for mobile BI Executive level champion for mobile initiatives
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Role specific BI dashboards and reports exist Mobile BI is part of an integrated BI strategy 65% 42% 46% 40% 360 degree view of the customer is available Information access times on mobile devices are measured
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Mobile BI usage is monitored 33% Users can drill-down to detailed information from summary reports 75% 37% 24% Reports and charts can be written once and deployed on any mobile platform 62% 32% 16% BI on mobile devices can be used when disconnected from the network 64% 29% 11%
Technology
Process
The strong commitment to mobile BI exhibited by Best-in-Class organizations is apparent in several of the processes that they have in place to deploy and support mobile BI effectively (Figure 8).
56% 43% 34% Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggards 50% 25% 22%
"It's very important for our sales people to have intelligence out in the field and to be as up-to-date as possible. Sales reps need to see close to real-time inventory levels so that when the customer places the order they can see what can ship immediately and what needs to be built. ~ Dan Sise, Director of Business Development, Laser Technologies
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By definition, mobile BI disseminates highly sensitive and confidential information regarding the organization's business performance to mobile devices, which are often vulnerable to loss or theft. As a consequence, a mobile BI deployment shouldn't be considered enterprise-ready unless security of the data on the device, data in transmission, and data on stored media is assured. Best-in-Class organizations are almost twice as likely as all other companies to have policies in place for management and security of the device, a necessary first step in securing the mobile infrastructure. Best-in-Class organizations are also more likely than other organizations to ensure that the managers who are the ultimate users of the mobile BI initiative are closely involved in all aspects of the project. This is essential for any BI application - not just mobile - to be effective and widely adopted. It is an essential step in ensuring that end-users' BI needs are effectively addressed and their business requirements fully met. Business managers should be involved in formulating requirements and ultimately sign-off on completion of the project during the Quality Assurance (QA) process. In addition, prior Aberdeen research (Operational Dashboards Drive Profits and Customer Retention) has highlighted the value of an iterative approach where developers work closely with business users throughout the development process. Too often, business intelligence projects fail when decision makers (who are the ultimate users of the BI solution) are not intimately involved from start to finish. Without this close involvement, the project can miss the target in many ways. For example: the project may deliver information that is simply not useful for managers; only deliver partial information; not update information in the timeframe needed by the business; or provide information in a format that is less than optimal - such as a tabular report
2010 Aberdeen Group. www.aberdeen.com Telephone: 617 854 5200 Fax: 617 723 7897
instead of a visual dashboard. BI projects that suffer from these shortcomings frequently end up being little-used by business managers and as a consequence ultimately waste development resources without providing measurable benefits to the business. Best-in-Class companies are also more than twice as likely to have a standard project plan in place for the delivery of mobile BI deployments compared to All Other organizations. Developing a standard approach is an efficient way to ensure consistent deployment and ensure that all necessary steps for a successful implementation are undertaken. It is a necessary step to move mobile BI out of the experimental stage and into large scale deployments. The fact that half of Best-in-Class companies have already adopted this type of approach is another indication that these top performers have moved beyond the pilot phase and are moving into more widespread business adoption. Finally, almost half of the Best-in-Class (46%) have a process in place to automatically push BI reports to mobile devices on a pre-determined schedule. After initial configuration, this capability can serve basic management information to business management without additional workload being placed on IT staff. This is ideal for organizations that need to generate routine reports on a recurring basis and distribute them to users on the move. Examples would include daily customer project updates, manufacturing performance or inventory levels. The alternative to the automated distribution of routine information is to manually refresh each report and distribute it - a process which inevitably requires some intervention by the IT organization. Only 23% of all other enterprises have this capability.
Organization
If there was one word to describe the organizational capabilities that Bestin-Class enterprises demonstrate, that word would be commitment. Management at all levels and in all key functions in Best-in-Class companies are more likely to have made mobile business intelligence a priority within their company (Figure 9). As described in Chapter One, the most common pressure across all survey respondents for adopting mobile BI is the simple belief that it can bring a competitive advantage. However, Best-in-Class firms back that belief with management commitment. Companies can dabble with new technologies such as mobile business intelligence with the consent of just one or two managers and minimal or no support from the IT organization. However, to deploy mobile BI in a way that can make a significant impact across the organization requires a greater alignment of management and a more dedicated allocation of resources.
"Id like to mobilize from the shop floor supervisor all the way up to the CEO. We currently have a manufacturing execution system that lets us know if some plant is down, what the current manufacturing output is and so on. If a plant goes down or something goes wrong, the maintenance guy, the production guy, the plant manager all need to know that as soon as possible." ~ Bob Carnes, IT Architect,| Louisiana-Pacific Corporation
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To some extent, mobile BI is possible without the explicit involvement of the IT organization. For example, BI provided via a browser to a laptop or netbook in the field is no different from browser-based BI accessed from a desktop PC. In fact, in this scenario the IT organization may not even know that mobile BI is occurring. However, mobile BI on a next-generation mobile platform, such as a smartphone or a tablet, really requires the commitment of IT resources. This is necessary to understand how the new technology works, what BI presentation and formats can be supported, which existing reports and charts can be used without change, and what pitfalls need to be avoided. Fifty-two percent (52%) of Best-in-Class enterprises dedicate IT staff to mobile BI initiatives, compared to just 28% of Laggards. As projects move beyond the testing-the-water stage, executive support is often needed to sanction additional product and services investments that are required. In terms of tangible expense, almost one third of Best-in-Class organizations (32%) invest in additional servers or licenses for their mobile implementations. Soft or hidden costs are also incurred as the time of key staff may be diverted from other potential projects to implement mobile BI. Best-in-Class organizations are more willing to dedicate IT staff to mobile BI projects than all other companies. As noted in the Process section above, business managers that are ultimately going to be the users of mobile BI projects also need to commit time to the initiative in order to ensure that the project delivered is fit for purpose and will provide value to the business.
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Knowledge Management
Many of the knowledge management capabilities exhibited by Best-in-Class organizations provide a testament to the powerful back-end business intelligence capabilities that have already been put in place. For example, the Best-in-Class are over twice as likely as other survey respondents to have a 360 view of the customer available to BI users (Figure 10). Figure 10: Key Knowledge Management Capabilities
65% 46% 26% Best-in-Class Industry Average Laggards 42% 21% 18%
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Recall that the strongest driver across all survey respondents for the adoption of mobile BI is the inherent belief that it will provide a significant advantage, relative to their competitors. Best-in-Class organizations are focused more strongly on achieving that competitive advantage by empowering their front-line employees. In fact, Best-in-Class organizations are 30% more likely than all other organizations to have this focus. For front-line workers - sales representatives, consultants, field service and customer support staff - intimate knowledge of the customer is critical to business success. Empowering front-line workers with a comprehensive knowledge of their customers drives customer satisfaction and ultimately customer retention. Best-in-Class enterprises enjoy a customer retention rate of 89%, 11 percentage points higher than all other organizations. CRM and ERP applications help to feed and nurture this consolidated view of the customer. Best-in-Class companies are almost twice as likely as Laggards to have a CRM implementation to draw on (48% vs. 26%), and almost four times more likely to have an ERP solution deployed (54% vs. 14%).
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Top-performing users of mobile BI also leverage role-specific reports and charts extensively. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Best-in-Class firms can provide such tightly focused views of management information, compared to 41% of the Industry Average and 31% of Laggards. Role-centric business intelligence helps to ensure that the key roles within the organization receive precisely the information they need to execute their jobs efficiently, no more and no less. For this to be achieved, the tasks involved in each role need to be clearly defined and well understood by the team responsible for implementing the BI initiative. With this deep understanding, the right management information can be provided in the right way with the appropriate update frequency. As already noted in the Process section of this chapter, Best-in-Class organizations are more likely than other cmoapnies to ensure that business managers are involved in BI projects from inception through to delivery. This level of involvement helps to make role-based BI a practical reality. Many of the practices described in this report for the effective delivery of mobile BI apply equally well to any type of BI (or even IT) project. As mobile BI moves into wider adoption, it's reasonable to expect that the distinction between mobile BI and BI delivered to the desktop will dissolve. Best-in-Class organizations have already started to make this transition, with 65% of this maturity class incorporating mobile BI projects into an integrated corporation BI strategy. By contrast, only 46% of the Industry Average and 26% of Laggards have made the transition to bring mobile BI into the mainstream.
Technology
In addition to the presentation and delivery technologies used (described in the "Aberdeen Insights - Technology" box), several other technologies were used more extensively by Best-in-Class organizations (Figure 11). Companies making the best use of mobile BI are more likely than others to make extensive use of robust data management technologies. This includes data warehousing, data integration and data cleansing tools. The use of a data warehouse is one way that a 360 of the customer can be obtained, for example. Providing a central, subject-focused repository for reporting and analytics, a data warehouse often draws data from multiple source systems to create that unified view. Data integration software and data cleansing tools are technologies that are frequently used to construct the data warehouse. Data integration allows data streams from different source data systems to be manipulated and combined into a single coherent set of data to populate a data warehouse. Data cleansing tools can provide very necessary help in that integration process.
Often, data drawn from different systems is difficult to integrate because it has not been recorded consistently in transactional systems. For example, Joseph Doe might be recorded as the CIO at Acme Corp. in a sales order processing system. Simultaneously, the customer support call logs might record that someone called Joe Doe from Acme Co. has raised a trouble ticket. Is this the same person? Probably - but data cleansing is required if those two disparate records are to be brought together in a data warehouse in a meaningful way. Forty-eight percent (48%) of Best-in-Class organizations have data cleansing tools at their disposal. This more comprehensive use of the key supporting technologies reinforces the viewpoint that Best-in-Class organizations are more mature in their use of BI in general, not only in their approach to mobile BI. But, in addition to these enabling technologies, Best-in-Class companies also exhibit a distinct set of technology capabilities that distinguish their mobile BI initiatives (Figure 12). Two distinct capabilities, real-time or near real-time data feeds and the offline usage of mobile BI, contribute to the ability of end-users to access useful data. The use of close to real-time data feeds to mobile devices means that managers can always be assured that they are making decisions based on the most current data. If managers lack trust in the data, or doubt its relevance because it may be stale, the success of mobile BI deployments will be hampered. Similarly, the ability to access business intelligence on a mobile device when it is not connected to a network helps to ensure managers can always find the required information at all times.
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Eighty-four percent (84%) of Best-in-Class organizations realize that securing data on mobile devices is necessary, but not sufficient. Data must also be secured while in transmission (over the air) to be comprehensively secure. This capability among the top performers is 1.8-times the Industry Average and over 5-times Laggards. Finally, Best-in-Class firms are over twice as likely as all other organizations to use a BI development tool that allows reports and charts to be developed once and deployed to multiple platforms unchanged. This is important to help enterprises support and migrate to new BI platforms and form factors - such as smartphones and tablets. A tool that allows a report to be created once and used throughout the organization on any device or platform can clearly increase the leverage of scarce IT developers and business analyst staff. The alternative is to waste time supporting multiple versions of reports, or just not develop so many reports at all.
Performance Management
Given the superior end-customer satisfaction achieved by Best-in-Class organizations as described in Chapter One, it is no surprise that they also excel when it comes time to measuring that level of satisfaction (Figure 13).
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Following the maxim that measured performance becomes improved performance over time, they are more than twice as likely to measure BI access times on their mobile devices deployed in the field. They are also more likely to monitor overall mobile BI usage, an essential step in a comprehensive program to increase mobile access and optimize the enduser experience. Aberdeen Insights Technology There are two primary ways to deliver BI to a mobile device. The first is via a conventional web browser. The second is via a specialized application downloaded to, and executed on, the device. Often referred to as a native application (app), this approach is offered by many BI software vendors for smartphone and tablet devices. Other mechanisms, such as automated alerts also exist. While both primary methods are in use by Aberdeen's survey respondents, browser-based BI access is used more commonly by both Best-in-Class organizations and the survey population as a whole (Figure 14). Native applications typically offer data presentation tailored for the smaller mobile device screen sizes, the manipulation of a rich graphical display via touchscreen interface, and the use of built-in GPS mechanisms to automatically filter data appropriately based on the user's location. Altogether, they offer the promise of a more interactive mobile BI experience. Why then, is the use of browser-based BI so prevalent on mobile devices? There are two fundamental reasons.
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First of all, laptops are among the devices most commonly used for mobile BI in Aberdeen's research survey. Many conventional BI tools have used web-browsers as the presentation layer of choice for many years in PC environments. Naturally then, many laptops will already be using a browser for BI presentation, whether inside or outside the office environment. Meanwhile, mobile BI itself is still in its formative period. While the appeal of management information on the go is clear, many organizations are still assessing the true potential and the best BI applications for mobile devices. Using a browser for initial mobile BI projects is a very easy and low-cost way to make this evaluation. Looking into the future however, survey respondents indicate that the use of native applications will increase sharply in the next 12 months. Indeed, Best-in-Class enterprises will double their use of native applications in this timeframe. This is indicative of the relative maturity of Best-in-Class organizations in their use of mobile BI. This top performing 20% of survey respondents more fully understand the value of mobile BI and have more fully committed their resources to its success. Having used browser-based mobile BI in the early stages, Best-in-Class organizations are now ready to adopt native applications to take their projects forward to the next stage.
Measure your progress. Over one half of the Best-in-Class don't yet measure information access times for mobile BI. Without this assessment, there can't be sustainable improvement. We suggest taking the perspective that the end-user is actually the (internal) customer. If the mobile BI solution isn't responsive enough, or isn't delivering relevant information in the time required, then end-user usage will lag and the organization's investment in becoming more agile and responsive through mobile BI will be for naught. Measuring the fluctuations in information access times will provide a critical tool in assessing the pulse of the business, the speed of change, and help develop a roadmap for future improvement. Aberdeen Insights Mobile BI: Staying One Step Ahead
Global competitive pressures reward the Real-Time Enterprise (RTE), defined as the organization focused on market and customer responsiveness, swift and agile decision-making, and transparency and immediacy of information shared among internal groups. Mobile BI has evolved as an essential enabler of the RTE, delivering business-critical information when and where its needed. As a result, mobile BI is becoming an essential weapon in the modern organization's arsenal to remain competitive, agile, and responsive in this increasingly competitive and rapidly changing global marketplace. By delivering the most relevant business performance data in the hands of both strategic and tactical decision makers whenever and wherever they may be, organizations are achieving faster "time-to-information" and therefore shorter "time-to-decision," becoming ever more responsive and agile. The organization that is in touch and one step ahead is best prepared to thrive in the brave new world of instant and ubiquitous data access.
Table 6: The Relationship Between PACE and the Competitive Framework PACE and the Competitive Framework How They Interact
Aberdeen research indicates that companies that identify the most influential pressures and take the most transformational and effective actions are most likely to achieve superior performance. The level of competitive performance that a company achieves is strongly determined by the PACE choices that they make and how well they execute those decisions.
Source: Aberdeen Group, December 2010
Information on these and any other Aberdeen publications can be found at www.aberdeen.com.
Authors: Andrew Borg, Senior Research Analyst, Wireless & Mobility, andrew.borg@aberdeen.com David White, Senior Research Analyst, Business Intelligence, david.white@aberdeen.com
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