At a time when banks are shedding IT roles by the dozen, it seems counter-intuitive that 83 per cent of the nation’s chief information officers should report they are confident about the future of their business to the extent that 45 per cent expect to hire IT staff in the first six months of the year. The question remains – is this a dead cat bounce?
read moreWednesday, 17 March 2010 13:22
Australian IT professionals want greater visual representation of data within their business intelligence (BI) deployments, according to a survey conducted by Sydney-based Altis Consulting, an Australian-owned consultancy offering specialist expertise in data warehousing, business intelligence and information management.
The survey, completed by IT professionals at a Sydney seminar in February 2010, found that 91 percent of attendees stated that data visualisation – such as the use of mind maps and the graphic display of news, data and other resources - will become an increasing priority within their BI environments over the next two years.
Although 65 percent of the survey respondents are confident that their current visualisation capabilities are contributing to improvements in organisational performance, the success of such tools and techniques appears to be limited.
More than half of those surveyed (56%) stated that while their data was “adequate” there was room for improvement. Fifteen percent said that their data only occasionally shows the required information, while six percent are “constantly disappointed”. Only seven per cent of attendees were happy that their data shows everything needed to meet business requirements.
Integration with other applications and ease of use topped the IT professionals' list of requirements when considering solutions to assist with data visualisation. Not surprisingly, given the BI environment within which they are deployed, data analytics and metric reporting were also awarded a high priority by almost half the attendees, followed by interactive graphics such as drill-down, pop-up, zoom and scroll capabilities.
Almost one third of attendees cited cost and time to deploy as the major barriers to adoption of data visualisation solutions. Other concerns include the lack of executive sponsorship (31 per cent), technical complexity (27 per cent) and user training (26 per cent).
“The amount of data is growing exponentially year upon year placing pressure on BI teams to identify the information that can actually make a difference to the business. There is now an urgent need to create a greater understanding of how data visualisation can help management because only once management understands and gets behind it, will visualisation projects gain the budget and executive sponsorship they need,” said John Hoffman, CEO, Altis Consulting.
The survey involved more than 85 business intelligence and data warehousing attendees at a three-day business intelligence seminar and workshop. The event was hosted by Altis Consulting and was facilitated by Stephen Few, data visualisation expert from US, who currently has the number one and two books on Amazon in the category of information visualisation.
About Altis Consulting
Established in 1998, Altis Consulting is a 80 person privately-held Australian company offering specialist consulting expertise in all aspects of data warehousing, business intelligence and information management, including data quality and master data management. The company’s services include strategy, planning and architecture, solution delivery, and managed services.
While the company has experience in almost every industry sector, Altis Consulting has particular expertise in telecommunications, government, logistics, financial services, health services and utilities. Clients include Allens Arthur Robinson, Sydney Airport, Department of Health and Aging, Lend Lease, Macquarie Bank, Reece, Independent Liquor Group, Suncorp Metway, Optus, Qantas, Telecom New Zealand, , and Vodafone.
Altis is also the Australian New Zealand partner for the Kimball University the foremost authority on data warehousing. Altis Consulting has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Auckland.
