Principles of Better BI

People Are Smart

People have the ability to make sense of less-than-perfect data. Providing access to data early is good. Witholding access to data until it's been made perfect is bad.

All BI is local

Information is most valuable within the local business context. Business decision makers are primarily concerned with their local business data and what it reveals about their area of responsibility.
Providing access to local business data as soon as possible is good—people are smart. Waiting until the local data has been regularized and transformed into larger scale contexts is bad.

Data is everywhere

Excel files. Access databases. Operational databases. Web sites. Call logs. Data marts and warehouses. PDFs.
Any set of records, and anything that can be munged into records, is data and is contains valuable information that could benefit the data's owner or user if only there was some way to get to it quickly and easily.

Establish Intimate Analytics

Intimate analytics is the state of establishing an intimate realtionship between a real human person and the data they are concerned with. This relationship fosters transparent access to the data along with highly effective means for analyzing it, and for commmunicating the insights achieved.

Work with purpose

When practicing Better BI there is always a direct line between one's activities and a valuable business outcome. Providing the explicit link to business value is essential to ensure that the BI program stays on track. Better BI's use of Intimate Analytics across the full spectrum of activities involved in all forms of BI ensures that all parties are able to concentrate on value-providing activities.

Talent matters.

The ability to conduct effective and efficient data analysis, and to meaningfully communicate important data-based information and insights is uncommon.
It takes a combination of aptitude, interest, and cognitive and technical skills.

Tools and technology? —not so much
Acquiring and installing an Enterprise-scale integrated full-spectrum mega-BI technology platform expecting that its presence will necessarily lead to BI bliss is a fool's errand. It—might—work, but it probably won't.

Deliver Value Early and Often

High quality business analytics delivered immediately, normally within hours, for all of the distinct BI program analytical modes:

At first contact—exploring new data is the first step. Better BI emphasizes and excels in delivering high value analytics right from the start.
New analysis of well understood data—Better BI recognizes that supports the ongoing discovery process is an essential component of a healthy BI program. The horizon of possible questions to ask about the data is limitless.
Refreshing existing analytics with up-to-date data. Traditional BI is centered around this facet of BI—strategically valuable standard prepared reports are distributed, with some possible data filtering abilitiy to cross-compare data population subsets.
Internal data analysis within Enterprise BI projects—Better BI is extremely valuable in improving the internal operations of Enterprise BI projects, with demonstrated success in achieving substantial gains in efficiency and business alignment.

Collaboration, collaborate, collaborate

Constant collaboration is the best way to ensure that valuable business outcomes are achieved. Better BI is organized around the core principle that collaboration between business decision makers and their BI-providing partners is absolutely critical for delivering the necessary BI outputs.

You can't start with everything

Or: Start with the first thing first.
Better BI requires that delivering meaningful, high value analytics is the first and most important act of successful BI. There is a multitude of benefits to delivering the first analytics absolutely as fast as possible. Chief among these are: valuable information is delivered to the business person who requires it; information is gleaned about the business data that guides further analysis; in an Enterprise BI project the analytics are the best possible model for those analytics ultimately re-developed in the Enterprise platform; the business stakeholder develops immediate confidence in the ability of the BI program to develop information.
From a strategic perspective there is a huge benefit to immediate delivery: fostering an aggressive data-seeking analytical mindset in the business. Any approach that does not deliver immediate results imposes friction and bother on those seeking information and over time they learn that their time and attention is best spent elsewhere, and the BI initiative withers.