BI programs are initiated with high expectations. Business people need the information and insights that BI was created to provide. Sadly, many of these programs languish and time passes—five, six, or more months, without business analytics delivered to the business people who need them.

Once traditional BI systems are in place it's common for requests for new analytics, and the valuable insights they can convey, to take substantial periods—as much as weeks—for the business analysis, data analysis, technical analysis, and analytics analysis, design and implementation to occur and the analytics to be delivered. Introducing new data sources into the existing system can be as difficult and time consuming as initially building the system; and adding new data can sometimes prove a bigger challenge than starting over.

Analytic Information Design

Designing effective, high quality displays of quantitative information is a professional skill.

Traditional BI Analytics

Traditional BI analytics are customarily created by sketched out at project inception and Traditional BI analytics are customarily sketched out at project inception and is dominated by the size and complexity of its data processing and BI platform aspects. The sheer bulk of the technology the projects, commandeering the limited time and attention of the information seekers.

The absence of direct data access and analytics tools creates the situation where the business analytics the business requires are initially created as rough sketches; the lack of fidelity of these inputs has corrupting effects throughout the entire traditional BI process chain.

When the Entperprise BI tool specialist is engaged to create the semantic layer and outputs they are faced with the low fidelity, and likely very much out of date, initial sketches, and with the data warehouse based on those them, which has. BI tool specialists are generally employed for their ability to program the BI tool; analytical information design skills are generally not a priority in traditional BI projects where reducing the cost of production is a primary concern.

This confluence of factors results in traditional BI projects that are not only late (see above), their likelihood of providing high quality analytics that maximize the businessperson's ability to perceive and communicate high value information and insights is very low.

Better BI's insistence on establishing an intimate analytical relationship between the businessperson and their data ensures that live analytics are developed in real time that directly provide the highest value information and insights up front. Better BI practitioners are highly expert in business analysis and analytical information design, ensuring that the live analytics are of the highest possible quality. These live analytics are then used as the gold standard analytical requirements across the entire BI project. They are clear, concise, unambiguous, and explicit.