Mobile Business Intelligence: Some Strategic Considerations

In my last post I presented my assessment that 2011 will prove to be a watershed year for mobile BI. I noted that wireless infrastructure, devices, and software applications are maturing to the point where mobile BI deployments will expand rapidly, in this and the coming years. Now I want to look at strategic considerations for business in deploying mobile business intelligence.

To begin I want to examine mobile BI in the context of the PRIME model I have presented elsewhere on this blog. From a device standpoint, I think it's very clear that tablet devices such as the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab are best suited to most of the functions (Produce, Review, Investigate, Extrapolate) of data interaction I describe in the model. I say this due to the limited amount of screen area available on most smartphones.

The exception for me is the Monitor function, where a smartphone app could be a very useful client for performance management alerts. Such an app could present the mobile decision maker with up to the minute information, say, a change in a key performance indicator. The decision maker could then delegate investigation to an appropriate knowledge worker -- either through the app itself or with a good old-fashioned phone call. A smartphone with a larger screen and/or higher resolution might work for basic queries or reports.

As to mobile BI deployment, I would not be surprised to see small- and medium-sized businesses out in front of their larger counterparts. The reason I say this is that small and medium businesses are most likely to have immediate need of the flexibility that mobile BI provides. After all, in a larger business with a more mature BI implementation knowledge workers are likely to be equipped with laptops and working either at the office or at home. More time and improvements in device performance may be needed before these companies see tablet devices as ready for "industrial-strength" deployment to their back-office workers. I could more easily see initial deployment to front-line workers that the company wants to empower, for example, with customer intelligence in real- or near-real time.

In a smaller company by contrast, managers and even executives may already be on the front line and/or need to double as analysts. The ability to perform mobile analysis would be most welcome for them. (Those who have seen the iPad commercials currently running in the US are probably salivating already.) And if the business were using a software as a service (SaaS) model any performance disadvantage should be minimized since the heavy lifting is being done in the cloud. If you missed my post on SaaS check it out here. Oh, and don't skimp on the bandwidth.

Mobile Business Intelligence On The Way

There are definite signs that 2011 will be a watershed year for mobile business intelligence. Among their predictions for 2011, Gartner Research projects that fully one-third of all BI will be consumed by handheld devices within two years. Vendor Microstrategy includes three mobile BI items in their top ten highlights for 2010. On January 12 Forbes reported that 90% of IT managers surveyed plan to deploy mobile apps this year. SAP BusinessObjects, which tweeted the link to the Forbes article, is obviously interested in some of that mobile app business. And so it goes.

What's driving the move to mobile BI now? Improvements in hardware and infrastructure. Smartphones have become smart indeed, and tablet devices such as the Apple iPad and Samsumg Galaxy Tab have already rendered netbooks all but obsolete. Meanwhile, the advent of 4G broadband in the US means that wireless mobile devices have access to data speeds comparable to those available on the fastest wired networks.

To be sure, not everyone is yet sold on the new tablets. IBM reported from this week's National Retail Federation show (as tweeted by Cognos) that tablets drove the highest positive and negative sentiment over the holidays. But development is progressing rapidly: Motorola, Dell, and RIM (Blackberry) are just three companies working on bringing dual-core processing capabilities to tablets in the very near future.

Next time we'll ponder how (not to mention if) you should approach mobile BI for your business.