This book is rare in my experience. It is helpful to both the executive who wants to develop important customer and competitive advantages and to the CIO who has to plan the company's electronic capabilities. The book succeeds in doing this in a way that will improve the dialogue and effectiveness of technical and nontechnical executives in working together to improve their organization's knowledge and ability to make good use of it. Beyond that, the book is well-founded in a vision of individuals (at work and at home) being able to interrogate data bases to find better ways to do things, and then cooperating with other people to save time and money.
Business intelligence software basically does two things: First, it pulls off data from other databases so that relevant information is all together in a usable form. Two, it contains simple query tools that allow anyone to ask a wide variety of ad hoc questions and get quick answers back. Think of this as being like turning a large business into the simplicity of a one-person operation being run by the owner.
The strength of the book comes in the many detailed examples from around the world of companies in different industries using business intelligence software to improve themselves, their customers, and suppliers. The examples come from companies of many different sizes, dealing with different kinds of problems, and having varying degrees of technical sophistication. These are presented in some detail in sidebars that are highlighted in gray backgrounds so that they are easy to find.
I intend to recommend this book to all of my clients, which is something I seldom do.
The writing in this book deserves special praise. Mr. Liautaud and Hammond have done a very careful and thorough job of taking complex ideas and breaking them down into simple words, concepts, lists, and examples. They have done this without "talking down" to the reader, and the material is consistently interesting. Mr. Hammond deserves special credit for understanding the advanced thinking of Mr. Liautaud that has led to the development of an entire industry around helping companies expand their e-business intelligence.
I am often annoyed by books written by CEOs of companies that have services to sell. The books often come across as one big piece of advertising or brochureware. Although the examples here come from Business Objects clients, I did not have that negative reaction to this book at all.
After you finish this book, you will realize that the key thing to getting benefit from e-business intelligence is to ask better questions once you have the databases and query tools in place to do your own interrogations. I suggest that you start asking those questions now. You may find that some can be answered simply and quickly without bogging down the IT department, and you will obtain the benefits sooner. What's even better is that you will find ways to start thinking in improved ways about your business sooner.
Enjoy the benefits that follow naturally from having all of us know more and be able to ask more . . . to extend our knowledge into improved forms of profitable intelligence!
