Evolution Versus Revolution

The unfortunate truth about traditional heavy business information technologies is that they require the report developer to predict the types of questions that the information consumer is going to ask.

 This fact contributes to frustration for both the people building the reports and the information consumers who need flexible tools.

The other major shortcoming is that tradition "heavy" BI Solutions require a significant up front cash outlay for both software and consulting resources.  In order to get the money the project champion had to be:

1. A risk-taker
2. Promise the moon
3. Get a large capital project approved
4. Deliver promised value

This landscape required someone willing to lead a "revolution" within the company.  Risky and potentially career threatening.

Today with data visualization tools like Tableau,  Excel spreadsheets that hold 1 million rows of data and low cost Enterprise-class data warehouse systems like Microsoft SQL Server, business information projects that formerly required a revolution can now be undertaken in a more incremental, low-risk approach.  The overall cost of implementing user-friendly solutions has dropped dramatically.

The "evolutionary" approach to business information development doesn't require the act of faith and the big capital outlay.

Results can be achieved in hours or days instead of weeks and months.  Capital outlays can be small, incremental and only made after the concept has been proven.

In 2007 I started a project for my company that paid big dividends that ended up costing 10% of what more traditional Big BI players quoted me to do the work.   The Evolutionary approach I ended up using was enabled by Tableau Software and an Excel spreadsheet. 

I had proof of concept and feedback from end users before I invested the first dollar.  The overall cost of my project was 90% less then heavy BI solutions which were quoted by the major companies.

InterWorks Inc aims to help other people learn and execute an evolutionary model for building better business information,  one that puts the information consumer in control of the data analysis and data visualization, dramatically reducing the time from question to insight.