Business Intelligence, or BI, is the analysis and strategic use of business information or data to boost revenue, improve productivity, find new business opportunities and/or speed up growth.
Everyday, every hour, and even every second there is new data available for businesses to gather and analyze. An endless amount of BI and data analytics tools and applications are now available to help manage and refine the ever growing amount of data. Knowing how to optimize BI practices is key to staying ahead of competition and keeping up with digitization.
This blog post will highlight a few BI thought leaders to follow on Twitter to help you gain some new insights and perspectives in the enormous industry of BI, big data, and data analytics.
Included below is also an overview image of the Data and AI 2019 landscape. Keep reading to learn more ⬇️
Who’s Who?
Included in the list below are both new and old voices prominent in the wide field and long history of BI. They have been placed in no particular order.
Cindi Howsen
@BIScorecard (25.3K followers on Twitter)
Cindi Howson is currently the Chief Data Strategy Officer at ThoughtSpot. She was formerly the Research Vice President at Gartner.
As founder of BI Scorecard, author of “Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data,” and a professional with 20 years experience in the BI and analytic space, she has a proven track record of bringing data and BI to many people, even those who might not consider themselves BI consumers.
Howsen believes it is her mission, “to create a more fact driven world. And right now facts are hard to get to. Data is hard to get to.” Her goal is to help companies to tackle particular (rather than generic) problems and to find insights both swiftly and with ease.
Howard Dresner
@howarddresner (25.3K followers on Twitter)
Howard Dresner is the founder and Chief Research Officer of Dresner Advisory Services, an independent industry resource, with three decades worth of experience in BI.
Several of Dresner Advisory Services’ annual reports have highlighted the growing prevalence of cloud BI. In its 8th edition, Dresner’s research has found that the percentage of organizations saying that cloud BI is “critical” or “very important” is at an all time high (48%). The four most popular cloud BI requirements are:
1. Advanced visualizations
2. Ad-hoc query
3. Personalized dashboards, and
4. Data integration / data quality tools / ETL
See chart below for a more complete list.
Chart I – Cloud BI requirement according to Dresner Advisory research
Claudia Imhoff
@Claudia_Imhoff(29K followers on Twitter)
Claudia Imhoff is the CEO and founder at Intelligent Solutions, Inc. and founder of Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT), a consortium of international, independent analysts and consultants that supports the exchange of information on new trends and technologies.
BBBT kick-started the year with a webinar featuring JP Serhal, the Head of Product Marketing at Toucan Toco, that explored the importance of businesses contextualizing data and using storytelling to make data easier to use and more accessible to a wider audience.
Boris Evelson
@bevelson (19.3K followers on Twitter)
Boris Evelson is the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research with over 30 years experience in BI.
Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau in a $15.7 billion all stock deal recently caused a stir but was unsurprising to Evelson, even though there is a large disparity in the supply and demand sides of the BI market. He asserts that BI market consolidationwill continue to flourish, even though its demand, i.e. the procurement and employment of BI solutions, is diminutive compared to its supply because:
“The low maturity of the people/process/data components [in BI solutions] will ensure that the BI technology market is healthy and vibrant for the foreseeable future. It’s easier to switch to another BI tool rather than fix inherent problems with data management, quality, and governance.”
Matt Turck
@mattturck (21K followers on Twitter)
This final individual is not typically linked to BI but he has an interesting perspective on BI and big data from the standpoint of a tech startup investor.
Matt Turck is a partner and managing director at the venture capital firm FirstMark. He is a founder, organizer, and host of Data Driven NYC, which has 18,000+ members and focuses on data, ML/AI and enterprise software. He is also an organizer of Hardwired NYC, an 8,000+ community of people interested in frontier technology.
Turck insists, “As more of the world gets online, the “datafication” of everything continues to accelerate” and causes the landscape of Data and AI to continuously shift and evolve. Below is an overview of this landscape in 2019 created by Turck in collaboration with Lisa Xu and FirstMark.
Data and AI landscape 2019 by Matt Truck and FirstMark
He also blogs at mattturck.com!
There are several other individuals missing from this list that are also prominent in BI and big data but this was only meant to be a small taster. By exploring these individuals further they will help you connect to the larger network of BI and Big Data professionals.
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Writer: Jade Rosenkranz is a communications freelancer interested in building connections and storytelling.
Image credit: Tumisu / Pixabay
