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One of the questions I am usually asked is: "How do you quantify a successful BI Solution?"

Computing ROI becomes a challenge for most because a BI solution brings both quantifiable and qualitative benefits. The key to calculating ROI is being able to define, measure and quantify specific benefits in terms of dollars and cents and then compare that monetary value to the cost of your investment to achieve those results. Calculating ROI is easier said than done because the challenge lies in putting monetary value to some of intangible benefits of the BI solution e.g. performance improvement, time savings, etc.

In a TDWI Report Series: Smart Companies in the 21st Century: The Secrets of Creating Successful Business Intelligence Solutions by Wayne Eckerson, the diagram below shows that BI solutions have more intangible benefits than tangible ones.

Click to view original size

The value of a BI solution increases with the number of subject areas it supports as well as the number of happy users. The BI solutions must support the business requirements. In our experience, successful BI projects are incremental. We start small but add value exponentially by adding new subject areas and users. Incremental implementation makes it easier for the users and project sponsors to see the value of the BI solution right away. It helps builds the trust and confidence hence, is able to pick up momentum and funding for the next increments of the implementation. Over time, it matures and becomes a valuable enterprise resource.

Lance Walter, VP of Marketing at Pentaho, let us know that we had neglected to include jFreeReport in our blogroll and lens. I plagerized his email in describing jFreeReport in the lens links to reporting tools.

This site is a great resource. A consultant referred me to it and said it was the best consolidated source of information on osbi that he had found.

I had one suggestion. In the OS Reporting Projects - would you consider adding a link to JFreeReport? www.jfree.org/jfreereport . We use it as part of Pentaho, but it's also a standalone java reporting library with some pretty nice capabilities and a decent community around it.
-- email from Lance on 2006.02.23

Thank you, Lance.

We want to extend heartfelt thanks to Nicholas Goodman, who hosted Julian Hyde of Mondrian fame, and James Dixon, Senior Architect and Chief Technology Officer ("Chief Geek") and Lance Walter, Vice President of Marketing for Pentaho, and Clarise, and me at the Thirsty Bear, the night before the Open Source Business Conference. We had over three hours of great conversation on open source, the conference, BI, the Oracle rumored purchase of JBoss, Sleepycat & Zend, and just rambling along on a bunch of topics.

Some of the more interesting geeky areas of discussion centered around data modeling, UDM, CASE tools, data stewardship and metadata management and use.

But I think that the most interesting area of discussion was in supporting the community around an open source project, and identifying the target audience for our OSBI book [update: no publishers are interested in the OSBI book as of 2007], for open source BI projects, and for BI programs in general.

While we weren't able to attend OSBC, we got a taste of it through drinking Thirsty Bear ales and bears and we've added a module to our OSBI Lens providing links to disucssions about the OSBC.

We're quite proud to announce that for the past week our OSBI lens, concentrating various resources for Open Source Business Intelligence, has been in the Squidoo top 100, generally ranked between 50 and 90. Take a look at our lens, and let us know what you think in the comments below. How can we improve it?

Once again, Mike Arrington's generosity led to a splendid party. Techcrunch and these parties have become the signature for Web2.0 events.

The Naked Conversations TechCrunch Party is now officially over
-- Mike Arrington at 2:01 a.m.

I left well before Mike posted that, but not before I got to hook up with some folk I knew and meet some folk for the first time. Mike's events are always great for networking.

• Of course the whole point of the party was to pick up another copy of Naked Conversations [Buy the book] and have it signed by the authors, Shel Israel and Robert Scoble. Mine was signed by Shel, but Robert was out "checking on the food". While I had met Shel and Robert before, and exchanged email and blog comments with them, this was my first opportunity to talk to Shel for a bit. He is indeed as nice a guy as his card proclaims.
• I saw Andrea and, later Ethan Stock of Zvents, both of whom I had met at the Riya Launch Party.
• Buzz Bruggeman was there, as was Bill Daul, both of whom I had met at ANZA. Bill introduced me to Douglas Engelbart. Both Doug and my father were among the first radar men in World War II, though I don't think they knew each other then.
• I was interviewed for a podcast by Michael Johnson of PodTech News - I'll link to it when it's released.
• Alex Moskalyuk of Yahoo!Tech and I had a good talk about tagging analysis and corporate significance.
• I met Andy of Microsoft, whom Bill describes as a bright young fellow.
• And I chatted for a bit with Brad Meador from ClearContext who is seeking to change the way you use email.
• Reintroduced myself to Scott Beale from Laughing Squid.
• Waved to Marc Canter and spoke briefly with Dave Winer

It was a great time. Mike, thank you and your sponsors very much for your generosity.