Plug and Play Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Ok, I wrote a blog post in 2013 titled "Plug and Play Business Intelligence?" (Excerpt from that blog below, should you choose to read it) Four years have gone by, and I still keep hearing things like, "What tool should we go with for AI/ML/Mind Mapping/AR?" Really? Is this still a thing? Get your data right. If you have it right, structured/unstructured or on the other end of the ever expanding Google universe, then please proceed. If not, please stop spending money, right now! Its like buying apples. If you are going to make apple cider with it, you might choose a different type, versus a milkshake or an apple pie. Ensure that your data is ready for consumption for a particular purpose!  If you don't know that, you are just throwing money down the drain. So, if you care, you can read this post from four years ago. You can call/email/LinkedIn, FaceBook me any time you want, if you have any questions.

Plug and Play Business Intelligence?
Really? Do I have to revisit this topic? Again? 2 years ago, I wrote that there is no such thing as plug and play business intelligence. Here we are and has anything changed? The answer is a resounding NO! 

Now, let me clarify this. Analytics tools have come a long way. There are several good analytics tools out there that allow you to do quite a bit of reporting and analysis yourself.

Then why am I insisting that there is no plug and play in BI? Unless you are the Data Warehouse Ninja , ETL(extract transform, load) Samurai and you have a team of 47 Ronin who, through the years of wisdom in the scrolls given to you by the smartest kid, I would venture to say that you don't have a handle on all the data that the business is looking for. And even when you do, the requirements are ever changing. Get my point? It's the data!!!

Data integration and standardization across the enterprise is going to be your biggest challenge. Unless you have that under control, you can put the next Alien ("look it also makes me a sandwich") dashboarding tool on top of it and you will still get bad data. Ever heard the saying, "all that glitters isn't gold"? Well, all that creates dashboards isn't BI either.

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