Not so long ago, our CFO was looking at changing our financial system and it reminded me of a similar situation that happened when I worked at National Australia Bank many years ago. We changed our entire ERP because the organization needed to slice and dice their data differently. What they could have done instead was use analytics differently to extend the life of the products they had, so that’s what we’ve done.

When it comes to automation in the BI industry, I think a lot of vendors are holding back. It’s entirely possible to automate the majority of what data analysts do today, but vendors are reluctant to do this because it would impact data analysts and they’re a big gatekeeper in the buying cycle of analytic software.

Innovation in the BI industry died about 30 years ago. Sure the colors and format may be different but what’s delivered to business users is exactly the same and that's a real problem. I think this is because the industry spends more time thinking about how to make a data analyst’s life easier rather than helping business users get the most value from their data.