In mid-March I attended the Gartner BI Summit held at the Gaylord National Resort in Washington DC. It was neither a resort nor was it in DC. How can they call it a resort when there’s no beach, golf course, ski slopes or anything else to attract someone looking for recreation? And the location is actually in Maryland across the Potomac River from Alexandria, not in DC. But it was a very nice hotel for a great event.

It’s my second year at the BI Summit and I found many of the sessions illuminating. A few others, not so much. Opening day was kicked off by a musical performance by the BI-lievers consisting of four Gartner analysts who did a cover of the Monkees’ tune “I’m a Believer"? with lyrics updated to reflect that the analysts remain firm in their belief that Business Intelligence is valuable even though others think it doesn’t deliver promised value. I am inclined to agree that BI — the widely available traditional query and reporting tools called BI by most of the vendors — doesn’t deliver on the promise.

What does deliver is a complete Business Analytics strategy. It’s the query and reporting tools AND the means to clean and integrate valuable data AND powerful analytics to answer the questions businesses really need to know. What will happen? What’s the best that could happen? What do we need to do for the best outcome?

It’s no longer enough for businesses to know what happened, or what is happening. Even if that’s relevant, it’s not a pretty picture. To be successful, it’s more about making the best of the future and a Business Analytics framework can make that happen.