Microsoft Drives Mass Adoption of BI by Hiding It - ' Three ' (
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[Another cool thing] is infinite drilldown. Thats a cool feature [of Report Builder]. Static reports are somewhat interesting. There are people who wake up, say "Im going to do BI today," they get [reports] in the morning, make a decision and go off and do something [based on the reports findings].
But we want to achieve more interactivity with data. If a number looks interesting, you can hover over it and click it [in Report Builder]. We generate the reports. We make the reports, we use them, then we get rid of them.
You can dance around from report to report to report. You dont have to think it out in advance. Nobody says, "Heres where people may go." You just draw the report, publish it, and end users start navigating it. Theyre creating reports every time they click [on a given piece of data within a report], and they dont even know it.
Thats how you drive mass adoption of BI, is to hide it.
You featured Barnes & Noble Inc. in your keynote. Are they a good example of hiding BI?
Barnes & Noble, now theres a company devoted to its geographies. They say, "The person who runs the store can make a better decision about what books to put in front, what books to put in back, etc., better than any corporate executive or IT staff can do." But theyre not a BI person. We cant tell them to take a training class and go write a report. We say, "Look at the information weve got. If you want to think of it more, start clicking."
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