Meyer:  You seem to be a big proponent of a democratized state of BI as opposed to top down strategic vision, one version of the truth.  Can you go into that?

Tyler:  We saw it today where BI is though of as a specialization by specialized groups of people.  I absolutely agree with that.  It all depends upon you business model.  Bossity says in his book you have to understand your business model and you have to do what is relevant to that model.  It is a simple formula that is not easy execute.   In our business, we are not into the consumer market; we sell to other large companies.  We apply Business Intelligence to the things that make sense to us, that is how we operate as a business.  It is important to us to us to incorporate better decision-making in every process that we promote and prosecute.  If we were in a consumer business like Harrah’s obviously Business Intelligence has a different opportunity.  So it is really about understanding your business model and then using any tools that you can muster to do that business in an excellent way. I don’t think there is anything that compels it to be one way or another.

But I do have a problem with companies who miss the opportunity to then use Business Intelligence as part of everyday process.   They get egotistical.  It is led by people who think you have to be PHD Statistician to do this well – and that is not true.  Every individual in a company is already making decisions and in most case they are making good decisions.  So giving them better tools, better information, can only improve that and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make small but important incremental improvements.  That’s my only problem.  If a company is egotistical it thinks that the general public can’t benefit from it.  I think they are missing an opportunity.

Meyer: Business Intelligence is the demand of the day and it certainly affects all of us.

Tyler: People ask me if I use predictive analytics and I say no I use reactive analytics.   People are stunned by that.  That’s a bad thing you are reacting.   You are right.  But I want to react better.  Harrahs is trying to get the intelligence closer to the point of transaction.  That is a reaction.  When you put your money in the slot and you pull the handle and then get a coupon.  They want to react to that.  They didn’t send you the coupon before you did that.  The closer you get to the reactive point of a decision and if you can influence that reaction the more effective you can be.  This is because business is a serious of human transactions, every day people talking to people, people making decisions, people making choices, most of which you cannot predict accept in very macro terms over the long run.  But if you can be more effective at the reactive point and at the person making that small decision at least as good as information as humanly then the chances are they will do better.  If you can’t get down to that person, if you keep this off in a tower, the most you can hope for is predictive analytics, and that is more about guiding the ship in the long run and deciding where to go as opposed to am I getting there efficiently, effectively, and on time.  Most business today is about getting there efficiently, effectively, and on time. 

Meyer: So you are saying the trick is to get the quickest response to local truths?

Tyler:  ...and as deep into the organization as possible.  You want every member of your team to be successful in whatever decision making they have to make.  Business Intelligence is almost too sexy a word because it is really about small decision made with very small amounts of data.  The real key is you want the data to be accurate, effective, on-time, and therefore you need business mentality to deliver that.  Business Intelligence is a methodology. The product from Business Intelligence can range from that reactive piece of data to I think next year we should get into a totally different line of business.  They are equally important to your long-term success.

Meyer:  The BI conversation is hard to define.

Tyler:  I was in a Computer World Conference in Arizona and everybody defines it differently.   What is really frustrating is that you cannot talk about Business Intelligence without talking about collaboration and knowledge management because what good is structured information if you don’t apply it in a experiential fashion otherwise it just printing on a paper.  I have to interpret that. Even if you incorporate that into algorithms and business activity monitoring processes somebody had to decide when this happens turn left.  That comes from experience not somebody else’s mathematics. 

It all builds upon itself.  To prosecute a business you want to promote experiential knowledge and learning and you want people to make better decisions based upon that and structured information is certainly an important component of that but it cannot drive it.  It cannot make it so.  I also disagree with Tom in his interpretation of Blink.  Gladwell says very carefully that gut-decisions work very well when the person making them has a long history of experience and they study data.  So it is not the way you make a decision it is on what basis are you making a decision.  It looks like gut decision but I have been in the business for 25 years and I have open and closed 16 plants, and I have worked with 16,000 people, and I have had 16,000,000 million conversations with customers.   That is data.   That is information. That is Business intelligence.

So if I make a decision and I don’t pull out a piece of paper to go back and look at those 25 years doesn’t mean that I am not using it.  

Meyer:  Right, and Warren Buffet is a high powered analytic computer and not gut-instinct wizard.

Tyler:  Absolutely.  I came from a business culture where people come together with little information and it is all seat of the pants.  The experience we brought was inconsistently applied.  The danger of experience is in its application. Data helps prevent the application from going too far beyond the context that the experience has value in.  So you say wait a minute you are making the decision based upon what you did in Europe and this is Asia – totally different cultures. Is the experience relevant to this market place?  It is not. We got to get you data to help you take that experience and make it relevant.  These things should be complimentary.  They are not mutually exclusive.  It doesn’t mean one aspect of that is wrong or not.  It just means how do combine those things to become the most effective manager, leader, that you can possible be.