And the survey says...social media not useful for BI yet

I am posting this in response to the ComputerWorld article by Joab Jackson titled "Survey: Social media not useful for BI yet" The article is based on results from the recent Kognitio Survey released at the National Retail Federation's annual conference this week in New York. The survey showed that only 14% of the respondents have any desire to incorporate social-networking data into their current data analysis efforts. A total of 63% of the respondents were "undecided" about the potential value of aggregated social-networking data, and 23% called social media "overrated."

The results of the survey are great from a data aspect you can find more on the survey here. Its still early for companies to be supplementing their data warehouse and business intelligence programs with data from Twitter and Facebook but I can assure you that the14% who are looking at it see an innovative differentiator that they can profit by. The 23% who see the data as over rated should run down to the corner store and buy a clue!

My concern with the article is it left out 50% of the social networking and business intelligence story its not just about the data. Social networking tools and processes are making their way into the enterprise and are being adopted. Just look at enterprise search, many vendors are trying to match the needs of the "Google Generation" knowledge worker with solutions that match their social tools and favorite internet resources. The same is happening to the BI space. Some vendors are taking a low level approach such as allowing you to favorite a report or collaborate with your peers this only scratches the surface. The big value comes from integrating the tools and the workflow so it makes sense and is easily adopted by all levels of user within the business intelligence environment.

So before you write off social media and BI solely based on integration of Twitter data lets look at the huge value companies can achieve by adopting solutions that deliver fully integrated tools and processes for social networking in enterprise business intelligence.