Over 100 senior business and IT personnel gathered in London’s Victoria Park Plaza last Friday for the 7th Obis Omni Forum, ‘The world is changing: Doing better and doing more with business intelligence and performance management’.

Among the most pre-eminent events on the business intelligence calendar, the Obis Omni Forum delivers thought leadership presentations and end user case studies alongside the opportunity to discuss ideas and experiences with peers and network with leading suppliers. With the community now in its sixth year, the forum’s aim, as ever, was to offer decision maker delegates the latest innovations, news and views in the world of business intelligence (BI).

The day began with Andrew Fryer, technical evangelist for Microsoft, talking about the latest trends in BI. His key points were that “there is a great increase in self service BI” which in turn requires a more complex set of tools. He also touched upon the current issue of the “massive explosion” in unstructured data which companies are starting to store and trying to make sense of. This is commonly known as big data and it is something which emerged throughout the day as a key area to be addressed over the next 12 months.

Next up was TAH’s director Ben Silcox who addressed the issue of how to add value to a business through performance management. Among his top tips for dealing with this ever-changing world, he stressed that any BI or process management projects needs to take the whole business into account. “You must ask the difficult questions,” he explained. “It’s a matter of taking a complex view, putting rigorous tools in place to align everything and then constantly revisiting it throughout your journey.”

Following the first two thought leadership presentations,and a networking session and sharp dose of caffeine, the delegates regrouped to listen to Paul Dodgson, associate director & head of consulting at TAH, who offered his views on how to create a BI strategy that is in line with the DNA of your organisation.

Like his colleague, Ben Silcox, earlier in the day, Dodgson wanted to challenge the thought process behind a BI strategy, rather than simply focussing on the solution. This, he said, is how you can ensure that any project you implement will be of benefit to the company as a whole and its employees.

Taking the last session before lunch was long-time Obis Omni Forum visitor Damian Smith, director of Madelo, who has attended all seven of the community’s forums to date. Smith was addressing the issue of data quality improvement and how this will, in turn, help improve any BI projects.

He offered a “methodology for making the business aware of the problems with their data quality and how that inhibits business progress.” He told the delegates how they can trust their company’s data and how the business function of an organisation can and should take responsibility for data quality. The measured words of the Obis Omni regular proved to be a very popular end to the morning’s session.

After a much enjoyed lunch and networking break, the attendees returned to watch the panel debate, for which morning presenters Andrew Fryer and Damian Smith were joined by Jaspersoft’s vice president Tom Cahill. Chairing proceedings was Professor Mark Whitehorn, chair of analytics at the School of Computing, University of Dundee.

The panellist fielded questions from a knowledge hungry audience covering all manner of issues, from identity validation and security precautions to data volumes and data quality.

The panel debate was followed by industry sector specific round-table discussions – allowing attendees to share their thoughts and experiences with peers plying their trade in similar companies. As ever, these proved hugely popular, with delegates relishing the opportunity to hear real world experiences and opinions of those in their own fields of work.

After this session there was a final coffee and network break before delegates were able to choose between two presentations on next generation BI. One was by Clive Boulton, business analytics business manager at Advanced Business Solutions, on using BI analytics as a key differentiator for business success, the other by Steve Hitchman, European operations director at WhereScape, on agile data warehousing development.

Then attendees then reunited for the final session of the day – an extremely insightful introduction to ‘big data’ from the chair of the panel debate Professor Mark Whitehorn. Whitehorn began by outlining exactly what is meant by the term big data – that being large volumes of non-tabular (or unstructured) data. He also outlined exactly what benefits companies can garner from big data. He used the example of eBay who can not only assess what you buy but also how you did it, when you bid and how you bid. This kind of information can be invaluable for a company to make it better informed about its customers and the way they think, or too predict future industry trends.

With big data looking poised to dominate the BI world in 2012, this presentation was a welcome introduction into a subject of huge importance and proved to be a great way to bring the curtain down on what was a very successful, enjoyable and informative day.

When reflecting on the success of the Forum and the feedback it received, Emma Taylor, founder and managing director of Obis Omni, said: “I think it was a superb event. Each of the sessions seemed to be very useful for those who attended.It was also great to see so many new faces at the event. It always a pleasure to see the Obis Omni community remain as vibrant and highly valued as it has been in the past. All the feedback we have received so far has been extremely positive, for both events.

“The Obis Omni Forum is now a must-go event on the calendar for our Obis Omni members and I’m really pleased that people are looking to the Forum to find out the answers to the problems they are faced with in their day-to-day projects.”

The presentation coincided perfectly with the launch of Obis Omni’s big data-based sister community on the same day – watch this space for more information.

Videos of some of the day's presentations will also be made available in the near future.

If you have any feedback from the event or would like to know how you can become a member of the Obis Omni community for the opportunity to attend future events, please do get in touch at charlotte.tite@obisomni.com