The Domo marketing team had the opportunity last Wednesday to attend the Salt Lake City Search Engine Marketers (SLCSEM) event. This event was huge, with presenter Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, drawing the crowds.

Rand presented about irrational biases in marketing (specifically in search engine optimization) that keep companies from gathering a lot of potential low-hanging fruit in terms of website traffic and revenue.

This got us thinking, “What about irrational biases in big data? Do they exist? Is there anything that common ‘Best Practices’ dictate that may be flawed?”

Here are the ones I came up with:

Irrational Biases in Big Data

1. Business Intelligence is for the IT Folks

Traditionally, business intelligence tools have resided within IT. For good reason, too; they’re complex! They take a lot of technical savvy and the tools are often too time consuming for an executive to get entrenched in them.

The truth is that your reporting doesn’t have to be so complex. Our expectations have been trained over the last 25 years that our data is inaccessible. We need to change our expectations and start expecting data that’s usable, even if we don’t have a degree in computer sciences.

2. Big Data Analysis Tools are a Giant Cost Center

We’re all used to high costs in both money and employee time, for tools for analyzing our data. Business intelligence solutions requiring years and millions of dollars to stand have become the norm.

When are you supposed to see an ROI on the purchase of these tools? Likely never.

This is another expectation we need to change. Tools exist to make our work easier. They shouldn’t make your work more expensive and more complicated.

BI tools should be inexpensive enough to make financial sense and provide an actual return on your investment. They also shouldn’t necessitate hiring a team of data scientists and implementation staff to install.

3. Reports Take a Long Time

The business intelligence products we’re used to take too long to deliver actionable data to decision makers. When executives need data, they rarely have the time to wait for IT to run a report. Staying competitive in the marketplace requires decisive actions and movement on a moment’s notice. This process cannot include a report sitting on one of your IT staff’s to-do list.

Being a Domo employee, and having used Domo, I am admittedly a little biased. That doesn’t change the fact that our traditional expectations for BI solutions are irrational and we should expect more from them.

Shameless plug:

It just so happens that Domo solves these issues. Change your expectations for what your Business Intelligence solution should do for you. If you’re curious, shoot us a note. We’d be happy to show you a demo of how Domo can change your expectations for BI.