Having spent some years pushing boundaries of live business
intelligence, it was natural for us to take a close look at wearable tech and
wonder if there was a place for this technology in the business intelligence
space. On face value, it seems unlikely. Why would you want charts showing your
sales vs target to date on a watch, or projected against the real world with
Google Glass? Well, you wouldn’t, and in fact this misses the point of wearable
tech. These devices are not proficient at presenting conventional information
on request, and why should they, we have plenty of devices capable of this.
However, they do by their very nature excel at notifications. They are worn by
the user, so always present and able to notify the user immediately in a way
that is both unobtrusive and impossible to miss. They are more suitable for
this than any conventional device, which can be left lying around or relies on
aural cues which are both intrusive and easily missed in a noisy environment.
So why would we want notifications in the business
intelligence space? Well, there are a whole host of reasons. Our business
intelligence software is adept at allowing business users to define, present
and automatically update information from just about any organisational
process. By adding alerts to these dashboards we allow “citizen developers” to
build almost any alert capability into the business process. Combine this with a smartwatch or Google
Glass and the possibilities are truly exciting. Imagine if a factory shift
manager could be notified immediately, regardless of his location and
surrounding noise levels, if a large order was placed that will significantly
raise demand. Or a retail area manager driving between stores is notified
immediately when demand for a particular product rises suddenly across several
shops he manages. Or your database administrator is notified immediately when a
database is close to filling its allotted disk space.
The combination of business
intelligence and wearable technology, wearable intelligence, will allow citizen
developers to define systems that deliver live actionable intelligence to key individuals at the right time, regardless of where they are or what they’re doing. This, we believe, offers a clear opportunity for truly disruptive innovation in almost any industry.
Don’t miss us at PUG Challenge 2014, 19th - 21st November in
Düsseldorf to see what we've been working on at DataPA to deliver wearable intelligence to our customers.
