Epilogue: A Look Back at the Next Twenty Years
Currently, business intelligence is a haphazard process that is done in many parts of an organization. Marketing, product development, and other areas each conduct their own research to gather information to support decisions. Over time, companies may recognize the similarity of this function, and consolidate intelligence operations into a single department that provides intelligence as a service to the organization.
(EN: This seems plausible, but it's largely a matter of organizational structure. My sense is that the kinds of intelligence gathered in different parts of the organization are significantly different, so even if there is a single "intelligence" department, the work will still be subdivided by subject matter. Also, companies that consolidate services such as IT often find there are drawbacks: it becomes slower, more expensive, and more difficult to get the assistance of a consolidated service department and they seldom get the same quality of service.)
He sees this as part of the legal department - primarily, because the information involved is highly sensitive, and placing it under the legal department better enables companies to maintain secrecy (by way of attorney-client privilege). Also, because it's fairly easy for intelligence operations to cross legal and ethical boundaries in pursuit of competitive information, it would be good to have them working closely with the attorneys who can advise them on the legal and ethical considerations.
He also notes that many companies do not have the financial resources to support an in-house department that covers all of its needs As such, i intelligence may become an outsourced service. He notes that it tends to be a trend for companies to outsource IT departments, human resources, benefits management, and even the legal department.
(EN: I'd have to disagree here, and am surprised the author cedes this as a plausible mode. Any operation that contributes to a company's competitive advantage should not be outsourced, as competitive advantage is lost when competing companies can simply buy the same capabilities from the same vendor. Since intelligence is critical to competitive advantage, it would be a very serious mistake to outsource these functions.)
There will be competition within the field of business intelligence, with the "best" consultants having considerable negotiating power to choose their own clients, much in the way that companies in litigation seek to have a better legal team than their opponent in order to win.
Even companies that do not have the financial resources to recruit a "dream team" of analysts will have better intelligence capabilities than they do today, at a much lower cost - they may not be able to hire the superstars of the industry, but they can still get moderately good quality for the price .... Though it's expected that companies will eventually recognize the value of good intelligence, and pony up for it.
However, he doesn't see it being automated. He's adamant that tools do not provide analysis - but are used by analysts to monitor data. It still requires human cognition to consider the information, derive meaning from it, and explain its relevance to a specific business. Without this, the output of tools is just data, not information.
(EN: This is actually an ongoing practice - many firms will buy automated tools to gather information and present it as reports, dashboards, and the like. My sense is that the problems are similar to outsourcing - i.e. a company has no advantage over competitors who use the same tools - and add to that the fact that shrink-wrapped solutions seldom offer the exact kinds of information that the company really needs.)