I began to ponder on the Business Intelligence industry with all its unfulfilled promise, often long on vision and short on delivery. The more that you challenge the status quo, the faster that you can see the opportunities to make the world a better place. It was this process that started me on a journey that led inevitably to creating SeeWhy. 

I fundamentally believe that the exploitation of data will be a key driver for competitive advantage in the 21st Century. The means to capture data are well established, and are now a requirement of doing business. But data capture and processing, whether by enterprise applications or data warehouses are no longer means to achieve a competitive advantage.  Everybody does this. 

The advantage undoubtedly lies with your ability to exploit what the data is telling you, and to do it before your competitors do. And in this area, current BI systems are found badly wanting, and it is also where the greatest opportunities lie.

Capturing and storing data does not give advantage. Reporting on the data and putting the information into the hands of the business users doesn’t either. It’s about acting on it in the time frame that can make a difference. It's what SeeWhy is all about.

Charles Nicholls is Founder and CEO of SeeWhy Software. He incorporated the company in 2003 with a vision to create a new generation of Business Intelligence that would enable users to build smarter business processes. Always on and never out of date, this next generation of BI is now being referred to as BI2.0.