IT Week: Business Objects has recently announced a new Enterprise Information Management (EIM) portfolio designed to improve the quality and management of firms' data. Why do you feel there is a need for these products?

John Schwarz: [Data quality] is a big hurdle for firms deploying BI systems. Most large organizations have literally thousands of apps that they run their business on and these apps have been built up over the years with each having different data structures. As a result data is duplicated all over the organisation and a lot of it is inaccurate. This situation is then complicated further by mergers and acquisitions, which can add still more data complexity and inconsistency each time you acquire a company.

Why is more accurate data so important? Many firms would argue they do well with their current systems.

If you can get more accurate data it enables better decisions, helps you treat customers better and keep your customers happier. You only have to realise that if you send invoices out to the wrong person you don't get paid. There are also real cost savings in that you don't have to invest so much in manually cleaning the data and it reduces the number of mistakes you make. One company I know of does 300,000 new transactions a quarter and only 15 percent of those have accurate and complete data. The company was spending millions each quarter with [business information firm] Dun & Bradstreet to clean the data, but each quarter more wrong data was coming into the system so it became an insurmountable problem.

Given how entrenched the problem is, how can firms improve data quality?

The aim of EIM solutions is to help bridge all these differences in the data that create inconsistencies. I don't believe companies will ever get just one data format, and as long as they have apps using different formats they need a way to bridge the gaps. The only effective way to do that is through EIM solutions that give you the ability to automatically integrate and federate data. Business Objects' move into this area is critical to our development.

How does data cleansing technology work?

There are two basic techniques we use. The first is to check the customer data against canonical data; and we have a massive database in the US of corporations' details that we use to check firms' customer data against. We also partner with business data firm Identex in the UK to offer a similar service in Europe. The second technique is to set up policies that automatically filter the data as it is input so you can ensure it fits into a certain range that you know to be correct. You can then either block or flag up any data anomalies that may need investigating. We are giving companies the ability to take overlapping data sources and determine which data should be taken as the canonical version, as well as determine which data is most current and ensure that the two data sources are kept in sync.

The urgent need to improve data quality problems suggests firms have not enjoyed the benefits they expected from BI reporting systems. Were you guilty of over-hyping the effectiveness of BI systems?

I don't agree that BI has been over-hyped. If anything it is still being undervalued. However, what I do believe is happening is that IT teams had a hard time clearly explaining the value [of BI] to business managers. That is where the big opportunity lies for BI vendors such as Business Objects because we can show how you can deploy BI to solve real business problems, such as compliance or risk management or productivity issues, and that will really drive future adoption.

BI vendors frequently claim BI has penetrated just 15 percent of the potential market. Given the benefits it can offer why do you think adoption remains so low?

I'd suggest customers have focused on ERP [enterprise resource planning] and their core apps for the past 15 years and BI was seen as a side project. It is only now firms have relatively stable ERP systems and databases that the energy is there to look at how to use those technologies to optimise the business and that is where BI has value. I believe we are rapidly approaching an inflection point for BI adoption.

How so?

As more and more US firms adopt BI systems they are making it a competitive essential and we are seeing that influence filter through to Europe. We have one mobile phone operator as a customer that deployed our BI tools to help detect customer fraud. It saved millions of dollars through that deployment and all that money can now be invested elsewhere. The technology is making the company more competitive and as a result its rivals will be under pressure to emulate its approach.

About John Schwarz

John Schwarz was appointed chief executive of Business Objects last year.

Previously he was president and chief operating officer of security giant Symantec.

Schwarz has also worked as a senior executive at IBM, where he spent 25 years in development, manufacturing, sales and marketing positions.