Decision support systems should support a "build to think" approach by enabling people to run tests and create prototypes with their data (see last week's related blog article). I recently spoke about this with QlikTech technical advisor Elif Tutuk and I've got more of her perspectives to share with you.

Traditional BI tools do not support a build to think approach; rather, they force the opposite. With query-based BI tools, project teams spend weeks or even months "thinking to build" by creating a reporting system they hope people will use to get business insights. The resulting decision support system gives users no freedom to prototype, to come up with new ways to analyze data. With traditional BI tools, people cannot build to think?they cannot learn fast and reshape their perspectives quickly to rethink the how and why of new opportunities in the business.

Here's how QlikView supports a build to think approach:

• QlikView users load millions of rows of transactional data into memory from a variety of data sources and immediately start observing. QlikView lets users analyze granular data with no pre-calculation or pre-aggregation.
• With the associative experience, users can see relationships within the data. (See QlikView blog posts about the associative experience here, here, and here.)
• Users select values and see which ones are associated as well as those that aren't. They use selections to refine their questions.
• As they learn more, they move on to narrow their business questions, building metrics on the fly. They continue to use these metrics in charts to see patterns or catch outliers.
• They gain insight into the root cause of an outlier on, say, a region-level chart, by selecting that data point. They then create another chart (say, at a product level) to understand the details. This is what we mean by prototyping new ways of analyzing the business.
• They find unknowns hidden in the data and share these with colleagues using bookmarks and collaboration objects.
• They determine that this new way of analyzing business data is very powerful so they move it up to the QlikView Server under the auspices of IT, to be used by all.

QlikView helps decision makers build to think, and do it quickly. Users can ask a business question, build a chart to find the answer, make selections to see associations, and change the chart or create a new one instantaneously. They can test and prototype, learning all the while, without taking their eyes off the data or interrupting their thought process.

For more insights by Elif Tutuk, see the May, 2010 podcast, "Delivering High-Value Analytics" and the May, 2010 QlikView PerspeQtive, "Think About Design When Thinking of BI."