The Ultimate Success By mid-1996, BBS had deployed eight applications to the desktops of over 250 users. As a whole, the benefits of putting knowledge of the business via warehouse data directly into the hands of the businesspeople who need it far outweighed any additional costs or a longer development cycle. Users become increasingly self-sufficient. Users are not dependent on another group's knowledge, schedules, availability, or politics to obtain the information they need to do their jobs. More people can analyze more data faster and make better decisions.
Quality improves because the data search and analysis are performed closer to the decision-maker.
Because users themselves provide requirements and success metrics, customer satisfaction drives development. Businesspeople are not at the mercy of someone else's interpretation or paradigm and can ask the questions directly. Despite these benefits, some companies aren't ready for the higher costs and enormous cultural change that are staples of large application deployment. In the retailer's case, the data warehousing team's insight into its colleagues' expectations avoided costly and wasteful application development work while resulting in more advanced analysis capabilities. Even at BellSouth, other divisions continue to leverage the services of centralized help desks to give users information.