A few years ago, if you had told me I could spin up a full BI dashboard just by asking for it in plain English, I would have laughed and said, “That’s magic, and not the real kind.” Back then, BI platforms were cautiously rolling out Natural Language Processing (NLP) powered features. You could type something like “What’s Year-over-Year sales?” and get a result, as long as the metric already existed in your dashboard. But if you wanted something new, like “Show me Sales Month-over-Month,” you would hit a dead end.
Then 2023 happened.
GenAI did not just enter the scene, it exploded. Overnight, it became the Swiss Army knife of modern work, writing, coding, summarizing, and designing. Entire industries felt the tremors. Content writers, proofreaders, customer service representatives, and even developers all discovered that parts of their jobs could now be done faster than they could manage themselves. And now, business intelligence is squarely in the spotlight.
The GenAI Dashboard Revolution
Old-school BI was a grind. You consolidated data, transformed it, modeled it, and then built dashboards from scratch, complete with custom KPIs, calculated fields, and role-based permissions. BI developers earned their coffee.
Today, you can type, “Create an inventory dashboard,” and GenAI will oblige with charts, KPIs, and even calculated fields. Want to change a chart type? Add a metric? Done. It is fast, intuitive, and genuinely impressive.
So, is BI finished? At Bristlecone, we believe there’s more to the story.
Why BI Still Wins (For Now)
1
Precision Beats Pretty
GenAI is fantastic for rapid prototyping, but when business-critical decisions are at stake, “almost right” is not enough. Complex business logic, multi-layered filters, and advanced aggregations need the precision that BI tools and the experts behind them deliver every time.
2
True Insight Requires Exploration
GenAI can give you a static chart. BI lets you explore the data, drill down, filter, compare over time, and uncover patterns and root causes. A sales dip in a summary means little until you find that it traces back to one late shipment in a high-value market.
3
Governance Is Not Optional
Without governance, data is just noise. BI platforms build in governance, access control, and audit trails. GenAI does not inherently know your data rules; it is a guest in your house. Without BI as the gatekeeper, you risk misinterpretation, leakage, or breaches.
4
Business Logic Is Institutional Knowledge
KPIs like “net new revenue” are rarely universal. They are shaped by your company’s DNA. BI ensures these definitions are locked in and consistently applied. GenAI without this context is guessing, and guesses are not a basis for strategy.
5
BI Is the Operational Backbone
Every GenAI insight depends on an infrastructure of pipelines, refresh cycles, and authentication layers, work managed by BI. Without that foundation, even the smartest AI queries risk falling apart in production.
The Risks of Overlooking Business Architecture and Process Consulting
Neglecting the involvement of Business Architects and Process Consultants during an S/4HANA transformation introduces several risks — each with long-term consequences.
The Future: Partners, Not Rivals
Semantic layers are closing the gap. By centralizing business logic and governed metrics, both BI and GenAI can draw from the same source of truth. This allows GenAI to handle natural language interaction and instant prototypes, while BI ensures accuracy, scalability, and compliance.
At Bristlecone, we believe GenAI will not replace BI. It will elevate it. BI will remain the governed, collaborative, interactive decision-making layer. GenAI will be the natural language interface that makes it faster and more intuitive to get there.
Final Word: GenAI is not BI’s executioner. It is the catalyst that will push BI into its next, smarter, faster era. The winners will not be the ones who choose between them, but those who combine their strengths to unlock better, faster, and more reliable insights.
Rohith K
Lead Visualization Specialist,
Analytics & BI – Delivery
Bristlecone
