hard work
>There's one fundamental truth at the end of all of this: business analysis is hard work, and anyone who claims differently is trying to sell you snake oil.
And obtaining good (as in reliable, complete, accepted throughout the organisation) data for said business analysis is even harder work.
Decision Support as described in the article sounds like home-made bound-to-create-many-problems-in-the-future-even-if-it-does-solve-problems-now speadsheets linked to miscellanous data sources. All organisations start like that, some spreadsheets are very ingenious, and all turns to custard when the original developpers leave, when spreadsheets from different sources have to be reconciliated, or when an inventory of all the company's reports is made.
And this is when one turns to real tools (and I am not talking about SQL here). I am not criticising this, it is the normal coming-of-age process. No need for big tools when a couple speadsheets will do. One the other hand, the earlier definitions and names are globally validated, the less pain when trying to make sense of all the versions of the truth this creates.
Paris because there is no hard work icon.