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Q8 What Are the Alternatives for Publishing BI? 371
Resistance to Hyper-Social Knowledge Sharing

Two human factors inhibit knowledge sharing in hyper-social organizations. The first is that employ-
ees can be reluctant to exhibit their ignorance. Out of fear of appearing incompetent, employees may
not submit entries to blogs or discussion groups. Such reluctance can sometimes be reduced by the
attitude and posture of managers. One strategy for employees in this situation is to provide private
media that can be accessed only by a smaller group of people who have an interest in a specific prob-
lem. Members of that smaller group can then discuss the issue in a less-inhibiting forum.
The other inhibiting human factor is employee competition. “Look,” says the top sales-
person. “I earn a substantial bonus from being the top salesperson. Why would I want to share
my sales techniques with others? I’d just be strengthening the competition.” This understand-
able perspective may not be changeable. A hyper-social KM application may be ill-suited to a
competitive group. Or the company may be able to restructure rewards and incentives to foster
sharing of ideas among employees (e.g., giving a bonus to the group that develops the best idea).
If these two factors are limiting knowledge sharing, strong management endorsement
can be effective, especially if that endorsement is followed by strong positive feedback. As we
stated in Chapter 7, concerning employee resistance, “Nothing wrong with praise or cash . . .
especially cash.”

Q8 What Are the Alternatives for Publishing BI?

The previous discussions have illustrated the power and utility of reporting, data mining, and
knowledge management BI applications. But, for BI to be actionable, it must be published to the
right user at the right time. In this question, we will discuss the primary publishing alternatives
and the functionality of BI servers, a special type of Web server.

Characteristics of BI Publishing Alternatives
Figure 9-28 lists four server alternatives for BI publishing. Static reports are BI documents that
are fixed at the time of creation and do not change. A printed sales analysis is an example of a
static report. In the BI context, most static reports are published as PDF documents.
Dynamic reports are BI documents that are updated at the time they are requested. A sales
report that is current at the time the user accessed it on a Web server is a dynamic report. In
almost all cases, publishing a dynamic report requires the BI application to access a database or
other data source at the time the report is delivered to the user.
Pull options for each of the servers in Figure 9-28 are the same. The user goes to the site,
clicks a link (or opens an email), and obtains the report. Because they’re the same for all four
server types, they are not shown in Figure 9-28.
Push options vary by server type. For email or collaboration tools, push is manual; some-
one, say a manager, an expert, or an administrator, creates an email with the report as an

Server Report Type Push Options Skill Level Needed
Email or Static Manual Low
collaboration tool
Web server Static/Dynamic Alert/RSS Low for static
High for dynamic

SharePoint Static/Dynamic Alert/RSS Low for static
Workflow High for dynamic
BI server Dynamic Alert/RSS High
Figure 9-28 Subscription
BI Publishing Alternatives