There are the hunkerers and the builders. Those are the two basic reactions to the recession that Jill Dychè observes. She’s a principal down at Baseline Consulting, and she reports seeing more builders.

The hunkerers “are using the economy as an excuse for a fair bit of inertia,” she emails. But the builders are using “the temporary lull” to ready themselves for the recovery. “Strategy” comes up a lot more these days.

One type of builder is revisiting infrastructure. For example, some want to re-platform their data warehouses, and others want to acquire master data management hubs. “When things get really busy again, they’re positioned to be out in front.”

A second type of builder she sees has better user functionality in mind. For example, one specialty retailer has decided to improve analytics and to make users more self-sufficient. “We’ve been helping them load new data into the data warehouse and to build in more ability to drill down.”

Naturally, many clients’ boom-time issues remain. One is the temptation to choose newer, faster and cheaper tools without having prepared the data. But that’s for a post next week.

This is one in a series of posts on the recession and BI.

What have you observed of the recession’s effects on BI? Tell me here.