SlideShare a Scribd company logo
1 of 21
Download to read offline
1
Business Intelligence Competency Centers
Authored by: Georges H. Prouty, Teradata Sr. Industry Consultant
Abstract
Quality Business Intelligence requires a three-pronged approach comprised of (1)
people, (2) process and (3) technology. Woven into the process and technology is the
concept of integrated data. While the concept and execution of data integration and the
wise selection of technology tools and platforms is a given, many companies are still
awakening to the need of an integrated and planned approach to business intelligence
delivery. The Business Intelligence Competency Center (“BICC”) answers this call to
action by creating an organization of select individuals who share a common BI expertise
or responsibility, and provide the requisite process for BI delivery.
Introduction
While opinions vary in the business intelligence and data warehouse communities
regarding the need for data integration and centralization for the delivery of high quality
and consistent business intelligence (BI), there is a growing understanding of the need for
a centralized BICC organization to guide BI strategy and delivery across an enterprise.
As a result, companies have been implementing and formalizing BICCs at increasing
rates.
This article focuses on describing what a BICC is, its responsibilities, and the nuances of
that makes for a successful BICC.
What is a BICC?
Business intelligence is no longer an optional or accidental method for delivering critical
information and analysis to an organization; it is a vital component of a company’s
decision process, strategy and operational aptitude and responsiveness. Given the
competitive and global nature of business, along with the pressures of faster response
time and business flexibility to changing conditions, the delivery of quality business
intelligence needs to be planned, orchestrated, executed, governed, and measured.
Additionally, business intelligence efforts need to be supported within the highest levels
of an organization, encouraging the implementation and growth of a central body or
competency center1
to drive quality data warehousing and business intelligence.
A BICC answers the critical competitive, strategic and tactical information needs of an
organization by assembling and implementing a team of people who are focused and
expert on business intelligence and data warehouse delivery. It should enable innovation
on the part of the organization and the individual BI users by providing best practices and
1
A competency center approach towards specific applications, technologies or business processes have
proved themselves through time. Competency centers are not a new concept in organizations nor are they
limited to BI. Competency centers have been in existence in many organizations in a number of different
forms for a number of years. Known also as a Center of Excellence (“COE”), competency centers have
proven their ROI and advantages across a number of areas including web content management applications
and data integration.
2
leading approaches in the application of BI to solve business problems and drive value
throughout the organization. In its most basic definition, a BICC is a cross-functional, co-
located, core team of individuals that share common BI expertise and responsibilities.
To dissect the meaning of a BICC further, the key components of such an organization
are further illuminated within the name itself:
• Business Intelligence means a focus on business intelligence delivery whether it
is in the form of report, scorecards, dashboards, or analytics such as data mining
and predictive modeling. It is dependent upon, data warehousing and traditional
data warehousing tools and disciplines such as data acquisition and data model
design.
• Competency calls for a group of individuals that have both training and
demonstrated experience and certification in a particular set of tools,
development, platforms, delivery of methodologies as well as business
understanding. It is recommended that they have certifications2
to support their
practice.
• Center implies a central group of individuals who can work together as a team,
cross-train, and maintain lesson-learned documentation so that there can be
continued improvement and advancement. “Central” can have a number of
meanings further explored below such as co-located, virtually located or satellite
centric. Center also implies a central body of knowledge such as a repository for
re-usable code, solutions and lessons-learned.
Core Composition and Alignment
A BICC team should be comprised of team players who can communicate with
management and the BI community to implement a cohesive enterprise BI strategy. To
be effective within an organization, the team should be cross-functional consisting of
both business and IT professionals. Further, the team should be built with the right
expertise based on market demand and need of an organization. In a perfect world, a
BICC should be autonomous within its own independent organization. This model, as
compared to a “business owned” or “IT owned” organization, will allow the BICC
greater flexibility and effectiveness within the enterprise as well as influence. If such
independence is organizationally and financially prohibitive, the group should
organizationally fall under the business since the business intelligence needs are business
2
One of the tenants of a BICC is the development of competencies. It is based on bringing expertise
together and fostering learning and cross-training. This is particularly so as the BI and DW worlds are
constantly changing requiring members of a BICC to continually update their skills. Obtaining product or
trade certifications such as TDWI are a natural part of this training reality. Further, one of the key success
criteria of a BICC is that the users of the organization have faith in the people that comprise it. Both
product and trade certifications differentiate the BICC members from the BI user community, promoting
confidence within the enterprise. While it is true that a BICC is as good as its people--and its people are as
good as the experience and education that they bring to the table—a certification is a license to practice.
3
driven. There should also be dotted-line reporting relationships with IT to assure that IT
strategies, process, protocol and methodology are intact.
BICC Technologies, Functional Areas & Skills
Within the definition of BI, the team has expertise in a number of areas of data
warehousing and information delivery. Such expertise can include some or all of the
following traditional BI technologies, functions and skills:
• Business intelligence tools and platforms
• Analytical intelligence (data mining, predictive modeling)
• Data-centered application development
• Implementation consulting of key BI and DW technologies
• BI delivery (including reporting, scorecards and dashboards creation)
• BI delivery consulting including BI architecture
• Semantic data model design disciplines
• Semantic data access implementation
• Project management and delivery
• Process formulation and execution
• Technology support
• BI best-practices
Further, the BICC should have an in-depth knowledge of an enterprise’s data and
business.
As the BI delivery is only as good as the data warehouse, data quality and data
integration that feed it, a successful and comprehensive BICC should also have
responsibility for (directly or indirectly) or influence (through consulting and advocacy)
the following DW technologies, skills and practices as follows:
• DW delivery
• DW architecture
• Extract, transform and load (“ETL”) technologies and practice
• Logical and physical data model design disciplines
• Physical data access implementation
• DW technology support
• Master data management (“MDM”)
• Metadata management
Finally, as Business Intelligence can be no better than the quality of the data, as derived
or influenced through governing bodies, principals, policies, standards, and data quality
initiatives, a BICC should have influence (but not responsibility) over the following
areas:
• Data quality (“DQ”)
• Data governance and stewardship
4
Benefits and Purposes of a BICC
The benefits and purposes of a BICC implementation are numerous. Some of the key
benefits include:
• Best practices
• Operational efficiencies
• Data warehouse and data governance (advocacy and consulting)
• Data integration roadmap, strategies and implementation
• Budgeting strategies
• Speed to market & flexibility
• Standardization
• Risk reduction
• Education and marketing
• Return on investment (“ROI”)
• Total cost of ownership (“TCO”)
• Project delivery improvements
• Quality improvements
• Community and commonality of business and IT
• Accessibility
• Technology and application support
• Vendor management
Best Practices
Providing and standardizing best practices for BI is a critical function of a BICC. The
pursuit of BI and DW standards is a foundational pillar of any BICC. Without best
practices, the BICC itself is vulnerable to ineffectiveness, or worse, disillusion. The very
nature of a BICC is premised on the need to standardize approach, minimize risk,
encourage re-use, influence data integration, reduce duplicity in systems, and increase
ROI. Accordingly, without such a dimension, we would not have a BICC.
Operational Efficiencies
A BICC will drive better utilization of the data warehouse by leveraging BI tools,
platforms, processes, as well as people skills. It will encourage leveraged solutions at
both an enterprise and group level and common technology stacks. It will exploit the
technologies that are selected and eliminate less effective solutions. It will reduce the
propensity of companies to purchase multiple BI tools and platforms and hopefully
eliminate shelf-ware.
5
Data Warehouse and Data Governance (Advocacy and
Consulting)
Although a BICC is focused on BI, it is recommended that it influence data warehouse
and data governance.
With respect to data warehouse governance, the BICC should make recommendations as
to how the data warehouse should be governed across an enterprise. These
recommendations should influence DW policy, governance structure and how future data
warehouse projects or changes will be selected and prioritized. Such standards are vital
to the continuing health and success of a warehouse.
With respect to data governance, again, the BICC should influence standards for data
ownership and stewardship with other participants. The business would have ownership
of the data and its stewardship, whereas the BICC would consult as to data best practices.
Data Integration Roadmap, Strategies, and Implementation
A BICC minimizes the number of business solutions and processes across an
organization, and maximize the effectiveness of a standard set of solutions. A BICC will
focus on data integration as a path to the effective utilization of data as a corporate asset.
It will chart a course and plan for data integration across an enterprise. Such work is vital
in improving the quality and depth of data intelligence, as well as the speed of delivery
and reduction in costs
Providing integration strategies is such a vital part of successful data warehouse and
business intelligence programs within an organization, that some organizations actually
create a separate integration strategy competency center. The integration of data and
systems is fundamental to the success of BI delivery. Bad integration (or lack thereof)
increases costs and reduces the likelihood of success.
A common death nail to successful BI is a lack of data integration. Many organizations
today are faced with disparate data marts, multiple versions of the truth, and inconsistent
and/or untimely ETL processes. This degraded state of affairs is further enhanced by
political realities within an organization’s structure causing stove pipe views of data and
redundancy in development efforts, a product versus a customer perspective, isolated
legacy systems that thwart retirement, data center stasis, and data hoarders who abhor any
concept of data democratization.
A BICC should be charged with breaking down these encumbrances and silos through (1)
vision, (2) education of the organization and (3) through promulgation of best practices
and standards.
Budgeting Strategies
One of the great difficulties facing BI and DW initiatives is the problems of navigating
budgets of multiple LOBs within an organization to accomplish enterprise strategies.
6
When there is no central budget for BI and DW initiatives, organizations have to
scrounge and negotiate for budget and establish allocation schemes between LOBs.
Many times, a BI or DW project that involves multiple LOBs is started as one of the
LOBs blinks, and agrees to absorb the costs upfront.
A BICC should work towards establishing a shared budget for its services. This budget
should likely be established by a governing committee within the organization. This will
keep the BICC focused on strategy, rather than be hobbled by a companies budgeting
limitations.
Speed to Market & Flexibility
The practices, techniques, tools and disciplines employed by the BICC will improve
solution time to market and work to support business intelligence-driven value within the
organization. Additionally, a BICC will allow for greater flexibility towards solutions
based on business need.
No time in history has the business world been so fast-paced and competitive. As a
necessity, business needs to be nimble, flexible, and responsive to the demands it is
facing. A key reason for business intelligence is to answer the strategic and tactical needs
of the business world. The BICC can assist in this need through:
o Reusing solutions
o Depth of data knowledge
o Facilitating and encouraging collaboration between the business and IT
o Maturity and experience of staff dedicated to business intelligence and
data warehousing
o Shared vision
o Commitment of BICC to education and certification of its staff and BI
users.
o Centralization and/or integration of data
o Sandbox environments of BI and DW tools and platforms that allow
prototyping and iterative or radical development methodologies
Standardization
A BICC will identify and implement best practices across an enterprise as well as select
appropriate BI technology to reduce complexity and hold-back or reduce costs. Cost
reduction will be seen in the areas of full time employees (FTEs) assigned to BI roles
including support and product maintenance.
Risk Reduction
Risk will be reduced through the effective use of information sharing, re-use libraries,
best practices, standardization, and learning through knowledge management supporting
capture and reuse of lessons-learned.
7
Education and Marketing
This is one of the key responsibilities of a BICC. While marketing and education is
usually not stated in the same breath, they are closely related and utterly inseparable for a
BICC.
A pivotal goal of a BICC is to provide education to BI users and management which
encourages best practices and BI maturity within the organization. The enterprise will be
more productive as well as informed through the education and training efforts of a
BICC. Such benefits will include:
• Quicker maturity of a BICC due to co-location, shared expertise and cross
training.
• Faster acceptance and effective use by BI users due to a BICC’s training
programs that are tailored to the company’s needs
• Accessibility of in-house training
• Better overall maturity of an organization and acceptance and need of analytics
and active data warehousing
• Better sharing of BI and DW solutions across businesses and between IT and the
business.
• Better understanding of the value of BI and DW.
A BICC’s charter is to educate the business users of BI best practices on what tools and
platforms exist and the solutions they can offer, on cutting edge technologies, on maturity
of BI practices, on how to use and develop on BI tools and ultimately on the importance
of all of these and the BICC. In essence, they are the in-house champion of BI. A BICC
will communicate on any of these levels, in a number of different ways:
• Training Classes. A BICC will work with the vendor to set-up training classes
for both business users and IT developers. In many cases, the BICC will
conduct the training itself, customized to an enterprise.
• User Groups. A BICC should set-up and facilitate regularly scheduled user
group meetings wherein both business and IT users can exchange wins, lessons-
learned, and techniques on specific technologies or vendor products. This is
also the correct forum for where the BICC can keep everyone up-to-date on new
developments within a set of products and/or within the user community and
enterprise. The user groups can be organized around specific products or
around subject areas. Either way, this is critical education and marketing to
support the BICC efforts as well as successful practices across the enterprise.
• Lunch and Learns. User groups tend to be held less frequently while lunch and
learns can be held based on need. These sessions tend to focus specifically on
products or techniques that a sub-set of the BI community needs.
• BI Annual Conference. Another excellent marketing event that can be focused
more on Senior Management is the use of an annual internal BI conference.
Typically, such sessions celebrate wins over the past year and discuss needs and
approaches to the coming year. A good practice is to include talks by Sr.
Management, users, and vendors both already in place or proposed.
8
Return on Investment (“ROI”)
A decision to purchase business intelligence or data warehousing tools and platforms
should not come lightly. The capital investment involved in the purchase of business
intelligence and data warehousing solutions can be significant, as well as the associated
costs of professional services, staffing, training, infrastructure costs, and maintenance.
There are also the costs that can be calculated and incurred from failed projects, missed
delivery dates, application down-time, tactical and strategic decisions based on faulty
data, duplication of systems and development work, duplication of code due to a lack of
reusability, duplication of errors due to the reuse of bad code or design, and many other
reasons.
A BICC can eliminate and/or reduce the potential losses and costs that can occur in many
BI or DW implementations. Further, a positive ROI can be easily demonstrated when
policies, procedures, and best practices are implemented by a BICC. One can quickly see
how some of the costs in the above paragraph can quickly add-up, especially as the
propensity of a business intelligence or data warehouse solution will grow in scale
overtime, multiplying the costs.
Further, a BICC will be able to implement solutions that have been carefully crafted from
the business needs through cross-functional team collaboration and consulting, best
practices and standardization. Over time, solutions will have a faster time to market as
the BICC matures, making the business more flexible to changing business and market
conditions.
It is important to mention, however, that the creation of a BICC does not come without a
price tag. There is an initial investment that a company will need to make in staff and
training as well as other hard and soft costs.3
Even when figuring in this outlay in a ROI
calculation, the BICC will still demonstrate a positive return on investment as long as the
BICC is effective within the organization. The BICC management will be responsible to
demonstrate these savings to senior management.
Total Cost of Ownership (“TCO”)
For many of the same reasons in the ROI section above, the total cost of ownership of
business intelligence and data warehouse tools and platforms decrease overtime because
of a BICC for many of the following reasons:
• Reduction in duplicative coding through the use of reusable solutions.
3
Staffing costs can be significant upfront. It will not always be possible to “re-deploy” staff in traditional
IT roles that are trained solely in developing and implementing transaction systems. Many times, the
creation of a BICC will require outside hiring and recruitment so that the right level of BI.DW skills and
experience are utilized. A BICC will only be as good as its people and those people will need to
differentiate themselves from traditional IT delivery.
9
• Centralized license management and pooling, reducing unnecessary purchases
and eliminating unneeded maintenance. The BICC’s oversight of licensing
ensures that the right licensing will be given to the user based on ability and
needs.
• Reduction in the number of people to deliver project implementations
• Reduction in vendor training where the BICC can provide alternative training
• Reduction in the number of FTEs to support implementations due to best
practices, centralized alignment with vendor support, and the reduction of help
desk issues
• Reduction in the number of independent data mart implementations.
• Reduction in infrastructure complexity
• Savings and profit arising out of strategic and tactical decisions on sound data
Project Delivery Improvements
The BICC promises substantial project delivery advantages because of commonality to
approach, a customized development life cycle for BI and DW, higher quality
requirements and testing due to a business and IT collaborative approach, and access to
lessons learned repositories for the mitigation of future project risk. The benefits can be
demonstrated in:
o A greater likelihood of success
o Faster time to market
o Reduction in project risk
o Containment of unnecessary changes due to better requirements
o Better consistency with estimates
o More robust solutions because of team co-development
Therefore, an important staffing consideration for a BICC is the employment of
experienced BI and DW project managers. This is an important consideration as business
intelligence and data warehousing project management is a specialty within the field of
project management.
Quality Improvements
It follows that the BICC would deliver higher quality solutions because of the team’s
experience, training, access to lessons learned and reuse repositories and business and IT
collaboration. Quality is further assured by the BICC for the following additional
reasons:
o Shared data vision
o Cohesive strategy
o Design standards
o Packaged approach
o Architecture strategy
o Structure for consistent answers
o Consistent testing practices
o Data governance standards and implementation
10
o Data warehouse governance standards and implementation
o Data integration efforts
o Data quality efforts
Community and Commonality of Business and IT
A BICC, if successful, can turn a disparate organization with multiple lines of business,
political outposts, and a dysfunctional IT and Business relationship into a community of
BI users focused on common solutions to business problems. Community is important as
a unified group will better embrace and advance some of the key goals of a BICC such as
data integration, reusability, and elimination of redundancy. Granted, this is hard to
achieve and will take persistence and drive to overcome organizational obstacles, but a
BICC has some valuable approaches it can use to move an organization in this direction.
They include:
o Marketing value through successful projects and implementations
o Demonstrating improved ROI and TCO
o Launching of internal user groups
o Lunch and learn events
o Successful training demonstrated in quality utilization of tools and
platforms
o Demonstration of senior management support through internal BI events.
There is no other place in the business world requiring a greater joining of forces of IT
and the business as there is in data warehousing and business intelligence. With
traditional OLTP (online transaction processing) delivery, the business is only
sufficiently involved with the requirements, testing, change management and sign-off
phases of an application. There is little to no involvement by the business after an
application has been placed into production, unless issues arise or in the planning of the
next releases. With data warehousing and business intelligence, the business and IT need
to be tied at the hip not only for the duration of a project delivery, but continually through
the life of a data warehouse or BI implementation. Data, and the changing and
competitive business environment that it is used in, are two key reasons demanding a
unique business and IT relationship.
Data
Data used by BI is paramount and long-lived; it is vital in making decisions that could
have long term impact on a company. According, the data needs to be accurate,
integrated, understood, refined, accessible, and available so that business questions can
be answered, business opportunities addressed, regulatory bodies responded to, and
strategies accomplished.
Traditionally, the business of IT is to provide systems that support or access the data
while the business understands the data at an atomic level and is able to harvest it for
value. Since an optimal BICC is a mixture of business and IT members and specialties,
11
the diverse needs and value of data are addressed. Within a BICC organization, the
business members can articulate the business user needs to the IT members for the
delivery of a solution.
Changing Business Needs
Today, there is a greater urgency to make strategic and tactical decisions to stay
competitive. Solutions need to be nimble and change is a certainty. The information used
to make business decisions needs to be precise and highly available, the data needs to be
of a high quality, complete and integrated, the data model needs to be flexible to allow
for changes and additional data, and the delivery mechanism needs to be flexible and
competent. Based on this, there is a very high standard that needs to be upheld,
answerable only through a strong and consistent collaboration between the business and
IT.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an important win for an organization and is an integral principal of a
BICC. A BICC can influence or facilitate accessibility of data and BI solutions through:
o Centralized assistance and support
o Centralized project, product and best practices information
o Delivery of self-service capability
o Education
Selection of Technology Tools and Platforms
Without a unified approach to spending for data warehousing and business intelligence
tools and platforms, an enterprise can quickly become smitten with a number of products
and solutions, increasing ownership costs and complicating delivery of solutions. In fact,
many companies today have an assortment of half used, improperly used, or un-used
(shelf ware) BI and DW/data mart/appliance solutions. A BICC can provide guidance or
set standards on the BI and DW/data mart/appliance purchases that a company can make,
eliminating or reducing wasteful spending, enhancing the integration of systems, and
speeding delivery to the business.
A BICC can and should also make recommendations for technology stacks that are tuned
and optimized for a particular BI tool or platform. Many times little thought is given to
how a BI application should be deployed. The BICC should be charged with working
with the BI vendor as well as those responsible for a company’s infrastructure and
middleware, to arrive at recommended architecture or stacks for a BI application. This
will save time and money, as well as reduce risk.
Finally, a BICC can assist with the selection of the right tools, platforms and architecture
for the right job, improving, performance, efficiency and speeds time to market for new
functionality
12
Technology and Application Support
While much of a BICC is relegated to consulting, project execution, and providing best
practices, a portion of a BICC should have responsibility for technology and application
support. Such support may be across all levels of support or it may just handle Level 3 or
critical support requests. This will depend on the funding and make-up of the BICC. As
a base strategy, however, a BICC will have a vested interest in seeing the BI application
selections be successful in an organization, and therefore will want to work with the
vendor to resolve critical or level 3 support requests as well as influence fixes and
enhancements in future releases.
Vendor Oversight
One of the difficulties for a company, as well as it BI vendors, is having multiple contact
points across an enterprise. A typical scenario for many companies is that one BI vendor
will receive multiple requests for purchasing, technical support and product information
across multiple areas of an organization. This is problematic at best, as there are no
economies of scale or consistent messaging between a company and vendor.
A BICC should be the focal point for the vendor relationship for a number of reasons:
• Re-use of support solutions to common problems increasing economies of scale
• One voice to the vendor for consistent messaging
• Potential reduction in duplicative purchasing
• License management
• Shared responsibility with IT and the contracting organization for vendor and
product selection
The BICC should be focused on each of these areas out of the starting gate—all are
fundamental to a BICC’s success.
A BICC’s Core Competencies
As is the case with a BICC’s core purposes, there are numerous BICC core competencies
that need to be considered as part of a BICC:
• Business intelligence consulting
• Data warehousing consulting
• Master data management
• Metadata management
• Project delivery
• Data quality
• ETL
The BICC should be focused on each of these areas although, not necessarily out of the
gate. Competencies can be added as a BICC matures. These specific dimensions are
addressed further as follows:
13
Business Intelligence Consulting
There a number of reasons why there should be a strong and influential BI consulting arm
to a BICC. First, business intelligence needs are constantly changing: there is a constant
need for further and frequent business intelligence enhancements and new deployments
to meet new business challenges. A collaborative and iterative approach needs to be
available to the client to successfully meet these challenges. Second, BI solutions to these
challenges are not always clear. It is difficult for the business or IT alone to be able to
formulate requirements that are responsive as well as strategic. Thirdly, the solution
needs to be cross-functional. This is fundamental to good BI as the approach towards
robust BI is cross-functional between the business and IT. Such collaboration creates
better planned and more robust solutions and strategies. It can never be just a business or
an IT solution. A consultative approach is the right approach to meet this challenge and
will achieve better value and ROI for an organization.
Contrast this with a typical application group that will generally work with business
requirements created by a business with little or no input by the IT application
development group. While this is typical and workable for many typical types of
application development projects, this type of scenario simply will not work well for BI.
It is important to note that in some BICC operations, BICCs are run like an internal BI
consulting group, actually vying for engagements across the enterprise, and competing
against external vendors. This is an extreme case of the consulting model and a more
viable solution for companies is to allow a cross-functional consulting approach to
prevail in the development of solutions to meet business needs through mandate. In fact,
as the approach can be much different than a typical software development life-cycle
(“SDLC”) a custom development life cycle for BI should be established by the BICC or
an enterprise PMO.
Data Warehousing Consulting
Data warehousing consulting is another foundational practice of a BICC. It is part-and-
parcel of business intelligence and cannot, and should not, be separated out into its own
competency group. Because BI and DW are so connected and inter-related, it is very
difficult to address each of them separately.
Consulting for data warehousing is important for a number of reasons as follows:
• Significant business need analysis needs to be completed. A consulting approach
will determine need through interviews and make recommendations as to
solutions based on need.
• Data warehouses need to be planned in design and architecture. Data warehouses
need to be flexible in their design to accommodate future business needs.
Business and IT need to work in a collaborative manner to achieve this flexibility.
• Data warehousing projects are a process, not an end-to-themselves. There is a
need for continual collaboration, planning, design and execution (both logically
and physically) to meet the maturing needs of a warehouse environment. Again,
14
consulting is the best method to draw out the best results from both IT and the
business.
Dimensions for data warehousing consulting to both IT and the business can include, but
not be limited to:
• Architecture
• Data Integration
• Data Modeling
• Enterprise and active data warehousing
• Extract, Transport and Load (“ETL”)
• Security and access
• Query Management
• Backup
• Failover
• Tuning
• Load Management
• SLAs
Master Data Management
One of the practice areas of a BICC should be MDM. MDM is not only an emerging
technology that is at the forefront of many CIO and CEOs agendas, it is a recommended
practice for producing solid business intelligence.
A MDM practice is called for as MDM involves more than just technology
considerations. Inherent in MDM are the concepts of data integration data governance,
two key components of BI best practices.
Metadata Management
Metadata management is a key BI best practice requiring a BICC competency as soon as
the BICC is able to offer it. Many BI implementations are unable to succeed because
metadata solutions and procedures are not established, standardized or implemented
across an organization. This makes it difficult for the users to get the highest level of
benefit from its BI solutions and data warehouse and its lack breeds discontent across the
BI user community.
Project Delivery
As is the case with many aspects of business intelligence and data warehousing, project
management skills are unique, requiring project management specialization.
Consideration should be given to formulating a special SDLC for BI and DW project
delivery. Additionally, a BICC should employ project managers who are skilled in BI
and DW delivery to reduce project risk and increase the likelihood of success.
15
Data Quality
One of the key reasons that users loose confidence in a business intelligence solution is
that the quality of the data is suspect. For this reason, a BICC needs to add a data quality
competency to its repertoire. Data quality strategies, tools and methodologies are now
mainstream: the tools should be a requirement (or at least a strong consideration) for any
quality DW or BI solution. It makes good sense for a BICC to address this important
aspect of BI and DW delivery for any project engagement, and as well, for it to advocate
data quality for the enterprise.
ETL
ETL is a foundational BI competency that should not be taken lightly. A major amount
of the time and cost of any BI or DW delivery is in the ETL portion of a project.
Accordingly, ETL can benefit from solid standards in its execution, and through the
deployment of a re-use library. Typically, however, many organizations allow multiple
areas in the organization to have ETL developers providing solutions in isolation. This is
particularly true in organizations that have multiple data mart solutions, or where there
are data, organizational or political silos. A good BICC will identify this problem
quickly, and encourage standards and user groups to foster practices that are less costly.
Are all BICCs Created Equal?
BICCs are not created equally. There is no definitive structure of a BICC, and its success
and design will ultimately depend on the organization that it is serving. Some of the
forms that a BICC could take (some better than others) include:
• Centralized organization and/or shared services
• Decentralized BICCs
• Mandated or optional use
• Pure consulting or owns it all
Centralized Organization and/or Shared Services
A centralized approach is the most advantageous for a BICC and the company that
supports it. For true economies of scale, a BICC should provide guidance, support and
standards for an entire organization. Such an approach will encourage clear business
intelligence and data warehouse success criteria such as data integration, governance,
data stewardship, reusability, and cost containment.
A shared services model is a good example of a successful centralized mode for a BICC.
In such a model, the benefits and the costs of the BICC are shared across the various
business units within an enterprise. Data and governance standards are more easily
adopted and implemented and strategic purchasing of BI platforms and tools are not
duplicated.
16
Politically, and in a perfect world, such an organization should not be owned either by
singularly by IT or the business. There should either be a joint ownership or a separate
corporate area that is created. Admittedly, feasibility for either option will be difficult.
Decentralized Organizations
A decentralized BICC is a typical response in a decentralized organization where the
strategic lines of business (“LOBs) call the shots for their own respective IT solutions,
and where resources are owned by the LOB. This is not optimal, as many of the
advantages of a centralized solution are lost. Although the structure may provide benefit
to the business in creating a more customized BI structure, the economies of scale are lost
as the enterprise as a whole will tend to have duplicative systems and support structures.
Worse, the data models will be independent, and the data will not be integrated.
Transformation of data to feed the corporate entities, (e.g., general ledger, HR, legal, etc)
will be costly and more prone to error. The concept of data governance would be highly
watered-down. If any central or corporate team exists4
its influence will likely be
minimal.
Mandated or Optional Use
For best results, a BICC needs to have authority in an organization. For a decentralized
organization where the word enterprise has become a naughty word, a BICC will not
have central authority over an enterprise.
The rule of thumb for the optional use of such a BICC is influence. Sometimes an
influencing party can have a great impact on an organization’s BI and DW decisions and
solutions. To be effective at influencing, however, the BICC should have:
• High quality and certified staff that garners the respect of the LOBs
• Political influence
• Consultative model (you will likely not be able to provide any other services such
as project management, etc.)
• Successful output demonstrating value
• Metrics demonstrating value
• Great ideas
Most importantly, this type of organization has to be ahead of the curve. It needs to have
vision and strategy, investing its energies on the direction where it should influence an
organization to drive to. It should already have know-how before the enterprise demands
a new technology or approach.
4
Some organizations have a satellite model for a BICC, where each LOB has its own BICC but there is a
Corporate or Shared Services BICC that acts as a conduit to the satellite BICCs. The use of the corporate
BICC is many times optional.
17
Pure Consulting or Consulting and Ownership
Another model decision is whether a BICC should own the data warehouse and business
intelligence stack. Obviously, this will depend on how a company is organized. In a
centralized model, it is unlikely that there would be a plausible group to hand over the
ownership of the BI or DW solutions to; in a decentralized scenario, there will likely be
more pressure by the LOBs to own their platforms and environments and for a shared
BICC to provide consulting only. It is just as plausible, however, for the shared BICC to
own the environment, tools, and platform. This is obviously the better option, as it will
foster data integration, reuse and the many other key benefits of a centralized BICC.
What Makes a BICC Successful?
Regardless of the organizational form of a BICC in an organization and the pros and cons
of each, there are specific aspects of a BICC that will encourage its success. These
aspects are as follows:
• Support by CxOs
• Centralized organization and/or shared services supportive
• Experience and talent
• Inclusion and bridging of business and IT
• Centralization of the team
• Cross training
• Sandbox environment
• Lessons learned repository
• Metrics supporting success
• Internal marketing
These specifics are addressed more fully below.
Support by CxOs
A critical component of a BICC is executive sponsorship within an organization. A
BICC imposes a different operational model on an organization—a model that
encourages centralization of BI efforts for the enterprise as well as a cross-functional (the
business and IT) approach towards BI. The model also establishes authority for
implementing a centralized process/standards making body that amongst other things,
may impose dashboard standards, and control over ad hoc queries, or influence data
models, data and data warehouse governance. Given the political nature of such a
structure and the reality of its standards promulgation or influence, BICCs will have
difficulty succeeding and becoming influential within an organization if they are created
organically.
Experience and Talent
Any BICC that is worth its salt will employ very talented and experienced individuals. A
BICC will only be as good as its people so a BICC requires investment in people and
skills. The individuals should be able to provide consulting on any of the technologies,
18
products or business needs that is germane to the organization. The individuals should be
respected by non BICC members across the enterprise. They should be able to support
the products that they have endorsed, as well as the projects that they have implemented.
The individuals should be team spirited, focusing on the customers needs. They should
be willing to be cross-trained within the group, and learn from the other team members.
They should not stubbornly hang-on to traditional IT practices involving transactional
systems.
Inclusion of Business and IT
Although a BICC could be workable without cross-functional membership of IT and the
business, it will ultimately be limited in its ability to influence one side or the other and
will be less effective in its solutions. Business intelligence and data warehousing, by their
very nature, is a two sided coin. Whereas many IT areas of responsibility require little
long-term involvement with the business, business intelligence requires constant data and
solution modifications, solutions as well as stewardship. This is especially true when
considering a BI maturity model—while traditional reporting is created, batched and
maintained, analytics such as data mining require constant collaboration and immediacy
between IT and the business.
Cross Training
One of the great benefits of a BICC is the creation of a team of professionals who have
access to each others’ knowledge. This presents excellent opportunities to the team for
cross-training, allowing individuals on the team to grow and take on new challenges, and
maturing the BICC.
Sandbox Environment
A highly recommended aspect of any BICC is to implement a product sandbox that
allows BI users in the organization to (1) contrast and compare BI/DW products when
considering solutions to a business problem, (2) create prototypes of business solutions,
and (3) foster BU user training.
A sandbox is essentially a test or development environment, separate and apart from
production or the BI stack as a whole. A sandbox will typically contain test or lab level
licenses of products that are endorsed or standardized by the BICC. Such products could
include BI tools as well as ETL, MDM, DW, DQ and custom applications. Experience in
organizations with sandboxes has shown that not only is the sandbox a great attractor to
the BICC as well as a collaborative tool, but that the prototyping in the sandbox allows
for better, faster and more successful BI solutions.
Lessons Learned and Re-Use Repositories
This is a key benefit of a BICC. A BICC that is providing services, consulting, and
product services across the enterprise will quickly build experience that can be placed in
a repository of lessons learned and best practices as well as code snippets that can be
stored in a re-use library. A well developed repository will speed solution time and
reduce risk. A centralized BICC would provide the biggest benefit as it assumes a
19
consistency of BI and DW architecture and tuning. In a de-centralized model, the
number of variables, lessons learned and coded solutions will grow in proportion to the
variability of the infrastructure. In such a case, a single repository will be less likely and
the ROI would be reduced.
Metrics Supporting Success
As every organization is dynamic, and its approach to organization and solutions can
change over time, it is critical that the BICC maintain its own set of metrics to
demonstrate ROI and worth to the organization. A BICC should be operated as a
business that needs to prove its worth and provide intelligence about its efforts. An
internal dashboard that is made available to the BI users and Sr. Management should be
deployed by the BICC to track its successes and financial benefits to the organization.
Internal Marketing & Training
Internal marketing goes hand-in-hand with metrics supporting the success of the BICC.
The BICC team should include individuals that can communicate to all levels of an
organization, continually re-marketing the benefits of the BICC. This is vital as there
will be a lot of pressure brought to bear on the organization as a whole to try new
products and processes that espouse greater benefit than what is already being provided
to the organization. This is why, as well, that a continual education program should go
along with the marketing efforts. Well educated and BI users will tend to support the
solutions of the BICC.
Some of the techniques employed by BICC in this area include the following:
• User Groups.
• Lunch and Learn Sessions
Getting Started
To get started, the key is garnering support for a BICC across the organization. For many
organizations, the time to start and garner support is simply a matter of timing and DW
and BI maturity. Unfortunately as well, the right amount of pain that an organization is
feeling relative to their DW and BI solutions can also foster success in starting a BICC.
A typical starting place for many BICCs is obtaining a champion in a Sr. Management
level position within the organization. It is hard if not impossible to get a BICC off the
ground, with success and longevity, based on a grass-roots effort. From an organizational
standpoint, the BICC will meet less resistance politically, if the champion is from the
business, rather than IT. Many times, however, it is IT that plants the seeds for a BICC
with the business champion.
The last key point is to start small, and build upon your successes. It probably does not
need to be said, but a BICC’s credibility will be built on successes and not failures. If a
20
BICC takes on to many dimensions of responsibility early on, they will become
unfocused and will likely falter. The BICC should first focus on resolving a key BI
business issue, and build a plan to address that and similar issues.
Immediate focuses of a BICC should be on data quality, stewardship and governance if
an organization is not strong in those areas. These will always be political issues as well
as technological issues. The political aspects should be the first focus, as important
political issues such as data stewardship and data “ownership” can be some of the most
difficult challenges a BICC will face. A BICC will have difficulty if it simply starts
focusing on technology out of the gate.
It is important as well for a BICC to demonstrate wins in its first year or operation. Such
wins will support the BICC’s existence and feed positive metrics about a BICC’s worth
to an organization.
Summary
The creation and implementation of a BICC is an absolute necessity in today’s
challenging and competitive business world. As business now has global breadth,
competition has escalated, and the need for an organization to be more nimble and
flexible as to the business course is an absolute requirement. Not only do business
decisions need to be made quickly—not only do they need to be based on reliable as well
as predictive information—companies need the flexibility to adjust their direction based
on changing conditions and information. They can no longer afford to hold onto
decisions that worked in the past or base decisions merely on gut feel.
Further, promulgation of even more stringent and invasive regulations on various
industries is demanding that business focus on data compliance and data transparency.
Examples of such regulations include Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II.
Now, more than anytime in the past, data plays a key role in business organizations. Data
can no longer be left to chance, and business intelligence and data warehouse decisions
and practices need to be carefully choreographed by a strong organization comprised of
IT and the business, with specific and proven data warehousing, business intelligence,
and analytical intelligence skills.
A BICC brings together the business and IT into a combined organization dedicated to
the delivery of accurate, complete and timely intelligence to be used in a variety of
business and analytical applications. To be successful, the BICC:
• Must be supported if not mandated by all levels in the organization
• Include co-located business and IT experts and consultants in DW and BI
• Have influence over data and data warehouse governance and data stewardship
• Have competencies in BI, DW, ETL, integration strategies, metadata, MDM, data
quality, project management
21
• Have responsibility for, or be able to strongly influence selection of, DW and BI
solutions and applications
• Have strong communication and consulting skills
• Provide consistent and frequent education to the organization on best practices,
technologies and successes
• Provide strong marketing on the value of the practice to the organization
• Create and utilize re-use strategies
• Promulgate and distribute best practices. Monitor implementation.
• Measure success of the BICC and demonstrate value
Of key importance, the hardest challenge that a BICC will likely face is political, not
technical. Strong political support from Sr. Management is critical to a BICC’s success.
Strong marketing skills and metrics that demonstrate BICC value or ROI are all
necessary for survivability over the long haul. Finally, a BICC’s credibility will be based
on its successes. A BICC should carefully plan out what it addresses, and grow
incrementally based on its successes.

More Related Content

What's hot

Recruitment and selection in talent management
Recruitment and selection in talent managementRecruitment and selection in talent management
Recruitment and selection in talent managementSeta Wicaksana
 
Human resource management theories
Human resource management theoriesHuman resource management theories
Human resource management theoriesSara Aljanabi
 
HR / Talent Analytics
HR / Talent AnalyticsHR / Talent Analytics
HR / Talent AnalyticsAkshay Raje
 
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition Models
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition ModelsStrategic Guide to Talent Acquisition Models
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition ModelsCielo
 
Human resource management ppt 2
Human resource management  ppt 2Human resource management  ppt 2
Human resource management ppt 2Sameer Ahmed
 
Information Technology in Human Resource Management
Information Technology in Human Resource Management Information Technology in Human Resource Management
Information Technology in Human Resource Management Harish Bramhaver
 
Strategic Human Resource Management
Strategic Human Resource ManagementStrategic Human Resource Management
Strategic Human Resource ManagementChanima Bhattacharya
 
Harvard competency dictionary final pdf
Harvard competency dictionary final pdfHarvard competency dictionary final pdf
Harvard competency dictionary final pdfNipu Tu Ayu Paramita
 
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource management
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource managementUnit 1 perspectives in human resource management
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource managementGanesha Pandian
 
An introduction to HR analytics
An introduction to HR analyticsAn introduction to HR analytics
An introduction to HR analyticsAjay Ohri
 
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case Study
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case StudyHR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case Study
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case StudyEnwisen Software
 
Human Resource Planning
Human Resource Planning Human Resource Planning
Human Resource Planning SadiahAhmad
 
Future of HR 2022 Slides
Future of HR 2022 SlidesFuture of HR 2022 Slides
Future of HR 2022 SlidesThe RBL Group
 
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?Hrhelp board
 
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHub
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHubDigital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHub
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHubRichardNowack
 

What's hot (20)

Recruitment and selection in talent management
Recruitment and selection in talent managementRecruitment and selection in talent management
Recruitment and selection in talent management
 
Ch 1 shrm
Ch 1 shrmCh 1 shrm
Ch 1 shrm
 
Human resource management theories
Human resource management theoriesHuman resource management theories
Human resource management theories
 
HR / Talent Analytics
HR / Talent AnalyticsHR / Talent Analytics
HR / Talent Analytics
 
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition Models
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition ModelsStrategic Guide to Talent Acquisition Models
Strategic Guide to Talent Acquisition Models
 
Human resource management ppt 2
Human resource management  ppt 2Human resource management  ppt 2
Human resource management ppt 2
 
HR ANALYTICS
HR ANALYTICS HR ANALYTICS
HR ANALYTICS
 
Information Technology in Human Resource Management
Information Technology in Human Resource Management Information Technology in Human Resource Management
Information Technology in Human Resource Management
 
Strategic Human Resource Management
Strategic Human Resource ManagementStrategic Human Resource Management
Strategic Human Resource Management
 
Harvard competency dictionary final pdf
Harvard competency dictionary final pdfHarvard competency dictionary final pdf
Harvard competency dictionary final pdf
 
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource management
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource managementUnit 1 perspectives in human resource management
Unit 1 perspectives in human resource management
 
An introduction to HR analytics
An introduction to HR analyticsAn introduction to HR analytics
An introduction to HR analytics
 
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case Study
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case StudyHR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case Study
HR Shared Services: Kellogg's Case Study
 
Human Resource Planning
Human Resource Planning Human Resource Planning
Human Resource Planning
 
Future of HR 2022 Slides
Future of HR 2022 SlidesFuture of HR 2022 Slides
Future of HR 2022 Slides
 
Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management
 
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?
What is Job Analysis meaning in HRM?
 
Workforce planning
Workforce planningWorkforce planning
Workforce planning
 
HRM -- Philosophies
HRM -- PhilosophiesHRM -- Philosophies
HRM -- Philosophies
 
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHub
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHubDigital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHub
Digital HR I Best Practices I NuggetHub
 

Similar to Business Intelligence Competency Centers

How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and AnalyticsHow BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and AnalyticsCognizant
 
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road map
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road mapBusiness intelligence competency centre strategy and road map
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road mapOmar Khan
 
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...Waseem Bari
 
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESA
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESACOMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESA
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESAUTPL
 
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi Wp
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi WpDynamics Ax 2009 Bi Wp
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi WpUTPL
 
White paper : the top 10 trends in business intelligence
White paper  : the top 10 trends in business intelligenceWhite paper  : the top 10 trends in business intelligence
White paper : the top 10 trends in business intelligenceJean-Michel Franco
 
Smart comp in 21st centry
Smart comp in 21st centrySmart comp in 21st centry
Smart comp in 21st centryMuhammad Shoaib
 
Enterprise digital Labs
Enterprise digital LabsEnterprise digital Labs
Enterprise digital LabsZinnov
 
Enterprise digital labs
Enterprise digital labsEnterprise digital labs
Enterprise digital labsZinnov
 
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdf
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdfData Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdf
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdfMaveric Systems
 
Business Intelligence for Data SCience Students
Business Intelligence for Data SCience StudentsBusiness Intelligence for Data SCience Students
Business Intelligence for Data SCience Studentssmartguykrish11
 
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...Jamal_Shah
 
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy Development
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy DevelopmentAnalytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy Development
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy DevelopmentVijay Raj
 
Beetra BI Practice
Beetra BI PracticeBeetra BI Practice
Beetra BI Practicesajidpathan
 
Business Intelligence Module 4
Business Intelligence Module 4Business Intelligence Module 4
Business Intelligence Module 4Home
 
Application business intelligence in railways
Application business intelligence in railwaysApplication business intelligence in railways
Application business intelligence in railwaysVoice Malaysia
 

Similar to Business Intelligence Competency Centers (20)

How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and AnalyticsHow BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
How BI Competency Centers Drive Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
 
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road map
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road mapBusiness intelligence competency centre strategy and road map
Business intelligence competency centre strategy and road map
 
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...
A BUSINESS APPLICAION FOR AN E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MANGEMENT THAT ANALYSES THE ...
 
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESA
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESACOMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESA
COMO MEJORAR LA PRODUCCION DE UNA EMPRESA
 
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi Wp
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi WpDynamics Ax 2009 Bi Wp
Dynamics Ax 2009 Bi Wp
 
White paper : the top 10 trends in business intelligence
White paper  : the top 10 trends in business intelligenceWhite paper  : the top 10 trends in business intelligence
White paper : the top 10 trends in business intelligence
 
Bi in financial industry
Bi in financial industryBi in financial industry
Bi in financial industry
 
Bi in financial industry
Bi in financial industryBi in financial industry
Bi in financial industry
 
Smart comp in 21st centry
Smart comp in 21st centrySmart comp in 21st centry
Smart comp in 21st centry
 
Enterprise digital Labs
Enterprise digital LabsEnterprise digital Labs
Enterprise digital Labs
 
Enterprise digital labs
Enterprise digital labsEnterprise digital labs
Enterprise digital labs
 
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdf
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdfData Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdf
Data Visualization in Banking is essential for the Finance Sector.pdf
 
Business Intelligence for Data SCience Students
Business Intelligence for Data SCience StudentsBusiness Intelligence for Data SCience Students
Business Intelligence for Data SCience Students
 
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...
Information Strategy: Updating the IT Strategy for Information, Insights and ...
 
Enterprise Digital Lab
Enterprise Digital LabEnterprise Digital Lab
Enterprise Digital Lab
 
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy Development
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy DevelopmentAnalytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy Development
Analytics Organization Modeling for Maturity Assessment and Strategy Development
 
Beetra BI Practice
Beetra BI PracticeBeetra BI Practice
Beetra BI Practice
 
module 4_BIDV foundation.pptx
module 4_BIDV foundation.pptxmodule 4_BIDV foundation.pptx
module 4_BIDV foundation.pptx
 
Business Intelligence Module 4
Business Intelligence Module 4Business Intelligence Module 4
Business Intelligence Module 4
 
Application business intelligence in railways
Application business intelligence in railwaysApplication business intelligence in railways
Application business intelligence in railways
 

Business Intelligence Competency Centers

  • 1. 1 Business Intelligence Competency Centers Authored by: Georges H. Prouty, Teradata Sr. Industry Consultant Abstract Quality Business Intelligence requires a three-pronged approach comprised of (1) people, (2) process and (3) technology. Woven into the process and technology is the concept of integrated data. While the concept and execution of data integration and the wise selection of technology tools and platforms is a given, many companies are still awakening to the need of an integrated and planned approach to business intelligence delivery. The Business Intelligence Competency Center (“BICC”) answers this call to action by creating an organization of select individuals who share a common BI expertise or responsibility, and provide the requisite process for BI delivery. Introduction While opinions vary in the business intelligence and data warehouse communities regarding the need for data integration and centralization for the delivery of high quality and consistent business intelligence (BI), there is a growing understanding of the need for a centralized BICC organization to guide BI strategy and delivery across an enterprise. As a result, companies have been implementing and formalizing BICCs at increasing rates. This article focuses on describing what a BICC is, its responsibilities, and the nuances of that makes for a successful BICC. What is a BICC? Business intelligence is no longer an optional or accidental method for delivering critical information and analysis to an organization; it is a vital component of a company’s decision process, strategy and operational aptitude and responsiveness. Given the competitive and global nature of business, along with the pressures of faster response time and business flexibility to changing conditions, the delivery of quality business intelligence needs to be planned, orchestrated, executed, governed, and measured. Additionally, business intelligence efforts need to be supported within the highest levels of an organization, encouraging the implementation and growth of a central body or competency center1 to drive quality data warehousing and business intelligence. A BICC answers the critical competitive, strategic and tactical information needs of an organization by assembling and implementing a team of people who are focused and expert on business intelligence and data warehouse delivery. It should enable innovation on the part of the organization and the individual BI users by providing best practices and 1 A competency center approach towards specific applications, technologies or business processes have proved themselves through time. Competency centers are not a new concept in organizations nor are they limited to BI. Competency centers have been in existence in many organizations in a number of different forms for a number of years. Known also as a Center of Excellence (“COE”), competency centers have proven their ROI and advantages across a number of areas including web content management applications and data integration.
  • 2. 2 leading approaches in the application of BI to solve business problems and drive value throughout the organization. In its most basic definition, a BICC is a cross-functional, co- located, core team of individuals that share common BI expertise and responsibilities. To dissect the meaning of a BICC further, the key components of such an organization are further illuminated within the name itself: • Business Intelligence means a focus on business intelligence delivery whether it is in the form of report, scorecards, dashboards, or analytics such as data mining and predictive modeling. It is dependent upon, data warehousing and traditional data warehousing tools and disciplines such as data acquisition and data model design. • Competency calls for a group of individuals that have both training and demonstrated experience and certification in a particular set of tools, development, platforms, delivery of methodologies as well as business understanding. It is recommended that they have certifications2 to support their practice. • Center implies a central group of individuals who can work together as a team, cross-train, and maintain lesson-learned documentation so that there can be continued improvement and advancement. “Central” can have a number of meanings further explored below such as co-located, virtually located or satellite centric. Center also implies a central body of knowledge such as a repository for re-usable code, solutions and lessons-learned. Core Composition and Alignment A BICC team should be comprised of team players who can communicate with management and the BI community to implement a cohesive enterprise BI strategy. To be effective within an organization, the team should be cross-functional consisting of both business and IT professionals. Further, the team should be built with the right expertise based on market demand and need of an organization. In a perfect world, a BICC should be autonomous within its own independent organization. This model, as compared to a “business owned” or “IT owned” organization, will allow the BICC greater flexibility and effectiveness within the enterprise as well as influence. If such independence is organizationally and financially prohibitive, the group should organizationally fall under the business since the business intelligence needs are business 2 One of the tenants of a BICC is the development of competencies. It is based on bringing expertise together and fostering learning and cross-training. This is particularly so as the BI and DW worlds are constantly changing requiring members of a BICC to continually update their skills. Obtaining product or trade certifications such as TDWI are a natural part of this training reality. Further, one of the key success criteria of a BICC is that the users of the organization have faith in the people that comprise it. Both product and trade certifications differentiate the BICC members from the BI user community, promoting confidence within the enterprise. While it is true that a BICC is as good as its people--and its people are as good as the experience and education that they bring to the table—a certification is a license to practice.
  • 3. 3 driven. There should also be dotted-line reporting relationships with IT to assure that IT strategies, process, protocol and methodology are intact. BICC Technologies, Functional Areas & Skills Within the definition of BI, the team has expertise in a number of areas of data warehousing and information delivery. Such expertise can include some or all of the following traditional BI technologies, functions and skills: • Business intelligence tools and platforms • Analytical intelligence (data mining, predictive modeling) • Data-centered application development • Implementation consulting of key BI and DW technologies • BI delivery (including reporting, scorecards and dashboards creation) • BI delivery consulting including BI architecture • Semantic data model design disciplines • Semantic data access implementation • Project management and delivery • Process formulation and execution • Technology support • BI best-practices Further, the BICC should have an in-depth knowledge of an enterprise’s data and business. As the BI delivery is only as good as the data warehouse, data quality and data integration that feed it, a successful and comprehensive BICC should also have responsibility for (directly or indirectly) or influence (through consulting and advocacy) the following DW technologies, skills and practices as follows: • DW delivery • DW architecture • Extract, transform and load (“ETL”) technologies and practice • Logical and physical data model design disciplines • Physical data access implementation • DW technology support • Master data management (“MDM”) • Metadata management Finally, as Business Intelligence can be no better than the quality of the data, as derived or influenced through governing bodies, principals, policies, standards, and data quality initiatives, a BICC should have influence (but not responsibility) over the following areas: • Data quality (“DQ”) • Data governance and stewardship
  • 4. 4 Benefits and Purposes of a BICC The benefits and purposes of a BICC implementation are numerous. Some of the key benefits include: • Best practices • Operational efficiencies • Data warehouse and data governance (advocacy and consulting) • Data integration roadmap, strategies and implementation • Budgeting strategies • Speed to market & flexibility • Standardization • Risk reduction • Education and marketing • Return on investment (“ROI”) • Total cost of ownership (“TCO”) • Project delivery improvements • Quality improvements • Community and commonality of business and IT • Accessibility • Technology and application support • Vendor management Best Practices Providing and standardizing best practices for BI is a critical function of a BICC. The pursuit of BI and DW standards is a foundational pillar of any BICC. Without best practices, the BICC itself is vulnerable to ineffectiveness, or worse, disillusion. The very nature of a BICC is premised on the need to standardize approach, minimize risk, encourage re-use, influence data integration, reduce duplicity in systems, and increase ROI. Accordingly, without such a dimension, we would not have a BICC. Operational Efficiencies A BICC will drive better utilization of the data warehouse by leveraging BI tools, platforms, processes, as well as people skills. It will encourage leveraged solutions at both an enterprise and group level and common technology stacks. It will exploit the technologies that are selected and eliminate less effective solutions. It will reduce the propensity of companies to purchase multiple BI tools and platforms and hopefully eliminate shelf-ware.
  • 5. 5 Data Warehouse and Data Governance (Advocacy and Consulting) Although a BICC is focused on BI, it is recommended that it influence data warehouse and data governance. With respect to data warehouse governance, the BICC should make recommendations as to how the data warehouse should be governed across an enterprise. These recommendations should influence DW policy, governance structure and how future data warehouse projects or changes will be selected and prioritized. Such standards are vital to the continuing health and success of a warehouse. With respect to data governance, again, the BICC should influence standards for data ownership and stewardship with other participants. The business would have ownership of the data and its stewardship, whereas the BICC would consult as to data best practices. Data Integration Roadmap, Strategies, and Implementation A BICC minimizes the number of business solutions and processes across an organization, and maximize the effectiveness of a standard set of solutions. A BICC will focus on data integration as a path to the effective utilization of data as a corporate asset. It will chart a course and plan for data integration across an enterprise. Such work is vital in improving the quality and depth of data intelligence, as well as the speed of delivery and reduction in costs Providing integration strategies is such a vital part of successful data warehouse and business intelligence programs within an organization, that some organizations actually create a separate integration strategy competency center. The integration of data and systems is fundamental to the success of BI delivery. Bad integration (or lack thereof) increases costs and reduces the likelihood of success. A common death nail to successful BI is a lack of data integration. Many organizations today are faced with disparate data marts, multiple versions of the truth, and inconsistent and/or untimely ETL processes. This degraded state of affairs is further enhanced by political realities within an organization’s structure causing stove pipe views of data and redundancy in development efforts, a product versus a customer perspective, isolated legacy systems that thwart retirement, data center stasis, and data hoarders who abhor any concept of data democratization. A BICC should be charged with breaking down these encumbrances and silos through (1) vision, (2) education of the organization and (3) through promulgation of best practices and standards. Budgeting Strategies One of the great difficulties facing BI and DW initiatives is the problems of navigating budgets of multiple LOBs within an organization to accomplish enterprise strategies.
  • 6. 6 When there is no central budget for BI and DW initiatives, organizations have to scrounge and negotiate for budget and establish allocation schemes between LOBs. Many times, a BI or DW project that involves multiple LOBs is started as one of the LOBs blinks, and agrees to absorb the costs upfront. A BICC should work towards establishing a shared budget for its services. This budget should likely be established by a governing committee within the organization. This will keep the BICC focused on strategy, rather than be hobbled by a companies budgeting limitations. Speed to Market & Flexibility The practices, techniques, tools and disciplines employed by the BICC will improve solution time to market and work to support business intelligence-driven value within the organization. Additionally, a BICC will allow for greater flexibility towards solutions based on business need. No time in history has the business world been so fast-paced and competitive. As a necessity, business needs to be nimble, flexible, and responsive to the demands it is facing. A key reason for business intelligence is to answer the strategic and tactical needs of the business world. The BICC can assist in this need through: o Reusing solutions o Depth of data knowledge o Facilitating and encouraging collaboration between the business and IT o Maturity and experience of staff dedicated to business intelligence and data warehousing o Shared vision o Commitment of BICC to education and certification of its staff and BI users. o Centralization and/or integration of data o Sandbox environments of BI and DW tools and platforms that allow prototyping and iterative or radical development methodologies Standardization A BICC will identify and implement best practices across an enterprise as well as select appropriate BI technology to reduce complexity and hold-back or reduce costs. Cost reduction will be seen in the areas of full time employees (FTEs) assigned to BI roles including support and product maintenance. Risk Reduction Risk will be reduced through the effective use of information sharing, re-use libraries, best practices, standardization, and learning through knowledge management supporting capture and reuse of lessons-learned.
  • 7. 7 Education and Marketing This is one of the key responsibilities of a BICC. While marketing and education is usually not stated in the same breath, they are closely related and utterly inseparable for a BICC. A pivotal goal of a BICC is to provide education to BI users and management which encourages best practices and BI maturity within the organization. The enterprise will be more productive as well as informed through the education and training efforts of a BICC. Such benefits will include: • Quicker maturity of a BICC due to co-location, shared expertise and cross training. • Faster acceptance and effective use by BI users due to a BICC’s training programs that are tailored to the company’s needs • Accessibility of in-house training • Better overall maturity of an organization and acceptance and need of analytics and active data warehousing • Better sharing of BI and DW solutions across businesses and between IT and the business. • Better understanding of the value of BI and DW. A BICC’s charter is to educate the business users of BI best practices on what tools and platforms exist and the solutions they can offer, on cutting edge technologies, on maturity of BI practices, on how to use and develop on BI tools and ultimately on the importance of all of these and the BICC. In essence, they are the in-house champion of BI. A BICC will communicate on any of these levels, in a number of different ways: • Training Classes. A BICC will work with the vendor to set-up training classes for both business users and IT developers. In many cases, the BICC will conduct the training itself, customized to an enterprise. • User Groups. A BICC should set-up and facilitate regularly scheduled user group meetings wherein both business and IT users can exchange wins, lessons- learned, and techniques on specific technologies or vendor products. This is also the correct forum for where the BICC can keep everyone up-to-date on new developments within a set of products and/or within the user community and enterprise. The user groups can be organized around specific products or around subject areas. Either way, this is critical education and marketing to support the BICC efforts as well as successful practices across the enterprise. • Lunch and Learns. User groups tend to be held less frequently while lunch and learns can be held based on need. These sessions tend to focus specifically on products or techniques that a sub-set of the BI community needs. • BI Annual Conference. Another excellent marketing event that can be focused more on Senior Management is the use of an annual internal BI conference. Typically, such sessions celebrate wins over the past year and discuss needs and approaches to the coming year. A good practice is to include talks by Sr. Management, users, and vendors both already in place or proposed.
  • 8. 8 Return on Investment (“ROI”) A decision to purchase business intelligence or data warehousing tools and platforms should not come lightly. The capital investment involved in the purchase of business intelligence and data warehousing solutions can be significant, as well as the associated costs of professional services, staffing, training, infrastructure costs, and maintenance. There are also the costs that can be calculated and incurred from failed projects, missed delivery dates, application down-time, tactical and strategic decisions based on faulty data, duplication of systems and development work, duplication of code due to a lack of reusability, duplication of errors due to the reuse of bad code or design, and many other reasons. A BICC can eliminate and/or reduce the potential losses and costs that can occur in many BI or DW implementations. Further, a positive ROI can be easily demonstrated when policies, procedures, and best practices are implemented by a BICC. One can quickly see how some of the costs in the above paragraph can quickly add-up, especially as the propensity of a business intelligence or data warehouse solution will grow in scale overtime, multiplying the costs. Further, a BICC will be able to implement solutions that have been carefully crafted from the business needs through cross-functional team collaboration and consulting, best practices and standardization. Over time, solutions will have a faster time to market as the BICC matures, making the business more flexible to changing business and market conditions. It is important to mention, however, that the creation of a BICC does not come without a price tag. There is an initial investment that a company will need to make in staff and training as well as other hard and soft costs.3 Even when figuring in this outlay in a ROI calculation, the BICC will still demonstrate a positive return on investment as long as the BICC is effective within the organization. The BICC management will be responsible to demonstrate these savings to senior management. Total Cost of Ownership (“TCO”) For many of the same reasons in the ROI section above, the total cost of ownership of business intelligence and data warehouse tools and platforms decrease overtime because of a BICC for many of the following reasons: • Reduction in duplicative coding through the use of reusable solutions. 3 Staffing costs can be significant upfront. It will not always be possible to “re-deploy” staff in traditional IT roles that are trained solely in developing and implementing transaction systems. Many times, the creation of a BICC will require outside hiring and recruitment so that the right level of BI.DW skills and experience are utilized. A BICC will only be as good as its people and those people will need to differentiate themselves from traditional IT delivery.
  • 9. 9 • Centralized license management and pooling, reducing unnecessary purchases and eliminating unneeded maintenance. The BICC’s oversight of licensing ensures that the right licensing will be given to the user based on ability and needs. • Reduction in the number of people to deliver project implementations • Reduction in vendor training where the BICC can provide alternative training • Reduction in the number of FTEs to support implementations due to best practices, centralized alignment with vendor support, and the reduction of help desk issues • Reduction in the number of independent data mart implementations. • Reduction in infrastructure complexity • Savings and profit arising out of strategic and tactical decisions on sound data Project Delivery Improvements The BICC promises substantial project delivery advantages because of commonality to approach, a customized development life cycle for BI and DW, higher quality requirements and testing due to a business and IT collaborative approach, and access to lessons learned repositories for the mitigation of future project risk. The benefits can be demonstrated in: o A greater likelihood of success o Faster time to market o Reduction in project risk o Containment of unnecessary changes due to better requirements o Better consistency with estimates o More robust solutions because of team co-development Therefore, an important staffing consideration for a BICC is the employment of experienced BI and DW project managers. This is an important consideration as business intelligence and data warehousing project management is a specialty within the field of project management. Quality Improvements It follows that the BICC would deliver higher quality solutions because of the team’s experience, training, access to lessons learned and reuse repositories and business and IT collaboration. Quality is further assured by the BICC for the following additional reasons: o Shared data vision o Cohesive strategy o Design standards o Packaged approach o Architecture strategy o Structure for consistent answers o Consistent testing practices o Data governance standards and implementation
  • 10. 10 o Data warehouse governance standards and implementation o Data integration efforts o Data quality efforts Community and Commonality of Business and IT A BICC, if successful, can turn a disparate organization with multiple lines of business, political outposts, and a dysfunctional IT and Business relationship into a community of BI users focused on common solutions to business problems. Community is important as a unified group will better embrace and advance some of the key goals of a BICC such as data integration, reusability, and elimination of redundancy. Granted, this is hard to achieve and will take persistence and drive to overcome organizational obstacles, but a BICC has some valuable approaches it can use to move an organization in this direction. They include: o Marketing value through successful projects and implementations o Demonstrating improved ROI and TCO o Launching of internal user groups o Lunch and learn events o Successful training demonstrated in quality utilization of tools and platforms o Demonstration of senior management support through internal BI events. There is no other place in the business world requiring a greater joining of forces of IT and the business as there is in data warehousing and business intelligence. With traditional OLTP (online transaction processing) delivery, the business is only sufficiently involved with the requirements, testing, change management and sign-off phases of an application. There is little to no involvement by the business after an application has been placed into production, unless issues arise or in the planning of the next releases. With data warehousing and business intelligence, the business and IT need to be tied at the hip not only for the duration of a project delivery, but continually through the life of a data warehouse or BI implementation. Data, and the changing and competitive business environment that it is used in, are two key reasons demanding a unique business and IT relationship. Data Data used by BI is paramount and long-lived; it is vital in making decisions that could have long term impact on a company. According, the data needs to be accurate, integrated, understood, refined, accessible, and available so that business questions can be answered, business opportunities addressed, regulatory bodies responded to, and strategies accomplished. Traditionally, the business of IT is to provide systems that support or access the data while the business understands the data at an atomic level and is able to harvest it for value. Since an optimal BICC is a mixture of business and IT members and specialties,
  • 11. 11 the diverse needs and value of data are addressed. Within a BICC organization, the business members can articulate the business user needs to the IT members for the delivery of a solution. Changing Business Needs Today, there is a greater urgency to make strategic and tactical decisions to stay competitive. Solutions need to be nimble and change is a certainty. The information used to make business decisions needs to be precise and highly available, the data needs to be of a high quality, complete and integrated, the data model needs to be flexible to allow for changes and additional data, and the delivery mechanism needs to be flexible and competent. Based on this, there is a very high standard that needs to be upheld, answerable only through a strong and consistent collaboration between the business and IT. Accessibility Accessibility is an important win for an organization and is an integral principal of a BICC. A BICC can influence or facilitate accessibility of data and BI solutions through: o Centralized assistance and support o Centralized project, product and best practices information o Delivery of self-service capability o Education Selection of Technology Tools and Platforms Without a unified approach to spending for data warehousing and business intelligence tools and platforms, an enterprise can quickly become smitten with a number of products and solutions, increasing ownership costs and complicating delivery of solutions. In fact, many companies today have an assortment of half used, improperly used, or un-used (shelf ware) BI and DW/data mart/appliance solutions. A BICC can provide guidance or set standards on the BI and DW/data mart/appliance purchases that a company can make, eliminating or reducing wasteful spending, enhancing the integration of systems, and speeding delivery to the business. A BICC can and should also make recommendations for technology stacks that are tuned and optimized for a particular BI tool or platform. Many times little thought is given to how a BI application should be deployed. The BICC should be charged with working with the BI vendor as well as those responsible for a company’s infrastructure and middleware, to arrive at recommended architecture or stacks for a BI application. This will save time and money, as well as reduce risk. Finally, a BICC can assist with the selection of the right tools, platforms and architecture for the right job, improving, performance, efficiency and speeds time to market for new functionality
  • 12. 12 Technology and Application Support While much of a BICC is relegated to consulting, project execution, and providing best practices, a portion of a BICC should have responsibility for technology and application support. Such support may be across all levels of support or it may just handle Level 3 or critical support requests. This will depend on the funding and make-up of the BICC. As a base strategy, however, a BICC will have a vested interest in seeing the BI application selections be successful in an organization, and therefore will want to work with the vendor to resolve critical or level 3 support requests as well as influence fixes and enhancements in future releases. Vendor Oversight One of the difficulties for a company, as well as it BI vendors, is having multiple contact points across an enterprise. A typical scenario for many companies is that one BI vendor will receive multiple requests for purchasing, technical support and product information across multiple areas of an organization. This is problematic at best, as there are no economies of scale or consistent messaging between a company and vendor. A BICC should be the focal point for the vendor relationship for a number of reasons: • Re-use of support solutions to common problems increasing economies of scale • One voice to the vendor for consistent messaging • Potential reduction in duplicative purchasing • License management • Shared responsibility with IT and the contracting organization for vendor and product selection The BICC should be focused on each of these areas out of the starting gate—all are fundamental to a BICC’s success. A BICC’s Core Competencies As is the case with a BICC’s core purposes, there are numerous BICC core competencies that need to be considered as part of a BICC: • Business intelligence consulting • Data warehousing consulting • Master data management • Metadata management • Project delivery • Data quality • ETL The BICC should be focused on each of these areas although, not necessarily out of the gate. Competencies can be added as a BICC matures. These specific dimensions are addressed further as follows:
  • 13. 13 Business Intelligence Consulting There a number of reasons why there should be a strong and influential BI consulting arm to a BICC. First, business intelligence needs are constantly changing: there is a constant need for further and frequent business intelligence enhancements and new deployments to meet new business challenges. A collaborative and iterative approach needs to be available to the client to successfully meet these challenges. Second, BI solutions to these challenges are not always clear. It is difficult for the business or IT alone to be able to formulate requirements that are responsive as well as strategic. Thirdly, the solution needs to be cross-functional. This is fundamental to good BI as the approach towards robust BI is cross-functional between the business and IT. Such collaboration creates better planned and more robust solutions and strategies. It can never be just a business or an IT solution. A consultative approach is the right approach to meet this challenge and will achieve better value and ROI for an organization. Contrast this with a typical application group that will generally work with business requirements created by a business with little or no input by the IT application development group. While this is typical and workable for many typical types of application development projects, this type of scenario simply will not work well for BI. It is important to note that in some BICC operations, BICCs are run like an internal BI consulting group, actually vying for engagements across the enterprise, and competing against external vendors. This is an extreme case of the consulting model and a more viable solution for companies is to allow a cross-functional consulting approach to prevail in the development of solutions to meet business needs through mandate. In fact, as the approach can be much different than a typical software development life-cycle (“SDLC”) a custom development life cycle for BI should be established by the BICC or an enterprise PMO. Data Warehousing Consulting Data warehousing consulting is another foundational practice of a BICC. It is part-and- parcel of business intelligence and cannot, and should not, be separated out into its own competency group. Because BI and DW are so connected and inter-related, it is very difficult to address each of them separately. Consulting for data warehousing is important for a number of reasons as follows: • Significant business need analysis needs to be completed. A consulting approach will determine need through interviews and make recommendations as to solutions based on need. • Data warehouses need to be planned in design and architecture. Data warehouses need to be flexible in their design to accommodate future business needs. Business and IT need to work in a collaborative manner to achieve this flexibility. • Data warehousing projects are a process, not an end-to-themselves. There is a need for continual collaboration, planning, design and execution (both logically and physically) to meet the maturing needs of a warehouse environment. Again,
  • 14. 14 consulting is the best method to draw out the best results from both IT and the business. Dimensions for data warehousing consulting to both IT and the business can include, but not be limited to: • Architecture • Data Integration • Data Modeling • Enterprise and active data warehousing • Extract, Transport and Load (“ETL”) • Security and access • Query Management • Backup • Failover • Tuning • Load Management • SLAs Master Data Management One of the practice areas of a BICC should be MDM. MDM is not only an emerging technology that is at the forefront of many CIO and CEOs agendas, it is a recommended practice for producing solid business intelligence. A MDM practice is called for as MDM involves more than just technology considerations. Inherent in MDM are the concepts of data integration data governance, two key components of BI best practices. Metadata Management Metadata management is a key BI best practice requiring a BICC competency as soon as the BICC is able to offer it. Many BI implementations are unable to succeed because metadata solutions and procedures are not established, standardized or implemented across an organization. This makes it difficult for the users to get the highest level of benefit from its BI solutions and data warehouse and its lack breeds discontent across the BI user community. Project Delivery As is the case with many aspects of business intelligence and data warehousing, project management skills are unique, requiring project management specialization. Consideration should be given to formulating a special SDLC for BI and DW project delivery. Additionally, a BICC should employ project managers who are skilled in BI and DW delivery to reduce project risk and increase the likelihood of success.
  • 15. 15 Data Quality One of the key reasons that users loose confidence in a business intelligence solution is that the quality of the data is suspect. For this reason, a BICC needs to add a data quality competency to its repertoire. Data quality strategies, tools and methodologies are now mainstream: the tools should be a requirement (or at least a strong consideration) for any quality DW or BI solution. It makes good sense for a BICC to address this important aspect of BI and DW delivery for any project engagement, and as well, for it to advocate data quality for the enterprise. ETL ETL is a foundational BI competency that should not be taken lightly. A major amount of the time and cost of any BI or DW delivery is in the ETL portion of a project. Accordingly, ETL can benefit from solid standards in its execution, and through the deployment of a re-use library. Typically, however, many organizations allow multiple areas in the organization to have ETL developers providing solutions in isolation. This is particularly true in organizations that have multiple data mart solutions, or where there are data, organizational or political silos. A good BICC will identify this problem quickly, and encourage standards and user groups to foster practices that are less costly. Are all BICCs Created Equal? BICCs are not created equally. There is no definitive structure of a BICC, and its success and design will ultimately depend on the organization that it is serving. Some of the forms that a BICC could take (some better than others) include: • Centralized organization and/or shared services • Decentralized BICCs • Mandated or optional use • Pure consulting or owns it all Centralized Organization and/or Shared Services A centralized approach is the most advantageous for a BICC and the company that supports it. For true economies of scale, a BICC should provide guidance, support and standards for an entire organization. Such an approach will encourage clear business intelligence and data warehouse success criteria such as data integration, governance, data stewardship, reusability, and cost containment. A shared services model is a good example of a successful centralized mode for a BICC. In such a model, the benefits and the costs of the BICC are shared across the various business units within an enterprise. Data and governance standards are more easily adopted and implemented and strategic purchasing of BI platforms and tools are not duplicated.
  • 16. 16 Politically, and in a perfect world, such an organization should not be owned either by singularly by IT or the business. There should either be a joint ownership or a separate corporate area that is created. Admittedly, feasibility for either option will be difficult. Decentralized Organizations A decentralized BICC is a typical response in a decentralized organization where the strategic lines of business (“LOBs) call the shots for their own respective IT solutions, and where resources are owned by the LOB. This is not optimal, as many of the advantages of a centralized solution are lost. Although the structure may provide benefit to the business in creating a more customized BI structure, the economies of scale are lost as the enterprise as a whole will tend to have duplicative systems and support structures. Worse, the data models will be independent, and the data will not be integrated. Transformation of data to feed the corporate entities, (e.g., general ledger, HR, legal, etc) will be costly and more prone to error. The concept of data governance would be highly watered-down. If any central or corporate team exists4 its influence will likely be minimal. Mandated or Optional Use For best results, a BICC needs to have authority in an organization. For a decentralized organization where the word enterprise has become a naughty word, a BICC will not have central authority over an enterprise. The rule of thumb for the optional use of such a BICC is influence. Sometimes an influencing party can have a great impact on an organization’s BI and DW decisions and solutions. To be effective at influencing, however, the BICC should have: • High quality and certified staff that garners the respect of the LOBs • Political influence • Consultative model (you will likely not be able to provide any other services such as project management, etc.) • Successful output demonstrating value • Metrics demonstrating value • Great ideas Most importantly, this type of organization has to be ahead of the curve. It needs to have vision and strategy, investing its energies on the direction where it should influence an organization to drive to. It should already have know-how before the enterprise demands a new technology or approach. 4 Some organizations have a satellite model for a BICC, where each LOB has its own BICC but there is a Corporate or Shared Services BICC that acts as a conduit to the satellite BICCs. The use of the corporate BICC is many times optional.
  • 17. 17 Pure Consulting or Consulting and Ownership Another model decision is whether a BICC should own the data warehouse and business intelligence stack. Obviously, this will depend on how a company is organized. In a centralized model, it is unlikely that there would be a plausible group to hand over the ownership of the BI or DW solutions to; in a decentralized scenario, there will likely be more pressure by the LOBs to own their platforms and environments and for a shared BICC to provide consulting only. It is just as plausible, however, for the shared BICC to own the environment, tools, and platform. This is obviously the better option, as it will foster data integration, reuse and the many other key benefits of a centralized BICC. What Makes a BICC Successful? Regardless of the organizational form of a BICC in an organization and the pros and cons of each, there are specific aspects of a BICC that will encourage its success. These aspects are as follows: • Support by CxOs • Centralized organization and/or shared services supportive • Experience and talent • Inclusion and bridging of business and IT • Centralization of the team • Cross training • Sandbox environment • Lessons learned repository • Metrics supporting success • Internal marketing These specifics are addressed more fully below. Support by CxOs A critical component of a BICC is executive sponsorship within an organization. A BICC imposes a different operational model on an organization—a model that encourages centralization of BI efforts for the enterprise as well as a cross-functional (the business and IT) approach towards BI. The model also establishes authority for implementing a centralized process/standards making body that amongst other things, may impose dashboard standards, and control over ad hoc queries, or influence data models, data and data warehouse governance. Given the political nature of such a structure and the reality of its standards promulgation or influence, BICCs will have difficulty succeeding and becoming influential within an organization if they are created organically. Experience and Talent Any BICC that is worth its salt will employ very talented and experienced individuals. A BICC will only be as good as its people so a BICC requires investment in people and skills. The individuals should be able to provide consulting on any of the technologies,
  • 18. 18 products or business needs that is germane to the organization. The individuals should be respected by non BICC members across the enterprise. They should be able to support the products that they have endorsed, as well as the projects that they have implemented. The individuals should be team spirited, focusing on the customers needs. They should be willing to be cross-trained within the group, and learn from the other team members. They should not stubbornly hang-on to traditional IT practices involving transactional systems. Inclusion of Business and IT Although a BICC could be workable without cross-functional membership of IT and the business, it will ultimately be limited in its ability to influence one side or the other and will be less effective in its solutions. Business intelligence and data warehousing, by their very nature, is a two sided coin. Whereas many IT areas of responsibility require little long-term involvement with the business, business intelligence requires constant data and solution modifications, solutions as well as stewardship. This is especially true when considering a BI maturity model—while traditional reporting is created, batched and maintained, analytics such as data mining require constant collaboration and immediacy between IT and the business. Cross Training One of the great benefits of a BICC is the creation of a team of professionals who have access to each others’ knowledge. This presents excellent opportunities to the team for cross-training, allowing individuals on the team to grow and take on new challenges, and maturing the BICC. Sandbox Environment A highly recommended aspect of any BICC is to implement a product sandbox that allows BI users in the organization to (1) contrast and compare BI/DW products when considering solutions to a business problem, (2) create prototypes of business solutions, and (3) foster BU user training. A sandbox is essentially a test or development environment, separate and apart from production or the BI stack as a whole. A sandbox will typically contain test or lab level licenses of products that are endorsed or standardized by the BICC. Such products could include BI tools as well as ETL, MDM, DW, DQ and custom applications. Experience in organizations with sandboxes has shown that not only is the sandbox a great attractor to the BICC as well as a collaborative tool, but that the prototyping in the sandbox allows for better, faster and more successful BI solutions. Lessons Learned and Re-Use Repositories This is a key benefit of a BICC. A BICC that is providing services, consulting, and product services across the enterprise will quickly build experience that can be placed in a repository of lessons learned and best practices as well as code snippets that can be stored in a re-use library. A well developed repository will speed solution time and reduce risk. A centralized BICC would provide the biggest benefit as it assumes a
  • 19. 19 consistency of BI and DW architecture and tuning. In a de-centralized model, the number of variables, lessons learned and coded solutions will grow in proportion to the variability of the infrastructure. In such a case, a single repository will be less likely and the ROI would be reduced. Metrics Supporting Success As every organization is dynamic, and its approach to organization and solutions can change over time, it is critical that the BICC maintain its own set of metrics to demonstrate ROI and worth to the organization. A BICC should be operated as a business that needs to prove its worth and provide intelligence about its efforts. An internal dashboard that is made available to the BI users and Sr. Management should be deployed by the BICC to track its successes and financial benefits to the organization. Internal Marketing & Training Internal marketing goes hand-in-hand with metrics supporting the success of the BICC. The BICC team should include individuals that can communicate to all levels of an organization, continually re-marketing the benefits of the BICC. This is vital as there will be a lot of pressure brought to bear on the organization as a whole to try new products and processes that espouse greater benefit than what is already being provided to the organization. This is why, as well, that a continual education program should go along with the marketing efforts. Well educated and BI users will tend to support the solutions of the BICC. Some of the techniques employed by BICC in this area include the following: • User Groups. • Lunch and Learn Sessions Getting Started To get started, the key is garnering support for a BICC across the organization. For many organizations, the time to start and garner support is simply a matter of timing and DW and BI maturity. Unfortunately as well, the right amount of pain that an organization is feeling relative to their DW and BI solutions can also foster success in starting a BICC. A typical starting place for many BICCs is obtaining a champion in a Sr. Management level position within the organization. It is hard if not impossible to get a BICC off the ground, with success and longevity, based on a grass-roots effort. From an organizational standpoint, the BICC will meet less resistance politically, if the champion is from the business, rather than IT. Many times, however, it is IT that plants the seeds for a BICC with the business champion. The last key point is to start small, and build upon your successes. It probably does not need to be said, but a BICC’s credibility will be built on successes and not failures. If a
  • 20. 20 BICC takes on to many dimensions of responsibility early on, they will become unfocused and will likely falter. The BICC should first focus on resolving a key BI business issue, and build a plan to address that and similar issues. Immediate focuses of a BICC should be on data quality, stewardship and governance if an organization is not strong in those areas. These will always be political issues as well as technological issues. The political aspects should be the first focus, as important political issues such as data stewardship and data “ownership” can be some of the most difficult challenges a BICC will face. A BICC will have difficulty if it simply starts focusing on technology out of the gate. It is important as well for a BICC to demonstrate wins in its first year or operation. Such wins will support the BICC’s existence and feed positive metrics about a BICC’s worth to an organization. Summary The creation and implementation of a BICC is an absolute necessity in today’s challenging and competitive business world. As business now has global breadth, competition has escalated, and the need for an organization to be more nimble and flexible as to the business course is an absolute requirement. Not only do business decisions need to be made quickly—not only do they need to be based on reliable as well as predictive information—companies need the flexibility to adjust their direction based on changing conditions and information. They can no longer afford to hold onto decisions that worked in the past or base decisions merely on gut feel. Further, promulgation of even more stringent and invasive regulations on various industries is demanding that business focus on data compliance and data transparency. Examples of such regulations include Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II. Now, more than anytime in the past, data plays a key role in business organizations. Data can no longer be left to chance, and business intelligence and data warehouse decisions and practices need to be carefully choreographed by a strong organization comprised of IT and the business, with specific and proven data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytical intelligence skills. A BICC brings together the business and IT into a combined organization dedicated to the delivery of accurate, complete and timely intelligence to be used in a variety of business and analytical applications. To be successful, the BICC: • Must be supported if not mandated by all levels in the organization • Include co-located business and IT experts and consultants in DW and BI • Have influence over data and data warehouse governance and data stewardship • Have competencies in BI, DW, ETL, integration strategies, metadata, MDM, data quality, project management
  • 21. 21 • Have responsibility for, or be able to strongly influence selection of, DW and BI solutions and applications • Have strong communication and consulting skills • Provide consistent and frequent education to the organization on best practices, technologies and successes • Provide strong marketing on the value of the practice to the organization • Create and utilize re-use strategies • Promulgate and distribute best practices. Monitor implementation. • Measure success of the BICC and demonstrate value Of key importance, the hardest challenge that a BICC will likely face is political, not technical. Strong political support from Sr. Management is critical to a BICC’s success. Strong marketing skills and metrics that demonstrate BICC value or ROI are all necessary for survivability over the long haul. Finally, a BICC’s credibility will be based on its successes. A BICC should carefully plan out what it addresses, and grow incrementally based on its successes.