Some pointers on Business Intelligence Project Factors

1. Steps for BI Provision : Find a Sponsor in the Business : This should be a Manager/Executive with bottom-line responsibilities, who has a broad picture of the enterprise’s objectives, strategies and goals and is able to translate these to KPIs. This person should not be the CIO and not usually in IT either. They should project manage implementation and be responsible for scope changes. Create a Common Definitions List: Even within a single business the definition of terms like ‘Gross Profit’ or ‘Order’ may mean different things in different departments. Assess the Current Situation: Look at the current BI solution, if present, and work out it’s involvement in current business processes. If the implemented BI solution does not cover these requirements, the new solution will fail. Create a Data Storage Plan: Consider Virtualisation – starting small and inexpensive with no room for growth would be a mistake. Try to predict data growth and plan the business’s data warehouse longer term.

2. Steps for BI Provision : (continued) Strategic/Tactical/Operational User Requirements: Strategic Users are decision makers and need KPIs and other business indicators such as Balanced Scorecards. Tactical users make decisions off aggregated and detailed reporting on a daily basis. Operational users will be the front-line employees, they will need day-to-day and sometimes live reporting to enable them to do their jobs. Understanding these three groups and what they need will drive the BI project requirements. Buy out-of-the-box solutions or create one: If the business uses industry standards and loosely fits an out-of-the-box prebuilt template solution, this may be a good idea. However watch for limitations in customisation and IT restrictions. A custom solution may be better for more complex or smaller businesses. Ensure the BI Suite selected has everything required: If the solution has any weak areas, they can pull down the whole solution. For example, if the ETL software crashes, no data will be delivered, eroding user confidence.

3. Steps for BI Provision : (continued) Take things step-by-step: Choose an end user and do a proof of concept first. Then build on and expand the reporting to keep the business involved and motivated with the project. Choose Low Hanging Fruit First: Choose simple, high business value and impact components first. Create one version of the truth: A stable data warehouse with reconciliation reporting will be essential for continued business confidence. Training: Generic Training does not work well with business users, and they loose the skills quickly as they wait for BI solutions that are sometimes created months after installation. Custom Training based on solutions implemented gives better results as the users understand their own business and can walk out of a course to immediately practice their new skills. Keep Business Confidence in BI high: Watch for repeated ETL failures, more than two in a row can be damaging. Also watch data accuracy – rounding and truncation can destroy confidence when large volumes of data are aggregated.