Successful business intelligence (BI) projects encompass more than implementation of a solution on time and within budget. True success should be measured by how the BI solution improves the organization's overall performance through increased efficiency in reporting, planning, financial functions, and performance measurements. This will help ensure organizations' BI projects fall into the estimated 30 percent success rate.
Much has been written about measuring return on investment (ROI) for BI, and the general conclusion is that gaining tangible insight into the initial benefits is not easy. Identifying long-term benefits becomes more practical as planning and analysis, compliancy, and forward-looking approaches become more mainstream within organizations. To gain insight into how to implement a BI solution successfully, organizations should benchmark the success of other organizations—including their implementations and use of BI—against their own current initiatives. It is equally important that organizations learn from other organizations' failures—and avoid repeating them.
This article identifies and explores five steps organizations should take to avoid the common pitfalls encountered by many businesses when implementing a BI solution. These steps also provide an overview of items that need to be considered before implementing BI within an organization or business unit.
Identifying the Business Problem
Identifying the BI business problem is the first step to ensuring a successful project. Once an organization knows what is broken, not only can it start to find ways to fix the problem, but it can also identify the proper resources, create user buy-in, and prioritize how to tackle the project. To produce an ROI, a BI solution needs to address specific business problems. Otherwise, implementing an ad hoc query tool, an online analytical process (OLAP) cube, or a dashboard will not result in lasting benefits.
Unfortunately, it is common for BI solutions to be pushed onto a business unit in order to meet an IT objective rather than an organizational need. Sometimes organizations get caught up with general initiatives and lose sight of the actual benefits BI provides in terms of performance management, collaboration, workflow, process improvement, etc.
To attain buy-in, the user community should be a part of the problem identification process. An implementation decision that comes from management still requires input from users as to what their requirements are, and this information can make the difference between the implementation of a tool that works as a value proposition and an implementation that may be seen as useless.
Much has been written about measuring return on investment (ROI) for BI, and the general conclusion is that gaining tangible insight into the initial benefits is not easy. Identifying long-term benefits becomes more practical as planning and analysis, compliancy, and forward-looking approaches become more mainstream within organizations. To gain insight into how to implement a BI solution successfully, organizations should benchmark the success of other organizations—including their implementations and use of BI—against their own current initiatives. It is equally important that organizations learn from other organizations' failures—and avoid repeating them.
This article identifies and explores five steps organizations should take to avoid the common pitfalls encountered by many businesses when implementing a BI solution. These steps also provide an overview of items that need to be considered before implementing BI within an organization or business unit.
Identifying the Business Problem
Identifying the BI business problem is the first step to ensuring a successful project. Once an organization knows what is broken, not only can it start to find ways to fix the problem, but it can also identify the proper resources, create user buy-in, and prioritize how to tackle the project. To produce an ROI, a BI solution needs to address specific business problems. Otherwise, implementing an ad hoc query tool, an online analytical process (OLAP) cube, or a dashboard will not result in lasting benefits.
Unfortunately, it is common for BI solutions to be pushed onto a business unit in order to meet an IT objective rather than an organizational need. Sometimes organizations get caught up with general initiatives and lose sight of the actual benefits BI provides in terms of performance management, collaboration, workflow, process improvement, etc.
To attain buy-in, the user community should be a part of the problem identification process. An implementation decision that comes from management still requires input from users as to what their requirements are, and this information can make the difference between the implementation of a tool that works as a value proposition and an implementation that may be seen as useless.
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