BI
Citing business intelligence (BI) as a strategic technology, analyst firm Gartner observes,
“BI can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business
performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its
mission by making smarter decisions at every level of the business from
corporate strategy to operational processes.”
BI continues to be one of the top tech nology spending priorities in today’s tough economic conditions. Why? Because BI projects:
- Leverage existing information investments
- Deliver proven high return on invest ment (ROI)
However,
few organizations today have a comprehensive enterprise BI strategy or
clearly defined BI standards.
They face a patchwork of disparate BI tech
nologies, which can lead to:
- Redundant costs in deployment, maintenance, and training
- Increased information inconsistencies
- Frustrated employees who cannot get timely answers to their business questions
Rationalizing
the number of BI stan dards in your organization can result in
significant cost savings, greater control over information, and better
alignment with your business users. This all leads to increased
competitive advantage by fully exploiting the benefits of enterprise BI,
and laying the foundations for enter prise performance optimization.
But
implementing BI standards requires a pragmatic, phased approach that
takes into account the organizational realities of large organizations,
and the business value of existing BI applica tions.This post gives an
overview of the advantages of implementing BI standards, and takes a
look at some of the real-life, best practice techniques used by industry
leaders. Read on to learn how successful organizations have
standardized on business intelligence – and why you should join them.
A Business Intelligence Strategy is Key to Success
Despite the importance of BI, Gartner predicts,
“Through 2012, more than 35% of the top 5,000 global companies will
regularly fail to make insightful deci sions about significant changes
in their business and markets.”
For
BI to be successful, information and analysis must be actionable. Your
associated decisions must have an effect on performance that is in line
with the objectives and strategic plans for your organization.
To turn
informa tion into real business change, your enterprise BI strategy must
answers questions such as:
- What performance metrics have the highest impact on your business strategy and objectives?
- Which people and processes have the highest impact on achieving your business objectives?
- What applications and BI technolo gies do these people need to deliver the highest impact on your business objectives?
- What information has the highest impact on your business objectives?
In order to succeed in enterprise BI, you need to consider all facets of your information environment for a holistic view.
Information Strategy
For
starters, your BI strategy should take into account all sources of data
used for business decisions: operational systems, departmental data
marts, key spreadsheets, and unstructured data stored in text files, Web
pages, and other corporate systems. Data sources should include not
only internal systems, but also information stored in the systems of
your customers, part ners, and suppliers, and in the greater “cloud” of
data that is accessible through the Internet.
An
enterprise data warehouse is a central pillar of any BI strategy. You
must constantly strive to integrate information from your diverse opera
tional systems, make it consistent, and optimize it for analysis. Your
enter prise data warehouse should be a key active part of operational
processes, helping deliver the information you need to optimize every
action of your daily business.
Still,
an enterprise data warehouse can never store all the information that
people may need; you also need a flexible BI solution. Your BI solution
should enable people to access and integrate information as needed, from
multiple different data sources.
User Strategy
Information
is irrelevant until people use it to change something in the way the
business operates. Your BI strategy should examine who needs which infor
mation, from which systems, and how they need to interact with it. The
goal is to ensure that all people and processes have the information
they need, when they need it, in order to fulfill their roles.
Each
person will typically have multiple different “information use
profiles.” For example, a sales manager may need to review high-level
strategy, track key performance indicators, analyze sales data, and
review information from oper ational systems. Each of these interac
tions will require a different interface and approach. The key to
successful BI is to bring information to the users as seamlessly as
possible, as part of their daily business.
You
should plan to embed information access into every standard process,
especially in areas that rely heavily on data analysis and evaluation,
such as financial budgeting and planning, and governance, risk, and
compliance systems.
Organizational Strategy
Your strategy should also consider the organization and processes that are required to ensure information is managed as a corporate asset. For example, you must determine which group will be responsible for realizing the value of an information asset. How should the group be staffed and financed? And what governance is required to set priorities and align infor mation use with the overall strategy of the organization?
The Importance of BI Rationalization
Having multiple, disparate data ware housing and BI solutions clearly makes it much harder to take a strategic approach to corporate information use. An essential part of a successful BI strategy involves implementing BI stan dards and rationalizing your existing BI tools. Since most large organizations have already implemented standards for their business application environ ments, BI rationalization is the next big opportunity for organizations to stream line costs and get a greater return on their information assets.
Standardizing
on BI software delivers the same economies of scale as other
standardization efforts. In addition, a cross-organization BI
infrastructure can provide exponential returns through better business
insights that traverse your entire organization.
Rather
than focusing on redundant skill sets, integration points, and project
requirement analyses, implementing BI standards allows your organization
to focus its energy on how to better use information and capture best
practices. The results are new revenue opportuni ties, improved cost
visibility, and better risk management.
Lower Costs
Reducing the number of supported BI tools in your organization can result in:
- Lower software costs through more coordinated purchasing and contracts
- Lower support and administration costs
- Less time and money spent on BI evaluations
- Lower user training costs
- Faster ROI for BI projects
More Control and Better Quality Data
With fewer standard systems for accessing business information, your organization can obtain:
- More reliable data for decision makers
- Easier comparison of information across different departments, for one version of the truth
- Easier sharing of consistent informa tion between different user groups, and with customers, partners, and suppliers
- More coordinated security, to mini mize unauthorized data access
Better Alignment with Business Needs
BI
is often an area of friction between IT (who provides information) and
busi ness people (who need the information to do their jobs). By
allowing you to connect goals, metrics, and people across the
enterprise, an enterprise BI strategy can help your organization to
manage and optimize information flows like other business processes,
leading to improved alignment, transparency, and performance.
In particular, a standard interface for information access gives:
- More timely answers to business questions
- Easier cross-data analysis to reveal new revenue opportunities
- Improved cost visibility
- Better risk management
- Increased competitive advantage by better exploitation of the benefits of enterprise BI
A Foundation for Performance Optimization
An
organization-wide infrastructure provides a foundation that helps you
ensure all users have the data they need to make decisions. You can then
leverage that foundation to optimize your business processes within
your organization and across your extended ecosystem of customers,
partners, and suppliers, in areas such as:
- Financial performance management
- Operational performance management
- Strategy management
- Governance, risk, and compliance
The Practical Implementation of BI Standards
Although
many organizations are already convinced of the benefits of
standardization, they are unsure how to turn that conviction into
reality. Simply declaring a particular set of products as “the standard”
or signing an enterprise agreement won’t deliver all the benefits that
you’re looking for. Based on the collective wisdom of customer and ana
lyst research, there are a number of recommended steps you can take to
introduce a BI strategy and effective BI standards within your
organization.
Review the Current Environment
- Perform an audit of existing BI proj ects. Spend time with business peo ple to understand what information and systems they are using today, and why it is important to the busi ness goals. You are almost certain to find examples of areas that could benefit from a more strategic approach to BI. In the case of large organizations with decentralized sys tems, your vendors may be a useful resource to help you find existing deployments around the globe.
- Based on your research, and in conjunction with your new business contacts, create a written BI strategy document that lays out the costs and benefits, and outlines concrete steps towards a more strategic approach.
Rationalize BI Deployments
Your BI strategy should include prag matic steps to reduce the costs of BI fragmentation:
- Define a standard set of non-overlap ping tools for the BI needs of the organization. The criteria used to make the choices should be explicit, firmly grounded in the business needs of the organization, and agreed upon by the key business users of BI.
- Start enforcing the standard. It is essential that the BI strategy include mechanisms such as veto rights over nonstandard projects and budget incentives to use approved products.
Build a Long-Term Business Intelligence Strategy
To
ensure that you receive the full ben efit of BI, and to avoid the
degeneration of your chosen standards, it is essen tial to have a
long-term BI strategy – including a BI competency center (BICC) and BI
governance.
Regardless
of which functional area it reports to, your BICC should be con sidered
primarily a business initiative, working closely with the
infrastructure teams and other departments.
The BICC is responsible for:
- Optimizing the value of your informa tion assets, by developing and sharing BI best practices throughout an organization.
- Aligning BI initiatives around a frame work: how BI should map to the tech nical, functional, organizational, and business needs of the organization.
- Implementing a formal BI methodology to ensure that BI projects bring the promised benefits. It should detail the roles of different groups (IT, business users, technical support, and so on), and cover both the technical and user-oriented phases of the project.
- Creating an acquisition and deploy ment process for new projects. The competency center must be financed. Care should be taken so that it does so in a way that does not reduce the incentives to business use of BI.
Managing Change
Failure
to manage and take responsibility for the business changes that result
from BI implementations is the biggest cause of failure of strategic BI
plans.
This can be avoided with the following steps:
- Monitor and communicate the strate gic plan. Organizations should con stantly evangelize the benefits of BI and of having BI standards.
- Avoid common BI project challenges. Many project problems can be pre dicted in advance, and can instead be turned into communication opportunities.
- Implement BI governance. Bring together key executives, project champions, and other stakeholders from different business units for reg ular meetings. Use the meetings to align the work of the BICC with the overall strategy of the organization, and overcome any organizational barriers to change.
BI Standardization Case Studies
The following organizations are selected examples of companies in various industries that have implemented stra tegic BI plans.
Insurance
One
of the largest U.S. insurance orga nizations, with over 40,000
employees, had grown through acquisitions, and each business unit had
retained responsibility for BI projects within its area. The
decentralized operations made it hard for senior management to get a
global overview of operations. To position for the future, the company
decided to standardize its information systems at a corporate level and
to implement a new enterprise data warehouse. In addition, the com pany
established a BICC to manage its overall BI strategy, to rationalize
sys tems, eliminate duplicate information, and have more control over
metadata.
The
BICC was staffed using resources from the previously fragmented man
agement reporting systems. Charged with consolidating existing BI
software deployments, the BICC chose the a single platform for both
operational and analyt ical projects across the company. The BICC has
focused on simplification, compliance and security, and BI gover nance.
The group spends time ensuring that different business units, with many
different points of view, all understand and buy into the high-level BI
strategy.
The
company believes that it has reduced the cost of purchasing and
deploying BI applications by up to 25%, resulting in annual savings of
several million dollars. In addition, the IT organi zation is more
easily able to support the rising demand for access and analysis of data
from the company’s applications from various different vendors. A
common set of business rules and metadata definitions are now used
across the organization.
Key
success factors for this insurance company’s BI initiative included
execu tive sponsorship, the ability to enforce central standards, and
knowledge of the businesses served. By standardizing their BI solutions,
the company has reduced the risk of data quality and integrity issues,
con flicting reports, and inaccurate mea surements of critical business
metrics.
Pharmaceuticals
A
large European pharmaceutical com pany faced widespread dissatisfaction
with its existing performance reporting capabilities. Reporting systems
were specific to each functional area, and functions were unwilling to
share data. It took too long to generate an integrated set of numbers. A
reliance on spreadsheets had led to errors and risk exposure. New
functional systems were being proposed that would increase BI
fragmentation and complexity.
The
company decided to develop a new system to support a strategic
initiative of improving business effectiveness and efficiency. The aim
was to improve productivity by standardizing data access across the
organization, reduc ing the risk of wrong decisions, and supporting
faster decision-making.
Sponsored
by executives from the company’s finance group, the project was
overseen by a BI competency cen ter. A shared IT service provided the
underlying technical infrastructure. The solution consists of a central
enterprise data warehouse with different “report ing suites,” which are
made available to different functional and operational areas. A “design
authority” team provides governance for the solution. Chaired by the
executive sponsor, the design authority brings together busi ness and
technical leaders every two weeks to review projects at critical design
points and sponsor improve ment projects.
The
new system replaced over 12 different legacy systems, resulting in
considerable cost savings. In addi tion, confidence in the data
increased, performance management is more effective because there is now
one set of numbers, risk is reduced, and there is more agility to start
up new projects quickly.
Key
success factors included business leadership of the project, keeping
the design flexible in response to evolving needs, and an emphasis on
good infor mation management to provide a stable foundation for more
advanced systems.
Railway Network
The
35,000 employees in this organization are responsible for a railway
network that carries over 1 billion passengers a year. Historically, the
organization took a very fragment ed approach to management reporting.
As part of a long-term project to improve efficiency and lower costs,
the company created a new team to help implement an information
architecture across the organization.
The
team carried out a detailed audit of business information use that
revealed dozens of homegrown, fragmented, spreadsheet-based, manually
operated systems, and suboptimal use of system resources. This
information was used to create a formal BI strategy document that
outlined the long-term vision and processes to be put in place.
The
BI strategy included the implemen tation of standard processes and
tools, and the consoli dation of duplicated resources; for example, a
reduction in the number of data warehouses within the organization.
A
carrot-and-stick approach was taken to encourage cooperation with the
new strategy: the team retained veto rights over new BI implementations,
and finan cial incentives were given for projects that used the
corporate standards, backed by enterprise agreements negotiated with
major suppliers.
Like
all other organizations, data quality is an ongoing challenge,
especially because some source systems are owned by other organiza
tions; information must be shared with customers and partners; and
because the data is subject to regulatory compli ance. Cross-functional
data specialist teams have been created to ensure a coordinated
technical and business process response.
Projects
are currently governed by a project coordination group called the
design authority. Over time, it is hoped that this group will become a
fully-fledged BICC, with a focus on data architecture, people, and
process.
Choosing SAP BusinessObjects as a BI Standard
SAP
has a long history of focusing on the needs of organizations
standardizing on enterprise-wide BI and performance management.
Reasons
to consider SAP as your BI standardization partner include:
Industry Leadership
According
to an IDC market study, SAP is ranked as the number-one vendor of BI
products in the world. More consultants, strategic integrators, and
potential employees know our products better than those of any other
vendor. This means that our products can integrate more easily with your
existing systems, at a lower cost.
Wide Product Portfolio
SAP has the one of the broadest set of BI products available in the market today, covering:
- All information – from SAP and non-SAP business applications, data warehouses, OLAP databases, unstructured information, and realtime information feeds
- All people – from operational reporting all the way to dynamic dashboards, and from the factory floor to the financial analyst and the executive suite
- A single, integrated platform
In
addition, the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio includes performance
optimization applications that leverage these BI products, including:
- Performance management applications such as strategy management; financial budgeting, planning, and consolidation; profitability and costing; and spend analysis
- Governance, risk, and compliance solutions such as risk management; process controls; global trade services; and environmental health and safety
Deep Standardization Experience
SAP
has extensive experience in helping organizations around the world
implement BI standards. We have dedicated consulting teams that have
helped organizations like yours with strategic BI projects, working with
you to get buy-in from business units and avoid the typical challenges
companies face with BI projects.
Conclusion
BI is the number-one priority for today’s CIOs. Implementing BI successfully requires a strategic approach to BI that includes implementing BI standards.
Rationalizing
the number of BI tools in your organization can result in cost savings,
more control over information, and better alignment with your business
goals – and increased competitive advantage by fully exploiting the
bene fits of enterprise BI.
For more information about BI, and SAP BusinessObjects, visit my BI Questions blog.
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