Many South African companies are wasting millions of rands on failed business intelligence (BI) projects due to inconsistent measurement of return on investment (ROI).
Estelle de Beer, BI practice product manager at Sybase SA, says most South African companies draw up sound business cases and ROI models for BI projects ahead of implementation, but many of them fall short by failing to continuously measure ROI after the roll-out is complete.
The shortfall, says De Beer, is that business leaders want to see ROI that was promised upfront by the IT department, and through the BI implementation, the business users tend to be overlooked in the overall BI picture.
“IT places enormous amounts of money into projects, which do not get constantly measured, and invests funds into mammoth projects that never show any real ROI. Organisations should measure their current returns, stop the bad ones, and fund the good ones,” De Beer adds.
Business insight
budgets from R30 million to R5 million on projects, by effectively changing the way they deploy BI.”
She points out that planned governance legislation will bring with it hefty penalties for companies that do not manage information according to compliance standards. De Beer says this is creating a new catalyst for BI solutions as these are able to consolidate that information.
According to De Beer, 2009 has seen growth in BI. “A trend has emerged where executive sponsors are viewing BI as a tool to direct them to deliver business value. They have felt the pain of the economic crunch and are using BI to help them to guide their strategy.”
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