BI is a journey, not a destination

While a business intelligence competency centre (BICC) promises to smooth the way for the new processes and layers of administration that are introduced with a new BI implementation, the scope for mismanagement is vast.

Caron Mooney, director at Microsoft Gold certified partner, IS Partners, says where organisations are creating what they call a BICC, the upshot in reality is ad-hoc development of new systems, responses to Exco queries and report production to appease user demands. However, because these functions are not fully understood, typical BICCs are not organised to meet the demands placed on them. Under-delivery, user dissatisfaction, lack of progress and over-stress is the result.

A BICC should be structured to account for various user needs, with three clear-cut divisions, the aim of which is to ensure that all your users are getting value from the system and using it, Mooney says.

“Gartner indicates that IT is out of touch with what users' and business' BI requirements, in fact, are. With any new BI implementation, IT should be co-operating with management to ensure that these users are obtaining the expected value from the system,” she says.

As with any new system, the BI solution will require a continuous investment to ensure ongoing value. “Your budget needs to account for ongoing training as one component, and the support structure that forms the basis for the BICC. The same rules, in fact, apply as with any other information system implementation.”

A continual training budget will ensure that people within the organisation who mature into the system can learn and grow through more advanced training and also derive ongoing value from their education.

“Users who are not given assistance until they become self-sufficient will ultimately abandon the system. Exco also needs to obtain the answers they want quickly enough,” Mooney says.

This applies equally to people within the organisation who simply do not have time to wait for information, such as the marketing department, for example. As these pressures start mounting and pulling resources in all directions, organisations might find themselves pressed for a solution.

Mooney says the BICC can go a long way to alleviating the burden, providing that it is structured and resourced with the correct skills, according to users' needs. “Support forms an integral component of the BI investment. By creating three distinct groups, companies need to ensure that dedicated resources are allocated to firstly support users up to a management level. These users have to be given access to available data, while the existing environment has to be used to generate new reports and dashboards,” she says.

A second team that has a higher understanding of the business needs to be established to respond to the needs of marketing and the Exco. This team could, for example, consist of marketing people themselves and must incorporate a high level of technical expertise within the group. This group will be in a position to create new business measures and dimensions based on the business taxonomy that is communicated from the Exco.

A third group, says Mooney, would handle any new BI projects and can be constituted if and when required. “This group always understands that BI is journey and never just a single project. They would also be responsible for road-mapping the future BI direction and obtain input from the other support groups to ensure users are getting what they need.

“By focusing skills in right place, and setting the correct boundaries for each support group within the BICC, organisations will have a much more successful BI programme and more useful platform on which to base business decisions.”