Building competency centres in the public sector for sustainable BI

The public sector is fast recognising the value of business intelligence (BI) to improve efficiency, enhance service delivery, as well as forecast and plan infrastructure requirements to support a dynamic population.

However, BI implementations cannot be viewed as discrete projects. Any BI implementation needs a holistic approach and must form part of an overall information strategy.

"To ensure sustainable success, a government department implementing BI should form a competency centre," says Bruce Bond-Myatt, national consulting manager at SAS Institute, leader in business and analytic intelligence. "If not, long-term value may not be sustained."

The BI competency centre is a permanent formal organisational structure to promote effective BI use to support business strategy.

"It provides a central location for driving and supporting your overall information strategy," explains Bond-Myatt. "It enables you to coordinate existing efforts, while reducing redundancy and increasing effectiveness."

Centralisation ensures that information and best practices are shared throughout the government department.

The competency centre is also instrumental in transferring knowledge and enhancing analytic skills. It turns analysis into action, ensuring greater information consumption and higher levels of ROI.

Operating a BI competency centre enables a government department to:

* Exploit the full value of technology investments;
* Standardise business and analytic intelligence processes;
* React faster to changes;
* Reduce risk of implementation projects;
* Support end-users in fully understanding data and acting properly on analyses; and
* Ensure that BI knowledge is shared.

"The competency centre provides an optimal solution for meeting the increasing demands of end-users with fewer support staff," says Bond-Myatt.

It also ensures that successes can be documented, measured and monitored for optimal performance. By streamlining operations, you can reduce overhead and avoid information silos.

Technology is only one piece of the BI puzzle. In order to have a successful implementation, it is also important to understand how your department uses information. The competency centre can be an excellent vehicle for articulating and executing information goals and objectives.

SAS has developed a service offering to assist customers in the planning, aligning and set-up of a BI competency centre based on extensive BI project implementation experience globally.