Business markets off the BI mark

Johannesburg, 06 Dec 2007

Business markets are still far off the mark in developing ideal business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) environments.

This was one of the issues raised at Cognos` recent Performance Management 2007 User Conference.

Graham Cobb, Cognos senior manager for the banking industry, explained how businesses can leverage standardisation and a BI competency centre (BICC) to fast-track their journey to achieve high PM.

"According to research, 70% of the international market operates in a state of `uncontrolled behaviour` that is further exacerbated by projects driven by a `siloed` approach, the deployment of many different tools, re-inventing the wheel by not applying past experience and best practices, and a lack of reuse of technical and human capital. In fact, research conducted on Fortune`s Top 200 Companies highlighted that, on average, these companies had between five and 15 BI tools deployed in their organisations."

According to recent Cognos research, standardisation drives higher levels of performance in an organisation and is the cornerstone of shifting from a technology focus to a business focus. It also reduces the total cost of ownership and delivers one common view, with one common tool and one version of the truth.

"Companies must mature their standardisation efforts to maximise the reuse of tools and resources in the organisation. One way of reusing knowledge is through the formation of a BICC," explained Cobb. "A BICC is the single largest contributor driving BI adoption within an organisation."

Overcoming barriers

There are, however, a few barriers to the success of a BI implementation, even with a BICC, explained Cobb: "Organisational change is often met with resistance and the need to work with familiar technologies and processes often challenges the success of a BI implementation."

Cobb believes there is also no `one size fits all` BICC and it is not easy to understand the success path for a BICC. "The BICC needs to establish an operating framework that supports BI as a strategic asset and it is challenging to create a balance of centralisation versus decentralisation. Business units or departments that operated in isolation now have to work in a collaborative environment."

The best practices approach is one way of resolving some of these issues with the design, formalisation and management of a BICC, he said.

Four principles

When setting up a BICC, there are four principles or best practices that can guide an organisation to achieve a BICC that offers all that it is supposed to, Cobb stated. "These are scope of BICC services, people and culture, foundation design, and placement and structure.

"Forming a BICC together with standardisation is now becoming a more widely accepted practice, driving the success of BI implementations across organisations.

"To ensure a BI/PM initiative thrives, best practices need to be applied and a customised model must be deployed on top of an already proven and successful one."