Quick-win BI is ideal for this economic climate because the results are quick and there is a low risk, says Keith Jones, MD of Harvey Jones.
Speaking at the 2009 ITWeb Business Intelligence Conference, Jones said: “South Africans have a problem-solving culture”, therefore, they're less likely to wait around for something, and would rather just get it done.
When implementing a quick-win BI solution, the proof of concept should take less than a day, the pilot should be available in a week or less, and the 'go live' should be between one and three weeks.
He says quick time to value is the only real measurement of a project's success, and a good solution should “tie in to and leverage existing technology and people assets”.
Jones presented a case study of BI implementation at Peter's Papers, where the company was unhappy with the speed and level of detail of its current reports run on its ERP system. The IT department had to develop new reports for every query and the decision-making process was very slow.
Jones said in four days the company had a functioning data warehouse running against three years of sales and stock data. The entire business solution was implemented in under a fortnight. However, he said, Peter's Papers was a best-case scenario because of its clean, high-quality data.
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