It was a real challenge and an ambitious endeavour for Eskom when it rolled out its operational business intelligence (BI) project, said senior consultant on BI at Eskom, Mike Voudouris.
He discussed the challenges Eskom faced when implementing operational BI, at the ITWeb BI Conference.
The company had to consolidate and integrate a myriad of different systems with completely different interfaces and complex data architectures. He concedes that the company should have started smaller. “We went over and beyond our schedule timeframe and the long and phased roll-out was too stretched,” Voudouris says.
As a result, there were a few problems the company encountered. A major issue was that employees forgot the training they received at the beginning of the project when, four years later, some of the core functionality came on stream.
It was also found that the users were grossly intimidated by the new system, and fewer users were actually using the system than initially thought. Furthermore, says Voudouris, interest from the business-side started waning and the project was not delivering according to the feasibility study.
Once the BI Competency Centre was established, the project roll-out went smoother and quicker, although it still faced many challenges. “The critical success factors in rolling out the Eskom BI project were to get executive level support and have a clear understanding of business requirements, having IT and business better aligned,” he says.
It was essential to have the relevant skills on board to implement the BI strategy from a business and technical perspective, and there was a need for someone to take responsibility for the functional specifications.
“It is imperative to ensure a synchronisation with functionality roll-out so training happens accordingly. In our case, the roll-out was too stretched out. The longer it takes, the more at risk the project is. Transition sooner and make sure the BI team is structured to deliver,” he concludes.
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