Extended BI success must meet the needs of business

Many business intelligence (BI) projects are initially successful, but organisations often falter as they attempt to extend the scope of the deployment. That's because they typically kick off with the smartest users who work with the highest value information, but the broadened scope of users as BI permeates the lower strata of the enterprise don't need or want deeply mined information - they need basic insights specific to their roles, distilled from a wealth of enterprise data.

A large local manufacturer very successfully delivered a BI project by taking all the appropriate steps. It appointed a senior person to take care of its side of the project. It took an iterative approach that saw a basic BI sales solution rolled out across multiple divisions of a very large operation followed up with an optimisation phase. That was successful because the team included basic, common functionality for all the organisation's divisions in the initial phase. The optimisation phase then delivered specific functionality for the salespeople in the different divisions.

Companies that don't take an iterative approach like that are going to find themselves incorporating too much functionality into the first build, with a resultant increase in complexity and the potential for error. It's just too complex and unwieldy and bound to failure. And technical people rarely counsel that it cannot be achieved, because to them it's a technical challenge that they want to meet.

But besides the technical advantages of iterative BI deployment, a gradual approach to delivering functionality to the broader spectrum of BI users, starting with basic functionality, fosters an information culture. As the culture grows, so people will request more from the system. Many IT departments are capable of implementing technically efficient tools, but users don't always want them or the tools don't give users views of their business that they need.

BI is a business solution that must meet business needs and must be sold to the business before tools are chosen, technical challenges dealt with and the implementation project kicks off.

It's one of the reasons behind Microsoft's success in the BI industry. Commoditised BI gives basic, generic functionality to the broadest possible spectrum of users. Salespeople need to know that they have stock of a particular item, how long to delivery if stock is not currently available, and what the latest price is. Retailer store managers need regularly updated point-of-sale (POS) data to analyse sale times and items, how effective promotions have been, ascertain the effectiveness of their shelf stacking and more. Traders need relevant information, not a deluge that becomes noise that slows them down.

Organisations looking to replicate their success with initial BI projects serving high-value information to key users must understand that they need to refocus on the business and its users to deliver pertinent information from the vast treasure of corporate data available in most businesses today.