We recently interviewed BPM Partners’ John Colbert, who talked about five common attributes of failed business intelligence projects. One of these attributes is how and when the business intelligence technology is selected.
According to Colbert, companies should select business intelligence technology with the plan of deploying the business intelligence application in a three-to-six month time frame. This gives the business intelligence team a better chance of having the technology support changing business requirements.
Business intelligence projects that get in trouble often select business intelligence technology, then undertake a major data cleansing or data warehousing project. While it is theoretically optimal to have a business intelligence project kick off with pristine data, history has proven this approach leads to extremely long deployment cycles.
With software vendors updating business intelligence technology sometimes as frequently as every six months, this can result in a 12 – 18 month business intelligence project relying on outdated business intelligence technology.
BPM Partners’ sees companies using business intelligence technology and platforms for three-to-five years before upgrading or migrating. With this is mind, Colbert recommends companies find a balance between ‘bleeding edge’ and older business intelligence technology. That balance needs to factor in company culture, business intelligence project deployment timeline and software vendor roadmaps.
Kelley Kassa
Spotfire Blogging Team
Image Credit: Microsoft Office Clip Art
