BI success is going to look different if you’re in finance, operations, marketing, sales, or other departments in your organization, according to Steve Williams, president of DecisionPath Consulting (@decisionpath) and an expert in the field of BI.
While it’s true that different companies have different strengths and challenges when it comes implementing and managing successful business intelligence projects, there are certain strategic challenges or barriers to BI success that every company faces.
In a cover story in Strategic Finance magazine, Williams identifies five strategic barriers to BI success. Here are three such barriers:
Barrier #1: Confusing terminology makes the value of BI hard to determine
Williams says even though business intelligence is becoming more pervasive in U.S. companies, most executives still aren’t comfortable with BI and BI-related terminology.
That’s not really a surprise because, according to Williams, BI is a broad field that includes a number of technologies, data integration approaches, canned and custom applications, and information/analysis delivery methods.
BI is often used as a blanket term and means very different things to different people, Williams says in a blog he wrote summarizing the magazine article. He asks: Is analytics different from BI? Is standard reporting BI? Is BI the data warehousing infrastructure, the front-end tool used for visualization, or an approach to utilizing information for more informed decisions?
It’s not as important, however, to determine the exact meanings of BI terms as it is to understand what value BI can bring to you, no matter what you call it. Williams says business leaders must have a much more concrete idea of what BI is and what it can do for their companies before approving six-figure to seven-figure BI budgets. Because if they don’t understand what BI is, their BI projects won’t get the necessary funding and they won’t be successful.
Barrier #2: The mission and importance of BI are unclear
To define the mission for BI, you first have to determine the strategic importance of BI to your company and to its industry, Williams says. The more complex your business is, the more important BI is to its success. That means you have to understand who your customers are; how complex your supply chain is; and how complex your product offerings because understanding all these things is essential to understanding how important BI can and should be to your company, Williams says.
Barrier #3: There’s no clear link to business strategy and critical business processes
For BI projects to be successful, your company has to improve the performance of the crucial processes that determine business success, Williams says. It’s imperative to closely match your planned BI investments with specific business processes so you can precisely target and measure performance improvements. If you don’t, your BI initiative most likely won’t succeed.
You can learn about the last two barriers, get in-depth information about each barrier and how to overcome them by reading the full article.
Linda Rosencrance
Spotfire Blogging Team
