Though BI has been around for so long that it’s now considered one of the essential functions within a company’s IT service portfolio, there are still plenty of companies who are not far down the analytics road for any one of a number of reasons.

Some of the main reasons companies are just now tackling their BI challenges are:

• They are a relatively young organisation and have just begun to see the need for the strategic advantage a BI investment can provide or justify its cost.
• They have been profoundly decentralised in the past and scope-limited, parochial solutions have dominated, while new needs for cross-silo data integration have finally reached a tipping point.
• They have done without analytics for some time because they have found a niche where they could survive effectively, but now globalisation of their business threatens them with competition encroaching on their field. They must seek out new opportunities and ways to remain competitive in their market.
• Whatever the reason, these companies are now faced with very real challenges that many of us BI architects haven’t struggled with recently: how to launch an analytics initiative when there’s no precedent in the company for it. A laundry list of quantifiable successes isn’t available in these circumstances, and organisations (especially intractable ones who need some convincing to adopt an attitude of welcome to the oft-times transformative nature of an analytics practice) may not see why it’s critical. Convincing leadership to take that first step is perhaps the subject of a different conversation. But assuming you’ve gotten buy-in for a proof-of-concept or a pilot BI program, where do you start?
• The recipe for success is simple and has three ingredients: start small, grow influence, add value at every step. Note that I’m saying the process is simple, which does not necessarily means it’s easy. After all, finding the right (small) place to start isn’t entirely straightforward. It’s important to select an initial project that meets as many of these criteria as possible:
  Engaged leadership: A senior business leader who believes in (or at least is open to) the potential for improvement through the use of BI will provide momentum for the project as it gets underway and testify to its success after its completion.
• Sufficient resources: The right financial and human resources to engage the problem and deliver on the goals. Oftentimes, it’s important to bring not just enough people to work on the pilot, but the right people to work on it.
  Clear goals & metrics for success: It’s critical to be able to state unambiguously at the outset what the goals of the pilot program are, and to be able to measure the project’s success in objective ways. Whether the intention is to improve process efficiency, simplify the organisation’s data complexity, or generate new insights, it is absolutely essential to be able to say when the work is done and to assess whether it achieved its goals: yes, no, or sort-of. This kind of clarity allows the BI team to take the institutional benefit of the pilot program and evangelise it throughout the company with real authority.

With these criteria in mind, a BI architect can leverage a well-chosen pilot program and its success into a string of connected projects that begin to demonstrate the kind of point-wise transformations that deliver quantifiable value to the company. A methodical approach that can quantify its value at each step helps the BI architect win over even the most skeptical of leaders.
From this place, the challenges change and become more difficult, but that’s the subject of a future article. For now, these organisations struggling to get on their feet with analytics have a roadmap for making a strong start down the road to a powerful strategic and tactical tool in their IT arsenal.

Mr. Briggs has been active in the fields of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence for the entirety of his 17-year career. He was responsible for the early adoption and promulgation of BI at one of the world’s largest consumer product companies and developed their initial BI competency centre. He has consulted with numerous other companies about effective BI practices. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College (Mass).
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Though BI has been around for so long that it’s now considered one of the essential functions within a company’s IT service portfolio, there are still plenty of companies who are not far down the analytics road for any one of a number of reasons.

Some of the main reasons companies are just now tackling their BI challenges are:

• They are a relatively young organisation and have just begun to see the need for the strategic advantage a BI investment can provide or justify its cost.
• They have been profoundly decentralised in the past and scope-limited, parochial solutions have dominated, while new needs for cross-silo data integration have finally reached a tipping point.
• They have done without analytics for some time because they have found a niche where they could survive effectively, but now globalisation of their business threatens them with competition encroaching on their field. They must seek out new opportunities and ways to remain competitive in their market.
• Whatever the reason, these companies are now faced with very real challenges that many of us BI architects haven’t struggled with recently: how to launch an analytics initiative when there’s no precedent in the company for it. A laundry list of quantifiable successes isn’t available in these circumstances, and organisations (especially intractable ones who need some convincing to adopt an attitude of welcome to the oft-times transformative nature of an analytics practice) may not see why it’s critical. Convincing leadership to take that first step is perhaps the subject of a different conversation. But assuming you’ve gotten buy-in for a proof-of-concept or a pilot BI program, where do you start?
• The recipe for success is simple and has three ingredients: start small, grow influence, add value at every step. Note that I’m saying the process is simple, which does not necessarily means it’s easy. After all, finding the right (small) place to start isn’t entirely straightforward. It’s important to select an initial project that meets as many of these criteria as possible:
  Engaged leadership: A senior business leader who believes in (or at least is open to) the potential for improvement through the use of BI will provide momentum for the project as it gets underway and testify to its success after its completion.
• Sufficient resources: The right financial and human resources to engage the problem and deliver on the goals. Oftentimes, it’s important to bring not just enough people to work on the pilot, but the right people to work on it.
  Clear goals & metrics for success: It’s critical to be able to state unambiguously at the outset what the goals of the pilot program are, and to be able to measure the project’s success in objective ways. Whether the intention is to improve process efficiency, simplify the organisation’s data complexity, or generate new insights, it is absolutely essential to be able to say when the work is done and to assess whether it achieved its goals: yes, no, or sort-of. This kind of clarity allows the BI team to take the institutional benefit of the pilot program and evangelise it throughout the company with real authority.

With these criteria in mind, a BI architect can leverage a well-chosen pilot program and its success into a string of connected projects that begin to demonstrate the kind of point-wise transformations that deliver quantifiable value to the company. A methodical approach that can quantify its value at each step helps the BI architect win over even the most skeptical of leaders.
From this place, the challenges change and become more difficult, but that’s the subject of a future article. For now, these organisations struggling to get on their feet with analytics have a roadmap for making a strong start down the road to a powerful strategic and tactical tool in their IT arsenal.

Mr. Briggs has been active in the fields of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence for the entirety of his 17-year career. He was responsible for the early adoption and promulgation of BI at one of the world’s largest consumer product companies and developed their initial BI competency centre. He has consulted with numerous other companies about effective BI practices. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College (Mass).
View Linkedin Profile->
Other Articles by Douglas->