Business Problems regarding the strategic deployment of BI across the organization

Nowadays BI becomes increasingly important driver for business results. Many organizations already have a number of different BI Solutions (Data warehouse, OLAP, Data Mining, Risk Calculators, KPI, Dashboards, etc) implemented within. Moreover, just right now many organizations are in the process of implementation of another one. There is lot of questions that could be asked by responsible people within the organization:

• How to handle this variety of solutions?
• How to go through the process more strategically, instead of taking “single project” approach?
• How to synergize effort and increase the level of reusability?
• How to avoid “silos” of solutions within the organization?
• How to break walls between business and IT people, between departments, etc?

There is a way. Not easy and fast, but certainly will drive you to your destination - if you are persevering enough. Organizations could respond by creating working teams of IT and BI users, now commonly known as BI Competency Centers (BICC). A BICC (also known as a Center of Excellence (COE), Competency Center, or Center of Knowledge) is an organizational structure that groups people with interrelated disciplines, domains of knowledge, experiences and skills, for the purpose of promoting expertise throughout an organization. A BICC purpose is to provide conditions for repeatable successful BI deployment through the development and focus of people, technology and process— in ways that makes sense to an entire organization or division, rather than just a ‘single project’.

If BI is to extend beyond tactical deployments to become a broader-based solution, organization needs a managed, predictable approach. A BICC defines the knowledge, standards, and resources needed to make this happen. A BICC is essential to the strategic deployment of BI because it:

• Maximizes the efficiency, use and quality of your BI across all lines of business
• Leads to BI deployments that have higher success and deliver more value, at less cost, in less time
• Drives end user adoption to ensure its success (simply providing BI to an increasing number of information consumers doesn’t guarantee more people will use it)
• Eliminates the gap between Business and IT
• Enables business agility and improved technology management, which will help to drive business efficiency

Standardization of processes and procedures are often the most overlooked aspect of BI deployment. BI projects are typically complex and long-term (e.g. implementation of enterprise data warehouse) and any inconsistent approach certainly drives to the project failure. Moreover, standardization of processes and procedures help eliminate duplication of effort, inconsistent results and delays in dissemination.

Major obstacles in BI adoption

Most common drivers for implementation of Business intelligence Solutions are:

• A new business needs that cannot be efficiently and effectively fulfilled using  existing systems
• Regulatory changes.

BI is game with three key players: business users, IT users and vendor of the solution. Let’s take a look on each of them.

Business Users could be an originator for deployment of new BI solution in the organization. In terms of BI solution adoption, there are the two kinds of business users in two variations:

• Business owner (e.g. Risk Manager in the bank) - person who should be crucially interested in BI deployment in order to improve his business performance (working with solution mostly on general level, e.g.  dashboards, KPI)
  • “Good guy” – feels project as his own,  interested in solution adoption, pushing the project and his people to participate, in no doubt that new solution will improve his business performance
  • “Bad guy” – fells project as inadequate, uninterested in project progress, except when he need to report to his superiors, pretty sure that existing solution is not worse than a new BI solution
• Business User – person who works with BI solution on daily basis on operational level (Reporting, analytical tools, data mining, etc)
  • “Good guy” – active participation during the project, understanding the solution and benefits, interested in solution adoption
  • “Bad Guy” – passive (reactive) participation during the project, often do not understand solution and benefits, weak candidate for solution adoption

Since form very beginning of the project, vendor should making a permanent effort, as much as is required, to inspire Business users to develop themselves into a “Good guys”.

IT users are equally important players in this game, but on they own way. IT Users receiving request from Business regarding the information deliverables - that is almost everyday scenario. IT people looking for most effective and efficient way to accomplish this requests (les time, less effort, no headache if possible), no matter which tools they have been used. Vendor is required to motivate IT people to direct business requests to BI solution as much as it is possible. BI must be they first option and hopefully the last one. That means that solution required to be easy to use and maintenance, stable and performing – data and deliverables must be timely, comprehensive, accurate and well formatted according to particular user needs.

Vendor plays role of the artist who must juggle between Business and IT users in order to supply environment suitable for project success.

How BICC can help?

The BICC should become a backbone of the organization’s effort of predictable and manageable development of BI infrastructure with a lower cost of ownership and reduced risk of project(s) failure.

 So, how BICC could help in organization happiness?

There is a list of tangible ways:

• BICC’s can help drive a lower total cost of ownership of your Business Intelligence and technology solutions with reduced implementation costs or deployment risk through:
  • The consolidation of best practice functions and services, allowing rapid, repeatable successes from other deployments.
  • The centralization of competency and operational efficiency which maximizes the use of technology resources and assets.
  • The ability to provide strategic BI deployment planning — accelerating rollout success.
  • The management of healthy tension of project prioritization.
• Higher and faster adoption of the complete BI lifecycle and ‘single version of the truth’ across the entire enterprise which improves user satisfaction and self service.
• The ability to enforce a BI standard through registration and guidance and the ability to identify new opportunities to leverage BI. This result in an alignment of technology to strategic goals (competitive differentiation / regulatory requirements) and a clarity of vision for future coordinated BI.

The BICC also serves to educate key stakeholders about the advantages of employing BI. It further helps to build the lines of communication between regions and departments to prevent a silo-driven approach to implementation. In doing so, the BI solution will clearly demonstrate its value through the breadth, depth, completeness, accuracy, timelines of information available throughout the enterprise.

The Solution

Building successful BICC is not one act play. The most successful BICCs are formed through a pragmatic development effort that matures over time. The right way to success is driven by following assumptions:

• Think on the strategic way
• Start with small steps
• Keep focus even if things not going such well as you expected

Scope of the BICC

BICC’s development is not “one size fit all” and will be influenced by business culture, historical deployment activity, specific business pain and measures of success. Start servicing the business based on the tactical technical aspects of a BICC is a first step, such as support and consulting or project start up assistance. Over time, BICC model will mature and expand the scope by having the BICC play a far greater strategic and proactive role in organization. The BICC scope is based on organizational needs, and generally is related with Business, IT and Vendor relations (do you recognize our three key players here).

The BICC scope could be generalized in the following items:

• Data Models Standardization
• Process Standardization
  • Best practice
  • Support Services
  • Documentation
• Infrastructure development
  • Technology/Infrastructure
  • Data Governance
  • License management
• People relations
  • Promotion
  • Training

What roles and personnel are involved in the BICC?

Once the scope of BICC has defined, you need to build team, capable to struggle with difficulties over time of maturing. The right selection of people and appropriate skills are dominant to the success of your BICC. The most successful BICCs maintain a mix of skills where individuals either in of themselves or the as the sum of all parts manage the balance between technical and business acumen. The nature of particular BICC will determine which skills, roles and staffing requirements are needed. As BICC matures and the scope of its function diversifies, additions and changes to the roles and skills will be required to meet the service and capacity needs of your organization.

As an absolute minimum, the BICC will be comprised of the following basic roles:

• BICC Director/Manager
• Business Consultant
• Technical consultant

The diagram demonstrates some of the roles that are commonly found in mature BICC implementations.

Realize that the personnel you appoint as participants in the BICC (fixed or virtual) may require additional education and certifications to obtain the competency required to service the functions of the BICC. It is important that you clearly define the responsibilities of these roles, including the functions of the Steering Committee, leadership qualities for the BICC Director/Manager, and core roles and traditional responsibilities of the BICC team personnel.

 Maturity of a BICC

As the BICC matures, the needs, responsibilities and personnel may change. The diagram below demonstrates the common path that a BICC may follow as it moves through maturity levels:

The BICC model varies depending on the need of the organization as well as its level of maturity. It may be an IT-only initiative, designed to consolidate the system knowledge necessary to ensure a consistent enterprise strategy for BI. Others are hybrids that include key members of functional business areas and executive sponsors, working closely with the IT teams. Some BICCs centralize at a corporate head office while others are loose networks of regional and divisional IT and business stakeholders. Whatever the configuration, the goal is to create a centralized, consistent approach to implement, support, and manage BI. This can ensure a successful deployment and broader usage across the enterprise so that BI is predictable, repeatable and consistent.

Implementing a BICC

BICC can take many forms, depending on the needs, size and objectives of particular organization. The setup and alignment of people will be influenced by many factors and becomes easier and clearer as you take the initial steps forward. Right planning and implementation is crucial for BICC success and that’s includes measured, well-managed approach. An important first step is to review your organization’s perception of the BICC and the maturity level of the effort (which may already be in partial progress without it being called out as a BICC).

• Is a BICC a new concept to your organization?
• Do you already have a BICC in place and want to improve it?
• Is your BICC effective but you want to expand the offering?

Based on the answers to these questions, you should be able to identify the maturity level of your BICC. Moving through these three phases will help you drive toward enterprise success with your BICC. Are you pushing awareness of the BICC concept and philosophy through your organization? Or have you moved on to formalizing your BICC plan and service case? Or are you ready to or already started the process of implementing your BICC?

Formulating your BICC vision and strategy starts by clearly understanding the BICC concept and determining where and how it could be implemented in the organization as well as understanding its primary goals, objectives and measures of success.

• What is the role you intend of the BICC?
• Have you considered who would be involved with the BICC?
• Have you thought about its structure and form (centralized/decentralized)?
• Have you considered funding and are you aware of the options?
• Is your culture attuned to a competency center philosophy?

 Epilogue

As BI becomes increasingly more strategic, IT departments are looking for ways to manage and support deployments across divisions, regions, and functions. A BI competency center can provide the centralized knowledge and best practices to help make this broader BI initiative possible in its own right, establishing a successful BICC depends on the right planning. Organizations that take a measured, well-managed approach are more likely to succeed. Those that do will gain wider support, contribute significant cost savings to the corporate balance sheet, and help take business intelligence to the next, strategic level

Rerefences:

Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center, IBM Whitepaper, 2009