Monday, November 9, 2009

Does your company have a BI strategy?


Boris Evelson wrote today a short but nice post in Information Management, called Ten Strong Hints Your Enterprise May Not Have a BI Strategy, where he lists 10 hints why the companies don't have a BI strategy. Below is his list:

"You know that you don't have an enterprise BI strategy if:

1 - Your end users keep pointing to IT as the source of most BI problems
2 - Your business executives view BI as another cost center
3 - IT staff keep asking end users for report requirements
4 - Your BI is supported by IT help desk
5 - You can’ tell the difference between BI and Performance Management
6 - You can’t measure your BI usage
7 - You can’t measure your BI ROI
8 - You think your BI strategy is the same as your DW strategy
9 - You don’t have a plan to develop, hire, retain and grow BI staff
10- You actually don’t know if your enterprise has a BI strategy!"

Although BI remains at the top of the list of IT priorities, the most of companies still lack a cohesive strategy for Business Intelligence. The companies need to understand that BI is not just another IT project, is a continuous process to delivery better information to the company makes better decisions. The companies need to link the BI with corporate strategy, with the strategies defined by executives applied to BI efforts. BI also must be connected with the business process. For all of this to happen, it is essential that the company has an executive sponsor that has influence on all divisions and business units (who is not the CIO).

4 comments:

Fred Powers said...

I agree with you that culture plays a big role in getting a BI initiative off the ground. I mentioned this as well in a recent article (http://tiny.cc/4Q1xR). Ownership is key, but not as important as finding common ground between business users and IT. Most BI initiatives need executive buy-in in order to be completely successful, but without the involvement of line of business managers, other end-users, and IT a strategy will stay just that - a plan versus something actionable that can be embraced by the entire organization.
- Fred Powers, CEO, Dimensional Insight

Marcus Borba said...

Fred,

Nice comment. I completely agree with you, for a succesfull BI project, you need to involve the business and end users, creating a commitment between the people involved, a truly partnership, working together during all the phases of the project.

By the way, I read your article, very good explanation on how to generate BI Value.

Best Regards,
Marcus

Jennifer said...

Marcus - excellent write up, believes have to start at the top with management for an adoption to be accepted.

I would love to republish this in our January 2010 newsletter of course giving you attribution by name/blog site. Would you allow us to do that?

Please let me know. :)
Jennifer
janderson@imninc.com
blogsunlocked.wordpress.com

Marcus Borba said...

Jennifer,

Thank you for your comment.

Sure, you can publish on your newsletter.

Best Regards,
Marcus