Some advice for your BI initiative does not become a scary halloween story

Today is Halloween, it's celebrated in a variety of ways and activities including trick-or-treating, wearing masks and telling scary stories. But when you are implementing an BI initiative, you don't want to hear scary stories. Here are some advice for your BI initiative does not become a scary halloween story:

The definition of a BI strategy plan is crucial to implement a successful BI.

First of all, you need understand your business issues before implement your BI, aligning the business goals with the BI strategy.

When you start the process to implement BI in your company, it is essential that you have an executive sponsor that has influence on all divisions and business units of the company, because it is necessary to show and persuade the business that BI is not just another IT project, is a continuous process to delivery better information to the company make better decisions.

It is interesting to consider the creation of a Business Intelligence Steering Committee. The BI Steering Committee includes the senior representatives of the principal areas of the company and the BI manager. The BI Steering Committee will work like a gear to BI.

It is interesting also to consider the creation of a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC). The BICC must be a center of expertise for BI, sharing resources, best practices and support to maximize its use in the company. The BICC can be physical or virtual (a team with defined roles and tasks).

Create and maintain a high-performance BI Team.

The BI Team and the business users need to develop together a business-focused metadata that provide all the business requirements.

Identify the gaps between the current state of your organization and the state you want when you implement your BI, and define a plan to close the gaps and achieve the goals.

Choose carefully your BI Tools, and it's important to have ongoing training the users on the BI tools and how to use better the data in the tools, also offering the right BI tool to the right user group, recognizing the importance of BI front-end tools in attracting the users.