Leveraging Information and Intelligence

According to this article, business intelligence programs are not delivering.

"One in four companies said that they had spent more than a million pounds on business intelligence implementations and more than half of those questioned had spent at least half a million. Furthermore, despite the investment, the research revealed that these implementations are not providing the value companies expect, with 62% admitting they receive a barrage of complaints from their business users."

Why? Well according to the article IT is not involving the business users in the process of understanding and deploying BI systems. Let's see...IT people not understanding the needs of the business user? Perhaps focusing more on the technology? Can't be. :-)

The core issue here is not one of BI failing. Technology is almost never the issue. It's the ability for IT to create and/or align the right technology for the needs of the business users.

BI is a particularly problematic area considering that reporting around, and mining of data, is something that business users do the majority of their day. Show me somebody creating reports, and I'll show you somebody who does not like the reporting or BI system. I'm pretty sure that most BI systems are not designed with this user in mind.

Here is a recommended path forward:

First, understand the needs of the business user at a much more detailed level than you think you need. This means what data they need, when they need it, and how they want it presented.

Second, don't forget about data quality. This is typically a huge issue.

Third, don't forget about master data management (MDM), which should be an ongoing effort.

Finally, delight the users by going above and beyond. Perhaps anticipating future needs and building those into the BI applications now.

Seems simple to me.