Business Intelligence StrategyA Practical Guide for Achieving BI ExcellenceJohn BoyerBill FrankBrian GreenTracy HarrisKay Van De VanterMC Press Online, LLCKetchum, ID 83340Business Intelligence StrategyA Practical Guide for Achieving BI ExcellenceJohn Boyer, Bill Frank, Brian Green, Tracy Harris, Kay Van De VanterFirst EditionFirst Printing—September 2010© 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved.The following terms are trademarks or registered … Continue reading “Business Intelligence Strategy | My Assignment Tutor”
Business Intelligence StrategyA Practical Guide for Achieving BI ExcellenceJohn BoyerBill FrankBrian GreenTracy HarrisKay Van De VanterMC Press Online, LLCKetchum, ID 83340Business Intelligence StrategyA Practical Guide for Achieving BI ExcellenceJohn Boyer, Bill Frank, Brian Green, Tracy Harris, Kay Van De VanterFirst EditionFirst Printing—September 2010© 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved.The following terms are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business MachinesCorporation in the United States, other countries, or both: IBM, the IBM logo, and Cognos. A currentlist of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this book is accurate andcomplete, some typographical errors or technical inaccuracies may exist. IBM does not acceptresponsibility for any kind of loss resulting from the use of information contained in this book. Theinformation contained in this book is subject to change without notice. The publisher, authors, andIBM do not guarantee the accuracy of the book and do not assume responsibility for informationincluded in or omitted from it.Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright, and permissionmust be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system,or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orlikewise.MC Press offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases orspecial sales, which may include custom covers and content particular to your business, training goals,marketing focus, and branding interest.MC Press Online, LLCCorporate OfficesP.O. Box 4886Ketchum, ID 83340-4886 USAFor information regarding sales and/or customer service, please contact:MC PressP.O. Box 4300Big Sandy, TX 75755-4300 USAFor information regarding permissions or special orders, please contact:mcbooks@mcpressonline.comISBN: 978-158347-362-7AcknowledgementsWe would all like to thank the IBM team and their extensive list of subject-matterexperts who contributed content, joined our discussions, and helped to provideexpertise that was critical to making this book possible: Thank you to MichaelDziekan and Forrest Palmer, who spent many hours with our team providing theirdeep expertise and guidance and contributing significant content and graphics,particularly on organizational structures and competency centers. And to MegDussault, who helped enlighten our team to the “sweet spots” of information.Thank you to Kevin Cohen and Derek Lacks for their assistance with and debateson the many levels of value within an organization. And to Andreas Coucopoulos,for his many hours delving into the technology strategy that is so critical to a strategic initiative. We would also like to thank Rob Ashe, Eric Yau, Harriet Fryman,and Mychelle Mollot for their support in making this book possible.We also want to thank the MC Press team—Merrikay Lee, Victoria Mack,Thomas Stockwell, and Katie Tipton—for their patience and expertise, as well asSusan Visser from the IBM Information Management team at IBM.From John BoyerI would like to thank my chain of management—Oussama Warwar, Jeff Henry,and Dirk Izzo—who contributed to the content and helped me understand howthe corporate vision is translated to strategy. I am also deeply indebted to theBICoE Team—Mangai, Robert, Ram, Venkat, Guru, and KT—who make myjob easy. You put the “E” in the BICoE. Thank you, too, to Lynn Moore; bestof luck on your book, my friend.From Bill FrankI would like to thank all of the IBM Cognos team who made themselves available inour BI journey over the years, the Cognos Innovation Center, Tracy Harris, and the“cheese kids.” There are so many individuals from J&J that have been my soundingboard, taken initiative to turn ideas into reality, shaped my thinking, collaborated withme, and put up with my endless evangelizing about standards, practices, and the needfor a BICC. I’m sure I’d miss someone in the short space I have here if I startedlisting names. I would like to thank the SSB BI Domain, the BITS team, the BICCleads, and the entire J&J BI COP for their efforts that have led to successes in transforming, improving, and creating innovation with BI solutions across the enterprise.Thanks also to the members of my immediate management as well as senior executives who have encouraged, mentored, and supported me.From Brian GreenOn behalf of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, I would like to acknowledgethe dedication and contributions of the entire Data Management and InformationDelivery team. I would also like to acknowledge Frank Brooks for his tremendous leadership, vision, and support. Thanks also to the members of myimmediate management as well as senior executives who have encouraged,mentored, and supported me.From Tracy HarrisA big thanks to Leah MacMillan, Meg Dussault, and Harriet Fryman for theirguidance, insight, and vision and for recognizing the critical need for thisendeavor. I would also like to thank Debbie Ng and Jacqueline Coolidge forhelping to initially bring this “excellent” group together to make this book possible. Thank you also to Jennifer Schmitz, Becky Smith, Jennifer Hanniman,Rebecca Wormleighton, Brent Winsor, Catherine Frye, and Nina Sandy for theirsignificant contributions to this endeavor.From Kay Van De VanterI would like to thank my fellow Boeing Business Intelligence CompetencyCenter team members and management for their insightful comments and discussions. Special thanks to our BICC executive manager for his careful reviews andattention to detail and to our communications focal for working closely with meto obtain the permissions and approvals needed to participate in this endeavor.Finally, we would like to thank the various thought leaders and analysts in theindustry who continue to provide critical research in this area that allows organizations to better understand how they can achieve success. In particular, wewould like to acknowledge the teams at BIScorecard, Nucleus Research, Business Applications Research Center, Gartner, Forrester, and TDWI. And wewould like to thank Roland Mosimann, Patrick Mosimann, and Jack Musgrove atBII, PMSI, and Aline for their research, support, vision, and foundational contributions to this effort.About the AuthorsThe content for this book was prepared by the IBM Cognos BI Excellence Advisory Board, a team of representatives from leading enterprise organizations whoresearch, advise, and share best practices for achieving excellence in BusinessIntelligence and Performance Management initiatives.John BoyerJohn Boyer is manager of the BI Advisory Team at The Nielsen Company. There, he oversees adoption, enablement, andinternal consulting for all things BI. Before joining Nielsen,John spent several years as a BI architect and trusted advisor atIBM. After graduating from medical school, his aptitude, passion, and bedside manner took him first to a healthcare clinic,where he rose to Director of Finance and Information Systems.John has spent the past 15 years consulting in software development, businessintelligence, and data warehousing.John is chair of the Illinois Cognos User Group. As a conference speaker, he hasbeen invited to speak at a number of national events, including Information onDemand, Cognos Forum, and the Composite Software User Group.About The Nielsen CompanyThe Nielsen Company (www.nielsen.com) is a leading global information andmedia company providing essential integrated marketing and media measurementinformation, analytics, and industry expertise to clients around the world. Throughits broad portfolio of products and services, Nielsen tracks sales of consumer products, reports on television viewing habits in countries representing more than 60percent of the world’s population, and measures Internet audiences. Nielsen alsoproduces trade shows, print publications, and online newsletters. The company isactive in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York City.Bill FrankBill Frank is the Manager, ITGF BI Practice, at Johnson &Johnson. He has more than 25 years of experience in decisionsupport and business intelligence and is a certified ProjectManagement Professional (PMP). Bill has worked in severalmajor companies, including AT&T, Time Warner, and mostrecently Johnson & Johnson. At J&J, Bill has played a keyrole in the development of BI solutions, organizational model,governance, and practices and in evangelizing BI across the enterprise. Billis a founding member of the J&J BI Center of Practice and co-leads this 300-member internal group focused on leverage, communication, and sharingproven practices.Bill also serves as the liaison to the IBM Cognos executive, marketing, andtechnology teams. He teamed with other J&J teams to lead the creation of theIBM Cognos enterprise agreement and the shared environments that are key tosupporting J&J’s standardization and consolidation efforts. Currently, Bill isdeveloping enterprise data warehouse and BI strategies to support the J&J GlobalFinance organization. He is also a member of the IBM BI Excellence AdvisoryBoard and several other external organizations focused on BI technologies.About Johnson & JohnsonJohnson & Johnson (www.jnj.com) is a Fortune 100
company, encompassingthe world’s premier consumer health company, the world’s largest and mostdiverse medical devices and diagnostics company, fourth-largest biologics company, and eighth-largest pharmaceuticals company. J&J has more than 250operating companies in 60 countries and employs approximately 114,000 people.The company is headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey.Brian GreenBrian Green is Manager of Business Intelligence and Performance Management at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Hehas 30 years of information management experience in theinsurance industry, with expertise in process improvement andorganizational development to align delivery of solutions withbusiness strategy.About the AuthorsAbout BlueCross BlueShield of TennesseeBlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (www.bcbst.com) offers its clients peace ofmind through affordable solutions for health and healing, life and living.Founded in 1945, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based company is focused on reinventing the health plan for its three million members. Through its integratedhealth management approach, BlueCross develops patient-centric products andservices that positively impact affordability, patient safety, and quality.BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Inc., is an independent licensee of theBlueCross BlueShield Association.Tracy HarrisTracy Harris is Senior Manager, BI Excellence, at IBM.She is responsible for chairing the BI Excellence AdvisoryBoard and managing the BI Excellence Program and Champion initiative at IBM. These programs are designed to helporganizations achieve success, business value, and excellencein their BI and performance management initiatives and aredefined through the sharing of best practices, research, andguidance from industry leaders and subject-matter experts. Tracy has workedwith Fortune 500® organizations and government organizations around theglobe to gather and research best practices in achieving excellence, and sheshares this research through workshops and speaking engagements worldwideon the topic.About IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation (www.ibm.com) is one of theworld’s largest technology companies—a multinational computer, technology,and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software and offers infrastructureservices, hosting services, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. With nearly 400,000 employees worldwideand sales of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars, IBM holds more patents than anyother U.S. technology company and operates eight research laboratories worldwide. The company has scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionalsin over 200 countries. IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, fourTuring Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medalsof Science.About the AuthorsKay Van De VanterKay Van De Vanter is an information management domainarchitect and enterprise BI architect for The Boeing Company,with more than 12 years of experience in IT and business intelligence areas. For the past seven years, she has led Boeing’sBusiness Intelligence Competency Center team and hasworked with several other key information management teamsto drive the standardization and alignment of BI initiatives atBoeing. Kay has also collaborated with industry BI professionals, user groups,and teams to help drive innovation and quality in the BI tools used by Boeing.She is currently partnering with others to develop an enterprise BI and technology strategy in support of Boeing’s business goals. Kay is a member of IBM’sBI Excellence Advisory Board and BI Customer Advisory Board, as well asother external user groups focused on BI technologies and best practices.About The Boeing CompanyThe Boeing Company (www.boeing.com) is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense, space, andsecurity systems. Boeing products and tailored services include commercial andmilitary aircraft, satellites, weapons, electronic and defense systems, launch systems, advanced information and communications systems, and performancebased logistics and training. Boeing’s Engineering, Operations, and Technologybusiness unit supports the company’s business units by delivering high-quality,low-cost technical services in IT, research and technology, and test and evaluation; integrated enterprise strategies that ensure technology is ready whenneeded, competitively protected, and environmentally progressive; and disciplined and efficient engineering, operations, and supplier management supportthat ensures program success.About the AuthorsContentsAbout the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vPreface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiiiIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1The Business Value of Successful Business Intelligence . . . . . . . . . 2The BI Excellence Strategy Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Consider Your Level of Maturity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Business Intelligence Excellence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Strategies for Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8The Business Alignment Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8The Organizational and Cultural Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9The Technology Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Building Excellence in BI and PM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Chapter 1: Defining Your Business Alignment Strategy. . . . . . . . . . 13An Introduction to Strategic Management Approaches . . . . . . . . . 14Assessing Your Current Situation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Where Do We Start? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Mapping Corporate Objectives to Bottom-Up Needs. . . . . . . . . . . 20The Bottom-Up Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20The Top-Down Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22How Successful Companies Make It Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23– ix –Developing Metrics and the KPI Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24The Performance Manager: A Framework for Strategy . . . . . . . 24Constructing a MethodologyToward Performance Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Determining Priorities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Analysis and Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Defining the Business Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Increasing IT Efficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Increasing Business Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Improving Business Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Checklist of Recommended Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Business Alignment Strategy Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Chapter 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Understanding Your Business Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Communicating the Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Transitioning the Culture byActive Team-Based Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Executive Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Mining for Executive Buy-In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Understanding Senior Executive Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Tactics for Engaging the Executive Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44Keep the Conversation Going . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45Value of an Organizational Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Defining the BI Competency Center (BICC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Organizational Design Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Goals and Objectives of the BICC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Developing the Scope of the BICC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54BICC Roles and Personnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Funding Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Strategically Position the Organization for the BICC. . . . . . . . . 57Maturity of a BICC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58User Adoption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Success Factor 1: Creating Technology Standards . . . . . . . . . . 58Success Factor 2: Converging IT and Business Users . . . . . . . . 60Success Factor 3: Providing Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Success Factor 4: Providing Product Management . . . . . . . . . . 61Success Factor 5: Ensuring Timely, Trusted Information . . . . . . 62Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62– x –ContentsShowcasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63How to Demonstrate Value and Communicate Successes . . . . . . 63Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Communication in the Requirement and Design Process . . . . . . 68Managing Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Checklist of Recommended Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Organizational and Behavioral Strategy Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Chapter 3: Technology Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Standardization and Consolidation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Standardization Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80What Drives Consolidation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Matching User Roles and Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Gaining IT Efficiencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Fragmentation and Reversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Using the Business Value Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87A Larger TCO Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Leveraging Existing Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Leveraging Existing Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Delivering the Information Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91Open Data Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92Consistent Business Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93Information Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94Gaining Confidence in Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Deployment Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97Deployment Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98Choosing the Right Deployment Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99Processes for Change and Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Delivering a Successful Technology Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Checklist of Recommended Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Technology Strategy Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113– xi –Contents PrefaceBusiness Intelligence Strategy: A Practical Guide for Achieving BI Excellence has been a project in the making for more than two years. Thebook began as a series of BI Excellence Advisory Board monthly roundtables.These discussions evolved to a number of white papers that were developed withAdvisory Board members, subject-matter experts from IBM, and various thoughtleaders in the industry. This content was then compiled into the IBM BIChampion Kit and finally into the book you are reading today.The BI Excellence Advisory Board was established by IBM in 2008. Madeup of a group of experts in the business intelligence field across several differentindustries, the Advisory Board was born out a recognition that although BI wasan important technology for many organizations, it appeared that for many,success was limited. With this realization in mind, IBM brought leaders fromwell-known, highly successful BI programs together to discuss how theyachieved success. Each of these professionals was a recognized, practicing leaderin the BI industry. Each had enabled thousands of users in their organizations,had large-scale BI departments or BI communities, and had successfully createdstandard people, process, and technology programs in the BI practice in theirorganizations. They had significantly reduced costs for their companies,increased efficiencies, and reduced time for many of their important processes.IBM brought these experts together as an Advisory Board to discuss commonchallenges these leaders encountered in their journeys and determine provenways in which those challenges were overcome.– xiii –This group of individual organizations met on a regular basis, tackling varioustopics with each and every meeting. Each member had slightly different areas ofexpertise that he or she could lend to the discussions:● John Boyer managed the BI Center of Excellence at Nielsen.● Bill Frank at Johnson & Johnson focused on BI solutions for finance,internally evangelized BI concepts and technologies, and co-led thecompany’s 300-member BI Community of Practice.● Brian Green was part of the overall information management division atBlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and managed the company’s BI andPerformance Management areas.● Tracy Harris was part of IBM’s Business Analytics division, researchingbest practices in achieving excellence and chairing the IBM BI ExcellenceAdvisory Board.● Kay Van De Vanter was the lead BI Architect in the Boeing IT BICC.Over months of discussion, several subject-matter experts were brought in,and a few contributed significantly to this group and to the content of the book,including Michael Dziekan, who provided deep expertise on the chapters relatedto organizational structures; Forrest Palmer, who shared his knowledge of business alignment strategy; and Andreas Coucopoulos, who lent valuable insights ontechnology strategy—all from the IBM team. Several topics were tackled, including user adoption, executive buy-in, and organizational structures, and each ofthese topics was found to have been a common challenge for every member ofthe group, regardless of industry. This exploration led to a series of white papers,developed through these conversations by IBM, on the best practices to overcome these challenges. The content of these papers formed a strong backboneupon which we expanded for the book, and many of these papers contributeddirectly to the content.As the meetings unfolded, a set of distinct common challenges was identifiedas the main cause for the typical issues encountered in organizations. Each ofthese challenges impacted one another and caused the various symptoms thatexisted. The preparation of white papers led to further development of a Website—the BI Champion’s Kit—that tackled each of these initiatives.The group continued to meet and determined that in order to truly be successful, it was not only a technology strategy that was important to a BI program but– xiv –Prefacealso a business alignment strategy and an organizational and behavioral strategythat were implemented as part of their success.This book discusses a BI strategy, but it also recognizes that a BI platform—what you might think of as reporting, analysis, dashboard, and scorecard capabilities—enables and supports a broader set of capabilities, such as financialplanning, budgeting, forecasting, realtime monitoring, and advanced analytics,that are also impacted by other technologies and programs: data warehousing,quality, integration, governance, and others. This means that in the BI strategy,these other technologies and stakeholders have to be consulted, supported, orenabled in the process.The book also recognizes the value of an agile BI methodology. An organization is not going to implement a two-year project and go into lockdown for thatlength of time. Nor is the expectation that a strategy is prepared once and will lastthe lifetime of the BI program. A BI strategy is meant to change—it needs todeliver a series of wins over time. It is meant to be evaluated on a regular basis,and the standards that are chosen are also evaluated and tested over time.However, creating a BI strategy also requires a collaborative approach acrossan organization, which means putting standard processes, technologies, and rolesin place. It is recognized that the standards don’t necessarily change each time anew technology is delivered—because you know there will be new technologieson the horizon—but they are evaluated with business partners, vendors are askedfor their roadmaps, and business and IT work together to deliver an approach thatwill best suit the needs of the organization. There are many situations where,given regulations, chaotic spreadsheets and tools that lack consistency and security are not acceptable. And there are definite controls that need to be put oninformation in many cases.All of the represented organizations realize that they have not successfullycompleted their BI journey—far from it—but have embarked on a journey to BIexcellence that has led to wins and enabled foundational elements to be put inplace. And all continue to learn and tweak their plans. It is a journey for the longterm and a journey that will change over time and deliver success and competitiveness for the organizations into the future. Improvements are continual, andeach organization looks forward to future innovations and change, but each hasalso realized the mission-critical value that a strategic BI program provides.These organizations have embarked on a journey in which they can truly link– xv –Prefacestrategy to execution through the leverage of technologies that enable success inthis area.We hope you enjoy reading this guide as you prepare for your own journey toBI excellence. It is meant to deliver a framework by which you can prepare yourunique strategy, and it provides a practical discussion of suggested strategies,tactical tips, and proven practices that the authors have learned in their BI excellence journey. As you make that trek down the road to success and encounterchallenges along the way, know that you are not alone. Please join our community by visiting the IBM BI Champion Kit (www.ibm.com/cognos/champion) andtelling us about your journey.The IBM BI Excellence Advisory BoardJohn, Bill, Brian, Tracy, and KaySeptember 2010– xvi –PrefaceIntroductionAccording to the 2009 IBM Global CIO study, BI and analytics is the number one priority for chief information officers (CIOs)1. Business andIT leaders alike understand that these technologies will provide the bestopportunity to gain insight and decision-making capabilities that can helporganizations uncover new opportunities, increase efficiencies, and reachcorporate goals.Yet many organizations are struggling to implement strategic BI initiativesthat can help improve enterprise-level access to the information needed tosupport business improvement. After decades of building the information infrastructure and amassing oceans of data, it seems many organizations have foundthemselves with silos of knowledge that are difficult to reconcile, complex tocomprehend, and limited in their ability to provide the needed insight.● According to a Computerworld survey, only 14 percent of organizationsare connecting strategy to execution with these technologies.2● In the same study, 67 percent of these organizations claim that there is alack of time, resources, and budget applied to these efforts.● And, according to a TDWI research report, user adoption is at only 24percent for these initiatives.3Why is there such a discrepancy between the needs of business and the abilityto meet these needs with business intelligence (BI) initiatives? If BI is truly the– 1 –top priority, how is it possible that there are budget or resource issues? Why, incorporations that have begun to implement BI, are user adoption levels so low?How can business intelligence be the number one priority, and yet so few canclaim success?We believe the reasons are often because many implementations are treatedsolely as a technology initiative—but the challenges exist beyond the technology.Many issues, in fact, are non-technical in nature and may not be addressed as aBI program is rolled out. In our discussions with various professionals in organizations around the globe, we have determined that many of the biggest hurdlesover time were likely due to the following issues:● There was no strategy in place—and if you don’t know what you’re tryingto achieve, you will never get there.● There were no metrics to define or measure success, no business case forthe endeavor, and no demonstrated justification of the value.● Politics and culture derailed the project easily with a lack of executivebuy-in, low user adoption, and an inability to create change.● There was no organizational structure for BI in place, with a strongemphasis on communication, to offer the skills, manage the program, andprovide the needed momentum.● The solutions that have been attempted are piecemeal, disconnected, andcostly to maintain without delivering the confidence in the informationthat is needed or the promised return on investment.In other words, the obstacles to a successful BI implementation are not solelytechnological in nature; in fact, they are often societal within the organizationitself. The result is that a BI initiative can easily be derailed by these factors, producing less value due to inconsistent behavior and thereby losing momentum inan organization. The projects that succeed are most often the result of a successful combination of people, process, and technology strategies because it isdifficult to have a successful technology endeavor when the other ingredients arenot present.The Business Value of Successful Business IntelligenceSo why would an organization endeavor to implement a strategic business intelligence program? It appears that there are, in fact, many organizations that have– 2 –Introductionvarious tactical implementations that are quite successful. Is it not just aboutusing a technology in the areas that are needed?It is true that a technology should be applied to the areas it can enable. However, most organizations—due to their tactical implementations of BI todate—have not yet realized the mission-critical value that BI can provide to thereaction time, monitoring, and predictive ability that can be found in a successfulimplementation. The ability to measure and monitor how organizations are executing against corporate goals—to understand whether they are on or off trackand why—and the ability to change direction when necessary has not yet beenenabled due to the limitations of the current environment.If we were to compare this situation with other, more mature technologies thatare considered mission-critical in today’s organizations—let’s take e-mail, forexample—would it be efficient, productive, and cost-effective to have pockets ofemployees on a variety of different e-mail systems, some of which might notintegrate or communicate effectively with others? How would this situationimpact the productivity of an organization’s work force?Consider a customer view: if the information is siloed across various departments, how can a consistent view be understood and accessed to provide the bestpossible service to the party in question with tactical silos of information? Is itproductive to manually pull together this information? Is it accurate? Efficient?We believe that a strategic, enterprise business intelligence program offershigher value to our companies, especially in today’s fast-paced, changingenvironment.● First, it can reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for IT and increasethe return on investment (ROI) for software and hardware. It alsoincreases the amount of time IT can spend on strategic work rather thanduplicate manual labor. This creates increased IT efficiency.● Second, it can leverage the IT infrastructure and a set of skills to givebusiness users direct access to enterprise-wide information so they canmake critical decisions. This increases the company’s overall productivityand business efficiency.● Last, and best of all, a successful BI program can increase collaborationand leverage the decision-support structure across the enterprise toincrease overall business effectiveness. This includes a better utilization ofresources, a critical consistent view of reliable data across the entire– 3 –The Business Value of Successful Business Intelligencecorporation, and the implementation of metrics to measure the progress ofkey decision areas. Indeed, a successful BI program can provideexecutives with the visibility they need into the performance drivers thatpropel the business forward.However, in most cases, organizations tend to focus on only the IT efficienciesthat the BI technology can provide, resulting in a continued value justificationexercise and a difficult time in providing a business case. If we consider thebusiness value hierarchy offered in the book The Performance Manager4 anddepicted in Figure I.1, we can see that the three levels of value are not all ofequal worth. And as you move up the value scale, they become more difficult tomeasure—especially if business and IT alignment is not strong.However, to achieve excellence, an organization needs to deliver value in allthree areas and must learn to partner with the right stakeholders to do soeffectively.Getting to this level of a strategic BI program is not an overnight endeavor. Itmay have taken years, generations, or even a century to implement the array ofdifferent technologies and data silos that likely exist in an organization. Therefore, it is understood that turning this data into information that provides– 4 –IntroductionFigure I.1: The business value hierarchy for measuring ROI.5decision-making capabilities and results will also require time, resources, andeffort. This is an effort that should not be done in isolation over a long timeperiod until perfection is achieved. It is an effort that needs to occur in a series ofsmaller successes, in an agile methodology—to ensure continued momentum isachieved. It needs to reflect the needs of the company today and tomorrow. Itneeds to change over time as the organization changes. Most important—toachieve this type of change—it is one that requires deep collaboration between ITand the various business community members that are stakeholders to achievemeaningful results.This is a process that each of our organizations has been undertaking over anumber of years, and one that will continue to evolve and change over time. Eachof our programs has encountered challenges along the way, and we have cometogether to share these challenges and offer insight into how successful initiativeshave been created.In this effort, we have discovered that there is a common ground for our successes. Successful programs were implemented not just with a technologystrategy in mind but also with the involvement of the community of stakeholders.Getting that critical buy-in ensured that corporate goals, people, and processeswere also taken into account. With this discovery, we have created a strategyframework for a strategic BI program that can be used to accelerate an organization’s success in this initiative. We call this the BI Excellence StrategyFramework.The BI Excellence Strategy FrameworkThe BI Excellence Strategy Framework can be used as a guide for organizationsin any industry to help create a BI strategy. This strategy will ensure that the variety of elements that can derail an initiative or improve success are considered. Itextends far beyond technology, factoring in people and process as key elementsof success. The framework is a practical guide to creating your strategy, ensuringyour effort aligns to corporate goals in a pragmatic way. It helps you to deliveragility in the implementation that will maintain momentum, and it recognizes thepolitical and cultural challenges that can be overcome before they happen. In thisbook, we take you through the strategy framework and also offer practical adviceand proven practices that we have learned along the way—as well as tactics youcan use as you move forward in your endeavor.– 5 –The BI Excellence Strategy FrameworkWhat this framework will do is provide a practical guide to help an organization understand many of the considerations it needs to include in a strategy. Whatit will not do is provide you with a ready-made strategy. The framework recognizes that each organization is different; culture, structure, maturity level, andstrategy will all affect a BI program, and each of these needs to be part of thewell-thought-out plan to ensure success.What the framework also will not do is give you a strategy that starts todayand ends after a set period of time, when results can be claimed and the initiativecan be considered over. A BI program is a journey—an ongoing effort thatshould, in fact, change over time, should be measured regularly against established benchmarks, and should be flexible enough to change. It should also bereviewed on a regular basis, tweaked, and realigned to ensure it is meeting theneeds of the business.Consider Your Level of MaturityWhere is your organization on the BI maturity scale? Let’s measure ourselvesagainst a very simple framework for typical BI initiatives (Figure I.2). If stage 1is at the lower scale of a BI program maturity level and stage 4 is the highestlevel of maturity, where would you place your organization?– 6 –IntroductionFigure I.2: BI maturity levels.Level of maturity will also affect your strategy, and you need to consider thisas you create your strategy. Your maturity level will change as your organizationmatures, causing elements of the strategy to change over time. You will thereforeneed to revisit your strategy on a regular basis.You will need to strive for each incremental step—not jump from stage 1 to4 today. You will need to adjust each level of your strategy to reflect thesechanges—while measuring the changes in the program to determine success.Business Intelligence ExcellenceSo, what is BI excellence anyway? We believe that business intelligence excellence is achieved when organizations have in place the strategy, people, process,and technology approaches that result in business impact, value, and effectiveness. Value and business impact are best achieved when the use of BI,performance management (PM), and analytics spans departments and silos toprovide an enterprise view of information and a collaborative team approach toorganizationally achieving goals. This requires a defined approach that takes intoaccount:● Business strategy alignment, vision, and business case● Cultural and organizational behavior● Technology and tools strategyTherefore, to achieve excellence, these three elements need to be consideredin the initial plan.Furthermore, each element of the framework relies upon an active, mutualrelationship between business users and the IT team. Each element of the strategyalso provides a high contribution to each value driver level in the business valuehierarchy. It is not necessarily just a one-to-one relationship, but each area definitely aligns closely to the three areas of the business value hierarchy. To achievethe highest levels of value, all three strategy elements must be considered—anddoing so will result in increased success for the BI program overall (Figure I.3).– 7 –Business Intelligence ExcellenceStrategies for SuccessThis book is divided into three critical sections, each associated with one of thekey strategies of the framework. It provides the higher-level overview of whateach strategy needs to contain and includes tactics and proven practices that wehave used in our organizations in each of these areas. The experiences of ourteam in building these strategies within our separate corporations are condensedand offered as guidelines and observations. Let’s examine each strategic elementquickly before delving into the details.The Business Alignment StrategyOur organizations are leaders in their respective market sectors, and we believethat our ability to get insight and visibility into the information that matters isindeed one of the strong enablers of our success. These systems help to enableour teams to discover new opportunities, improve processes, and make better,more informed decisions while reducing overall operational costs.However, before any organization can begin to provide its employees with thetools needed to deliver on the promise of BI, it needs to ensure that it measureswhat matters. It has to define the metrics that need to be measured, align them tocorporate priorities, and understand who the users of this information are andhow they intend to use it. A partnership between those on the business side—whocan help define the sweet spots—and those who know the data is critical.– 8 –IntroductionFigure I.3: Achieving the highest levels of value.But how do you align business goals and the data that exists in an organization?And how do you reconcile top-down strategies with bottom-up implementations? That’s the terrain we traverse in our first critical chapter. We’ll talkabout:● Assessing your current situation● Strategic management approaches● Mapping corporate objectives to bottom-up needs● Constructing a methodology toward performance management● Defining the business caseThis area of the strategy is about leveraging the knowledge and guidance ofthe key business stakeholders and creating a collaborative partnership with thosewho know the data to create a roadmap of wins that create success and maintainmomentum.The Organizational and Cultural StrategyIn our second chapter, we examine the cultural mechanisms within the organization that can create challenges for even the most solid BI programs. How do youmanage politics and culture within an organization? How do you prepare fororganizational readiness in support of a strategic initiative?As our organizations have grown and matured, we, too, have often foundpockets of resistance to the changes that a comprehensive BI program requires.Users are often already content with the tools and processes they’re using. Theirday-to-day activities can appear divorced from the understanding of the largerneeds of the organization. When change is required, obstruction and resistanceare often the result of a lack of understanding of the goals. How do you managechange in these instances?The organizational and cultural strategy area of the framework takes on thatchallenge. We start with the business goals identified by the business alignmentstrategy and then use a variety of techniques to win the support from users andline-of-business managers. We offer proven practices for organizational readiness, such as the establishment of a BI Center of Competency or Excellence. Wetalk about the keys to keeping a program on track, such as winning the support ofusers through collaboration, training, and a continuous communication process.– 9 –Strategies for SuccessIn this chapter, we’ll talk, among many things, about:● Understanding your business culture and communicating the goals of theprogram● How to obtain executive support and how to leverage that support for thebenefit of the project● The value of an organizational structure or a BI Competency Center withpotential organizational design approaches and funding models● The challenges of gaining user adoption of the technology● Showcasing your program to maintain momentumBy considering the many organizational and behavioral factors that can derailan initiative, you can plan and prepare early, increase communication and buy-in,and design an aligned approach that will help initiate change in an organization.The Technology StrategyWhile we noted earlier that many of the challenges facing enterprise BI programsare not specifically related to the technology, we do recognize that a solid technology strategy that meets the needs of the business is critical to success. Thistends to be the area that most organizations focus on in developing a strongdesign plan, but we believe it is only one of three areas that requires consideration. We believe that the technology strategy needs to be defined in alignmentwith the business and with an understanding of the needs of the various stakeholders, not just to meet the needs of IT.Our organizations have made major investments in information technologies,including CRM, ERP, and a slew of other transactional systems that run the operations of our divisions and subsidiaries. IT and business have also invested innumerous BI tools at divisional levels. We also know that the premise of a “onesize fits all” solution is both financially and operationally impractical. So, how dowe devise the technology strategy that will leverage what we have, position theinfrastructure for growth, and meet the requirements that our business alignmentstrategy promises—all while improving our total cost of ownership?That’s the subject matter of Chapter 3: building the technology strategy thatcan support the requirements of an enterprise-level BI program. In this chapter,we will discuss:– 10 –Introduction● Standardization and consolidation (what it means and how it can be doneeffectively and realistically)● Improving the total cost of ownership and leveraging existing investments● Delivering the multiple capabilities and an information platform that willenable an enterprise● Information and technology governance● Delivering confidence in the information● Deployment optionsThe array of technologies that surround, support, and are enabled by businessintelligence are broad and vast, and in this chapter we aim to provide an overview of which technologies you need to consider in your strategy and whichstakeholders you need to bring on board.Building Excellence in BI and PMIn managing and building our BI programs, we agree with The PerformanceManager principle that companies should be able to answer three key questions:● How are we doing?● Why?● What should we be doing?These may seem like common-sense questions to ask, but too many companies have found that they’re extremely difficult questions to answer.We believe our BI platform enables an array of technologies in our organization and needs to be strongly supported by others. Our companies should be ableto measure and monitor key metrics using scorecards and dashboards and to drawreports and analyze data to gain context, understand trends, predict future outcomes, and spot anomalies. And we believe our companies should be able tomodel future scenarios using the planning, budgeting, and forecasting tools thatcan spell the difference between business success and business failure.Although our work is far from finished, we believe our BI Excellence Framework is the foundation of our ongoing success in defining, managing, andsupporting our BI programs. We offer this framework to you in the hope that itbrings your organization similar benefits in the months and years ahead.– 11 –Building Excellence in BI and PMThis book was initiated because we recognized that all organizations facemany of these challenges. They are real challenges, but ones that can be overcome. You are not alone—these challenges are common, and many are, in fact,due to human nature. This book offers you some practical guidance to addressthese common challenges while providing food for thought and setting you onyour way to defining your own strategy for success.– 12 –IntroductionChapter 1Defining YourBusiness Alignment StrategyWhat strategic approach do top-performing, breakaway organizations share? According to the IBM Institute for Business Value studyBreaking Away with Business Analytics and Optimization, it is the use ofbusiness intelligence and analytics. Using BI, analytics, and performancemanagement eliminates information overload by making sense of the massiveamount of information that is now available in the enterprise. In order to becomea breakaway organization, companies need to establish both a vision about thestrategic use of information and a plan to implement this vision.1We know that most organizations have an understanding of one or more of thebasic elements of corporate business strategy. They typically define, at least on anannual basis, their top corporate objectives and business unit strategies. They analyze their markets, determine their direction, and create a plan to ensure thatresources are available and stakeholders informed. However, it is apparent thatmost organizations do not sufficiently link these plans to daily operations or manage execution effectively. And while it is recognized that BI technologies can be anenabler to successful execution, many do not have a business alignment strategythat allows them to plan their strategies via data-driven metrics and BI or to mapthese corporate objectives in order to effectively monitor results to ensure objectives are achieved. This area is often either overlooked completely or implementedon an ad hoc basis versus as part of the basic success of the business strategy.– 13 –In fact, according to a study conducted by IBM in September 2010, only 22percent of organizations are successfully linking strategy to execution with BIand performance management.2 And we know that when companies fail in strategy execution, company results can suffer.On the flip side, however, this means that roughly one in five companies issuccessful in its strategy execution. Such organizations can reap the benefits ofoverall performance improvements, gaining competitive advantage, finding newopportunities, and creating business impact that is aligned with their goals. Theyhave enabled visibility into the information that matters and improved decision-making capabilities. With the ability to understand, anticipate, and shapeoutcomes through innovative technologies, these organizations can help toincrease efficiencies and effectiveness throughout the key areas of theorganization.Our task in this chapter is to explore considerations and identify steps indeveloping an effective business alignment strategy for a strategic business intelligence initiative. It should map to corporate business strategy to enablesuccessful execution, a critical first step in the strategic BI initiative. Thisincludes the following:1. Assessing Your Current Situation—Understanding the corporatestrategy and identifying how your organization is currently managingits business strategy and monitoring and measuring outcomes2. Developing Effective Strategies for Linking the Business Strategyto BI Initiatives—Examining strategies that are used today and determining how your organization can develop an effective businessalignment strategy that improves outcomes and results3. Involving Key Stakeholders and Priority Business Areas—Understanding how to determine, prioritize, and involve key stakeholderswho can influence the business and execution strategies4. Implementing Sound Solutions—Learning how proven practicescan transform the effectiveness of the organizationAn Introduction to Strategic Management ApproachesSo how can strategy be managed to achieve the desired outcomes? Many different strategic management approaches may be in use within the organization.– 14 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyOrganizations use various methods today, and others have been used in the past.As examples, some of the highly common ones include, but are not limited to:● Balanced Scorecard (BSC)—A strategic planning and managementsystem that aligns business activities to the strategy of the organization.BSC offers the following:» Stresses the communication of the strategy—both internally andexternally—and monitors the progress of the organization againststrategic goals» Adds strategic non-financial performance measurements to thefinancial metrics to provide a more balanced view of organizationalbehavior» Applies metrics to the decision-making areas of finance, customer,internal process, and innovationBSC became popular in the 1990s and is used today by entrepreneurialfirms as well as some government departments.3● Six Sigma (6S)—A very rigorous system of management tactics that seeksto improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing thecauses of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing andbusiness processes. 6S does the following:» Uses a set of quality management methods, including statisticalmethods» Creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization(Black Belts, Green Belts, and so on) who are experts in thesemethods» Follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified targets; thesetargets can be financial (cost reduction or profit increase) or whateveris critical to the customer of that process (e.g., cycle time, safety,delivery)Six Sigma was originally developed by Motorola in 1981 and was usedfirst in manufacturing. Its roots are based heavily on Japanese qualityimprovement initiatives in the automotive industry. It focuses on quantifiable bottom-line results that are tied to strategy.4● Total Quality Management (TQM)—A management concept that isoften associated with developing, deploying, and maintaining organiza-– 15 –An Introduction to Strategic Management Approachestional systems required for various business processes. TQM achievesthese goals:» Reduces the errors produced during the manufacturing or serviceprocess» Increases customer satisfaction» Streamlines supply-chain management» Modernizes equipment and ensures workers have the highest level oftrainingTQM is closely associated with Six Sigma and differs mainly in itsapproach. W. Edwards Deming is considered the founder of this management model, which preceded Six Sigma.5All of these are solid approaches to managing strategy, and chances are goodthat management decision-makers use more than one of these, in addition toother management tactics, to control and direct the organization. However,whichever one is used, some common themes arise from these approaches:● Goals—The definition and selection of strategic objectives and/or goals● Measurements—The consolidation of measurement information relevant toan organization’s progress against these objectives and goals● Indicators and Metrics—Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metricsdefined with specific targets and attached to specific objectives● Performance—The interaction and/or interventions made by managers inresponse to these indicators to apply corrective actions and improve futureperformance against the goalsOur business alignment strategy process isn’t designed to replace any individual approach; rather, it’s recommended to orchestrate activities within theorganization so that these approaches work together seamlessly. In other words,our process is to help transform strategy definition into strategy execution usingBI, analytics, and performance management.What do we mean?In a 2010 survey conducted by IBM, more than 50 percent of organizationsindicated that there was a disconnect between what the business needs and whatIT delivers.6 The alignment between these groups can often lead to the inabilityto work together toward the goals that matter in an organization.– 16 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyWhat type of goals matter?Put simply, the goals that matter most are the ones that are most closely linkedto the top corporate objectives. Most often, they are also the goals that tie mostdirectly to revenue and expense management.Therefore, the key to executing the strategy is to a) communicate the strategyacross the organization and then b) act on new directions identified by the strategy. This can be done using the tactical tools and measurements implementedwithin the key decision areas to provide visibility and the ability to anticipate anddrive future outcomes.Assessing Your Current SituationHow closely is your organization connecting strategy to execution? What areyour company’s top objectives? How are they currently executed? How are youmeasuring and monitoring whether you are on or off track?As we assess our current environments, it’s often easy to see where an organization is aligning business strategies to a BI initiative.However, as our organizations have grown, separate silos of information haveevolved over years or generations. Some of these silos may be viewed as proprietary within an individual department or subsidiary. Some may have been createdby processes that are invisible to those outside that area of responsibility or maybe based on processes that are no longer current or common.In order to create a comprehensive business alignment strategy for a strategicBI initiative, collaborative teams need to make progress in revealing these information sources and strategically managing that information to create insight thatproduces high-value results. The high-value areas important to the businessalignment strategy need to be harnessed, and the political cultures representingthose organizational entities need to be brought together in a collective to produce results as cross-functional teams rather than individual groups.The outcomes of a business alignment strategy for business intelligence—thebusiness goals we are we trying to achieve—will help define how to get there andproduce better collaboration across teams to work together to achieve thoseresults. Without a clear vision of the connection to strategy, operating in silos andwithin communities or cultures is a natural instinct. Though there might be substantial effort and complexities, with good vision that is tied to the practicalities– 17 –Assessing Your Current Situationof a given business, a strategy can be created that moves the company from thetactical use of information to a focused organization that uses the informationstrategically in everyday processes.Where Do We Start?If your organization is like many, you likely already have a number of BIinitiatives taking place—some successful and many that are producing less value.The key to transforming these multiple projects into a high-value strategic initiative is to assess which ones are successful, why they are successful, and howthey connect to priority objectives. You can then use this information to create abusiness alignment strategy for BI and analytics that will define a roadmap ofhigh-value endeavors linked to business objectives that produce valuable outcomes in a series of small successes.Many of us remember the 1997 book entitled The Multidimensional Manager(Richard Connelly, Robin McNeill, and Roland Mosimann, Cognos, Inc., 1997). Itexamined the partnership between decision-makers in companies worldwide andthe people who provide them with better information using BI to drive better decisions. One of its key insights was that, as the complexity of businesses has grown,the majority of successful decision-makers concentrate their focus on a relativelysmall number of sweet spots of information that flow through the corporation.7If we take the advice of the authors in The Performance Manager,8 we cantake this concept and follow those sweet spots in our effort to create a solid business alignment strategy. In other words, we can use the information trail to drillinto the organization and investigate its core decision-making areas, which aretypically these:● Finance● Marketing● Sales● Customer Service● Product Development● Operations● Human Resources● Information Technology– 18 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyWe know that we will, of necessity, be required to analyze the data, systems,reports, processes, and functions of these areas. Based on this information, wewill be required to develop metrics and analytics, rate the effectiveness of the information to drive execution of the business strategy, and evolve our metrics tobecome more effective drivers of strategy execution. But who should be involvedin this process?This overall process will be much larger than any single individual because itimpacts every area of the organization. This is not merely an IT project, nor simply a BI project. And it is not just a business unit project. It touches every keydecision area in the organization. So identifying the stakeholders is a key elementof success. These are the people in the organization who have an interest in ensuring thatstrategy moves smoothly to execution. Andeach of these people will have a role to play.In other words, we need to assemble ateam of key representatives from the following areas:● Executive Involvement—Theexecutive team representatives whowill champion the initiative, helpdefine the business alignment strategythrough prioritization, and create theperformance management culture● Business Involvement—The line-of-business representatives or subjectmatter experts who will define the business processes and metrics that areto be tied to corporate strategy and support and champion the managementand execution● BI Team Involvement—The BI team representatives who will innovateand define how different business metrics can be applied with data,systems, and processes and help to create successful execution within a BIenvironment● IT Team Involvement—The various IT representatives who will ensurethat all technologies are integrated and interconnected. They will applytechnology to enable the business strategy—from information integrationto database administration, security, and infrastructure– 19 –Assessing Your Current Situation“I’ve seen several projectsfail because sufficient resources were not allocatedto the initiative,” says JohnBoyer, BI Enablement Leadat Nielsen. “Instead of appropriately allocating resources, focusing priorities,and involving the right stakeholders, they try to carve outtime from individuals in siloswho are already too busy.”These representatives will act as the key leaders for the various areas withinthe organization that hold a stake in the outcome of the business alignment strategy. They must also be key players in helping to establish credibility for theoverall team within their individual areas. It’s a two-way street: they bring theknowledge of their decision-making culture from within their areas, but theymust also communicate back—and champion— the vision of the business alignment strategy as it is formulated by the team. And working in partnershiptogether, they can define the roadmap of initiatives that can be executed effectively through people, process, and technology to produce business impact.Mapping Corporate Objectives to Bottom-Up Needs:Top-Down vs. Bottom-UpAll of us have experienced the difficulty of mapping the diverse operationalneeds of the company’s managers and departments to the requirements andstrategic goals of the larger organization. For many organizations, the conflictsbetween top-down (strategic) and bottom-up (tactical) approaches have sometimes become battlegrounds between business groups. And this difficultymanifests itself in the business alignment strategy: how do you prioritize theseinitiatives when an abundance of bottom-up tactical approaches exist in additionto the top-down strategy? Should we focus on individual business problems androll solutions upward to a corporate-wide strategy? Or should we direct the strategy from the top, where the executive goals for the entire organization are moreclearly understood? Understanding the pros and cons of both modalities will helpus craft the best business alignment strategy for the organization.The Bottom-Up ApproachWhen an individual decision area identifies a business problem, the first responseis to implement a business solution that helps to solve the immediate goals of thatentity. The solution may touch multiple departments or reach across to otherdecision areas. An example of this might be to provide a reporting or analyticaltool that is easy to implement or to apply a legacy solution that has been customized to meet the specific needs of the decision-making area.Many organizations may also approach business intelligence from a sequentialtechnology perspective. A reporting system may be implemented on a silo of data,and one by one, the IT team may add additional data repositories from various business areas. Over time, there is the accomplishment of having a reporting system on a– 20 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment Strategynumber of data sets, but it lacks a solid business alignment strategy that understandsthe outcomes and that links to top business objectives on what it is being used for.The initial reason, pain, or business need was not articulated, and when members of abusiness unit use the system, some of the information they need is not available or theinformation cannot be trusted. Little value might be recognized from the initiative.There are pros and cons in approaching your business alignment strategy inthis manner.● Bottom-Up Approach Pros» Individual departments can begin working together toward a tacticalcommon goal that is easily understood by all involved.» Solution implementation takes less time and expense in the short run.» The solution can create a domino effect within the organization,leading other departments to implement similar solutions and/orscorecards.● Bottom-Up Approach Cons» The solution may not be directlytied to any larger organizationalstrategy.» The solution’s metrics—if theyexist—may not be part of anorganizational framework thatinforms the overall businessstrategy.» As the solutions propagate withinthe organization, the variousdecision-areas can wander intheir alignment to theorganization’s larger businessstrategy.Most organizations are replete with bottom-up solution approaches, especially inthose organizations that have grown through acquisition, rapid expansion, or longtechnology transitions.– 21 –Mapping Corporate Objectives to Bottom-Up Needs“A bottom-up approach mightbe compared to building ahouse one room at a timewithout an overall design oreven an idea of how big itneeds to be,” says Kay Van DeVanter, Enterprise BI Architect at Boeing. “In the end,you have a house, you mayhave spent lots of time andmoney, but it may not fit theneeds of the family, and ifstandards and guidelines werenot followed, the quality maybe too poor to be able to use itas a home.”The Top-Down ApproachBy comparison, a top-down approach to implementing strategy first identifies thegoals of the entire organization and then communicates how those goals will bemeasured across the enterprise. It defines the goals and the metrics, but it doesn’talways define in detail the methods by which the various decision areas willachieve them.There are, of course, pros and cons in approaching a strategic BI initiative inthis manner.● Top-Down Approach Pros» The strategic objectives of the entire organization are cascadeddownward and across the entire enterprise.» Everybody acknowledges and understands what is expected.» The strategy of the organization becomes linked directly to theoperations of the organization.» The executive decision-makers can support and fund the projects.They then drive the solutions throughout the organization to achievethe goals.» Progress toward goals is measurable using a common syntax andagreed-upon metrics.● Top-Down Approach Cons» Implementation cycles can become lengthy as individual operationalconflicts are reconciled.» Top-down strategies require a significant cultural shift within theorganization in which the overall executive goals supplant theimmediate tactical preoccupations of individual decision-makingentities.» The long time-to-value process can derail a project when newpriorities arise.– 22 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyHow Successful Companies Make It WorkClearly, both approaches to implementing business intelligence initiativesare practiced by large and successful companies. It is rarely a lack of businessstrategy and execution methods that results in less-than-successful initiatives;most often, it’s too many disparate strategies and initiatives operating in adisconnected and unprioritized business approach that result in a long time-tovalue process or produce less-successful results. Melding a top-down with abottom-up approach into something that functions within the organization iswhat the business alignment strategy is about.Ultimately, this hybrid approach that is common in many growing organizations today is a transitional tactic that can be centrally managed through astrategic framework and organizational body. This approach can allow for managers to help define their own metrics, but it aligns priority and consistency in anorganization via a business alignment strategy. Through an assessment of the current initiatives that are taking place through a bottom-up approach and anassessment of key priorities that are not currently covered, teamscan better engage, decide on priorities, and align on key initiativesfor new development. Whether it is managed by individuals in abusiness alignment function in the BI department, a separate steering committee, or individuals who closely align with a corporatestrategy management function, it can help create higher value andimpact in an organization.This function or partnership will help coordinate cascading corporate strategyand prioritize and align business needs with the BI initiatives. It can prioritizekey business initiatives, map them to existing bottom-up initiatives, and identifygaps, thereby defining the roadmap for delivering the series of successes that theorganization needs in order to become more strategic in execution. It can alsoenable individuals with expertise in the business goals to partner with individualswho know what data is available. Then, the priority areas are implemented in aseries of small successes in a rapid fashion. Providing an agile BI delivery via aseries of smaller successes is key to maintaining momentum on the project anddemonstrating value to the organization.The tactic of implementing the business alignment approach—wheretop-down meets bottom up—across a consistent framework and communicationsystem permits the following to occur within the organization:– 23 –Mapping Corporate Objectives to Bottom-Up Needs● The decision area gets the implementation that it needs more quickly withless reiterations, due to strong alignment and expertise.● The solution provides “cultural capital” within the organization as a seriesof “wins” for the BI process.● The BI process can be extended to the next project in another decisionarea.But why should this hybrid strategy be centrally managed?By bringing the diverse BI processes into a focused framework, the companycan ultimately be guided to a comprehensive, consistent strategic planning mechanism. It will achieve this transition by working with the same Key PerformanceIndicators (KPIs), sourced from a common information resource.Developing Metrics and the KPI DesignObviously, defining standard metrics and turning them into something measurable is not an easy task. This complete effort requires a strong partnershipbetween executives, strategy managers, IT, BI professionals or business analysts,and the business unit managers. The business unit managers define what they areseeking to measure, and the IT and BI teams help to connect the metrics to thereality of the data.The Performance Manager: A Framework for StrategyThe previously mentioned book, The Performance Manager, provides a framework that enables the combined team of BI professionals and business unitmanagers to guide the conversation to the sweet spots of information.Within the framework described in The Performance Manager, each decisionarea (Finance, Marketing, Sales, and so on) is guided by core content of each corresponding set of information sweet spots. Using this framework, each area canorganize the sweet spots into matrixes of measurements: a) goals, b) metrics, andc) a hierarchical set of dimensions.In every discipline, specific sweet spots of information that are commonacross most organizations will create valuable results linked to common top business priorities.– 24 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyIt is a common challenge that when BI teams engage with the various business units, their partners do not know what metrics to measure or what information is available to them. The Performance Manager methodology can form thebeginning of the framework from which we can start to explore the informationsweet spots that drive the decision-making processes. It’s a simple model uponwhich we can build the architecture of our business strategy, with each decisionarea and function standing on its own. Figure 1.1 depicts an example.But this model is more than a list of particularly important information sweetspots. The framework charts how individual decision areas and functions are infact slices of a broader, integrated framework for performance managementacross the entire company.While the authors of The Performance Manager acknowledge that “Overlygrand, top-down enterprise designs tend to fail, or don’t live up to their full– 25 –Developing Metrics and the KPI DesignFigure 1.1: A cross-functional perspective on decision areas.9promise, due to the major technical and cultural challenges involved,” this modelis designed for precisely such an incremental approach. Decision areas empowerindividual performance managers to achieve immediate goals in their areas ofresponsibility. As we combine these goals across decision areas, we can create ascorecard for that function. Then, as we realize performance success, we canbuild upon it to solve the greater challenge posed by cross-functional collaboration around shared strategies and goals.Constructing a MethodologyToward Performance ManagementThe importance of The Performance Manager is its methodology. Everydecision-making cycle depends upon finding the answer to three core questions(Figure 1.2):● How are we doing?● Why?● What should we be doing?As a framework for creating a model of the business, this methodology provides a means of measuring our progress. It also enables us to create scorecardsand dashboards that monitor the business with metrics to find answers to Howare we doing?Likewise, the model uses reporting and analysis to provide the capacity tolook at historical data, analyze underlying trends, and identify anomalies tounderstand the Why?And finally, the framework enables us to plan, predict, and forecast to depict areliable perspective on the future to answer What should we be doing?But the key insight—one that we fully embrace—is the prerequisite of integrating all of these capabilities across all the decision-making areas to enable usto respond to changes happening in our businesses.To ensure consistency in answering these fundamental performance questions,you must integrate functionality not just within each one, but across them all.Knowing what happened without finding out why is of little use. Knowing whysomething happened but being unable to plan and make the necessary changes isalso of limited value.– 26 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyMoreover, a key insight that we’ve discovered is how the strategy must function: it must be seamless across the full network of performance managers.For instance, just as the core questions are connected, the answers must bebased upon a common understanding of metrics, data dimensions, and data definitions shared by all the decision-makers in the organization.Determining PrioritiesDetermining the priority of decision areas, or sweet spots, to conquer in yourbusiness alignment strategy is relatively straightforward: each business process isassessed for its business value in terms of the revenue obtained or the expense itcontrols—two of the highest-value areas for managing performance. It is alsoassessed against top annual objectives. A simple scale can be applied to eachbusiness demand to rate the overall value to the organization, differentiatinglow-value business issues and very high-value business issues.Figure 1.3 provides a sample template for rating these priorities for an organization. This rating can also contain an inventory of the availability of thisinformation and the successes that already exist. This requires a detailed analysisof available IT assets and an understanding of how those assets are being used.– 27 –Developing Metrics and the KPI DesignFigure 1.2: Informed, aligned decisions and actions.10By analyzing the key elements of each business issue, an associated KPI can becreated, detailing the importance of the information created by individual sources.Analysis and PriorityOnce basic priorities and ratings are identified, they can be categorized in abusiness alignment strategy that defines a roadmap for success. The roadmapprovides a timeline prioritizing “must do now” vs. “invest for the future” vs.“de-prioritize.” Factors influencing this prioritization include:● Key Corporate Priority—Relation to the top goals of the enterprise● High Revenue Impact—The assets that have the closest link to therevenue goals● Significant Expense Reduction—The assets that provide the bestopportunities to improve efficiency and achieve direct cost savings● High Information Gap—The assets in which poor information inhibitsdecision-making● Quick-Win Opportunities—Correlations between already-availableassets where there are opportunities for a quick winRolling these assets upward toward the business goals—along with the metrics associated with their values—can permit us to look across both the demandand the supply side of the information and identify those opportunities that willcreate a series of small successes—something that, as mentioned previously, iscritical to maintaining momentum and demonstrating value over time.– 28 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyFigure 1.3: A rating of business issues for a sample organization.Defining the Business CaseWith a roadmap that both defines a business alignment strategy for a BI or performance management initiative and links to top corporate objectives andbusiness outcomes, the business case and value impact of the initiative becomeseasier to articulate. To define the business case, we can use the business valuehierarchy that was mentioned in the introduction. This business value hierarchyprovides us with the understanding that investments in BI can generate threebasic sources of value:● An increase in IT efficiency● A gain in business efficiency● Improved business effectivenessAccording to a recent Computerworld study,11 67 percent of organizationscited a lack of time, budget, or resources as inhibitors to a successful BI initiative.Such issues are often the result of an inability to demonstrate the concrete crossorganizational value of an initiative. Focusing on these three sets of value providesa strong and compelling business case. And while this may seem simplistic, thebusiness case for many organizations is too often a difficult task because the alignment between the various stakeholders—business units, central IT and BI teams,and the executive management team—is not strong enough to articulate a compelling justification or clear outcome of the initiative. Often, IT efficiencies such astotal cost of ownership (TCO) or expense controls are the only justification. Inmany cases, business efficiencies can be articulated—such as time savings orresource efficiencies—but these indirect benefits are difficult to quantify.The true value and the core of a business case is strengthened through the outcomes that will be achieved from the overall business alignment strategy for the BIinitiative. With outcomes as the core, a comprehensive strategy can be understoodto allow an organization to make better decisions faster and thus use time moreeffectively, focusing more attention on issues that matter—the sweet spots thatmost accurately depict the company’s performance. A justification at this level willproduce better understanding, alignment, and a focus on common objectives.As a proven practice, organizations that are successful at BI initiatives will articulate the three sets of value in their business casein order to produce successful results and understanding. Let’s takea deeper look at examples of each of these values that should beapplied to the business case.– 29 –Defining the Business CaseIncreasing IT EfficiencyObviously, improving IT efficiency is an important source of value, with expensesavings at its core through reduction of license costs, resources, and associatedhardware costs.A total cost of ownership discussion will become a strong part of the businesscase, given that most consideration is typically given to the visible license cost ofthe software, not to the total costs of a solution—the costs of training, evaluation,consulting, hardware, support, and other areas that need to be considered. If youmultiply the costs across all these areas for multiple toolsets and consider thesavings that can be achieved by limiting the number of tools, you can deliver afairly compelling expense-driven discussion.However, if the BI businessstrategy project is championedand managed only by the ITdepartment, executive management’s backing may not be asstrong. Why? Because the projectmay be perceived as seeking onlyto refine existing processes ratherthan to discover new opportunities, which can result in acontinual cycle of cutting costsand resources to improve efficiency and the bottom line. So, asimportant as increasing IT efficiency is for organizations, itcreates a less compelling case tofocus solely on this issue whilemaking a business case.Increasing Business EfficiencyA stronger business case can be made for the BI investment if we focus on business efficiency. Increased productivity of business users, automation of manualprocesses that result in shorter sales cycles, faster finance processes, or the abilityto reduce inefficiencies and duplication can generate a compelling justificationfor a project.– 30 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyIT Efficiency ExamplesDirect total cost of ownership (TCO)savings in use of IT resources:• Cost savings or cost avoidancesuch as through software or hardware license savings and use• Services, consulting, trainingefficiencies• Faster IT response time, improvedallocation of work and productivity,employee labor• Reuse of technical assets andproven methodologiesImproving Business EffectivenessThe third source of value is business effectiveness. This is the outcome of measuring, monitoring, understanding, and planning against an objective andachieving the intended results. Ultimately, the definitive reason for developing acomprehensive BI business strategy is to improve business performance. Buthow can we measure that improvement?Most often, the improvements will demonstrate the ability to meet top corporate objectives, or revenue or expense goals, that were prioritized in thealignment strategy. Almost all of these benefits will take the form of higher revenues, lower costs and expenses, reduced risk, or some combination of these three.– 31 –Defining the Business CaseBusiness Efficiency ExamplesProductivity savings in terms of business users’ time to performboth transactions and decision-making:• Faster close cycles and improved times to complete work or projects, resulting in cost savings• Better resource allocation and increased productivity• Cost savings of time through automation of processesBusiness Effectiveness ExamplesImproved business performance from faster and more informeddecision-making:• Higher customer value• Improved product mix (margins)• Better sales pipeline conversion ratio• Enhanced customer retention• Greater production yields• Better order fulfillment• Faster collections• Lower production costs• Reduced risk/reduced impact of risksSummaryAs we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, only one in five companies isable to successfully execute on its business strategy. So how do you become oneof those organizations that achieve success? We believe that using a businessalignment strategy for effectively prioritizing and linking the corporate strategy—from a top-down approach to the bottom-up tactics—with BI as a way tomeasure, monitor, plan, and execute on corporate strategy can help organizationsbetter achieve successful outcomes. It is the first step of the journey to businessintelligence excellence, and it’s a repeatable way to move your organization intoa better position to achieve the business goals of the enterprise.– 32 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment Strategy“Providing business value goes beyond simply reducing cost,” saysBrian Green, Manager of Business Intelligence and PerformanceManagement at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. “For example,we were able to deploy a financial performance management application much faster than originally estimated due to the prior investments we had already made in developing a financial data mart andour integrated business intelligence deployment strategy. By leveraging existing technology investments, skills, and resources, there werea number of efficiencies that were created, which resulted in a fastertime to implement our solution. We are now working on an initiativeto further increase value by enabling shorter financial forecastingcycles.”Checklist of Recommended ApproachesLeverage success in your organization. Assess the current situation inyour organization to better determine the high-value and low-valueinitiatives that already exist.Prioritize decision areas, or sweet spots of information, by mapping keyareas of value against corporate objectives, revenue opportunities, andexpense savings. This is critical to producing high-value results. Preparea value matrix that demonstrates the areas of highest value andimportance.Create a roadmap of priorities that results in a series of high-value winsto kick the project off to a successful start. Prepare the roadmap andtimeline based on the prioritized sweet spots, and map to existingprojects that exist today in your organization.Align and produce strategy in partnership with various stakeholders togain momentum. Create a map of stakeholders that corresponds to thesweet spots of information to collaborate in determining priorities.Ensure that a business alignment team—whether fixed or virtual—iscreated to deliver consistency and priority across business alignmentstrategy. Determine who from your organization needs to be involved inthis team.Prepare the business case. Ensure it contains IT efficiency, businessefficiency, and business effectiveness outcomes to demonstratemaximum value.– 33 –Summary Business Alignment Strategy OverviewOverviewDescribe the initiative at a high level._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Corporate ObjectivesDescribe your top corporate objectives and identify how they impact the strategy._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________AssessmentDetermine successful initiatives that exist today that can be leveraged._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________RoadmapDescribe the top decision areas—or sweet spots—that will be tackled in order of priority,and rate them to determine the timeline and roadmap._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Value OutcomesDescribe the IT efficiency, business efficiency, and business effectiveness outcomes._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Business CaseDemonstrate the costs, resources, and expenses valued against the value impact theywill enable._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________StakeholdersDescribe the project team and stakeholders (assess your champions and yourroadblocks)._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 34 –CHAPTER 1: Defining Your Business Alignment StrategyChapter 2Organizationaland Behavioral StrategyOn the surface, it’s easy to see why every organization should already be implementing a Business Intelligence (BI) strategy. However, wantingthis capability and actually making it happen are two very different things.According to Cindi Howson’s “Successful BI Survey,” user adoption remainslow at only 24 percent, and many factors that influence a project’s success areorganizational and behavioral rather than technical in nature.1 For BI initiatives tobecome strategic, they require input and interaction that is much broader in scopethan the average IT project, and they demand early buy-in and collaborationbetween multiple business and IT entities across the organization. The need forearly buy-in is especially true of senior management, but it also requires in-depthsupport in each of the key decision-making areas identified in Chapter 1.In many organizations, when it comes to a strategic BI initiative, politics andculture can easily derail a project. Navigating politics and culture is always a keychallenge. What do we mean here? Challenges we’ve struggled with includegaining user adoption; managing change; getting acceptance, support, and consensus across executives, line-of-business managers, and IT; and promoting andenforcing technology standards through strong governance and oversight by thevarious management teams. Often, many issues of politics and culture can be– 35 –overcome through inclusion and communication. Many politically charged situations occur because there is a lack of these critical components:● Understanding of the plan by the stakeholders (both IT and business)● Understanding of the value and what it means specifically to thestakeholders● A change-management plan that will provide stakeholders with confidenceand help them make a transition● Alignment and a common language between business and IT● Buy-in, promotion, and support by executive leadership● Proof points and/or demonstrated support from other groups that havebeen successful● An ability to determine ROI or to communicate the tangible and intangiblevalues of BI that can usually be resolved via internal or external referencesTo obtain the necessary support, we believe you’ll need to study and understandthe unique business culture of your organization. Creating an organizational andbehavioral strategy that achieves a strong foundation of communication—built toincrementally achieve some wins—and developing an ongoing campaign tomaintain the momentum for your overall strategy can increase success.The guidance in this chapter will help you to recognize and avoid derailmentfactors that are common to most organizations as they transition to a strategic initiative. We will examine the following:● Cultural Sensitivity—Obstacles to look for as you assess yourorganization and come to understand the politics and culture that exist● Executive Support—Understanding of how critical executive support isfor a BI initiative and suggestions for how to engage the executive team inthe project● Organizational Structures—Understanding of the value of theorganizational structure for a BI initiative, common design approaches,and funding models● User Adoption—Factors that influence adoption, tactics that can be used,and considerations as to what may be hindering adoption– 36 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy● Communication and Training Strategies—Approaches to communicating with your stakeholders, keeping knowledge levels high, and marketingand showcasing techniques that have been used to maintain momentumUnderstanding Your Business CultureOur experience has shown that politics and culture are intense operational factorswithin our organizations as they relate to the BI initiative. The dynamics arealways unique within each company, are oftenpersonal, are many times difficult to navigate,and usually are institutionally complex to influence. The larger the organization or the longer ithas been in operation, the harder it can seem toinfluence substantial change. Yet all of us haveseen our business cultures change and flourish,and BI has helped to facilitate that change.But there’s a catch: change will often taketime, and successful change occurs instep-by-step increments. It requires partnershipsand measurements of individual successes.Why is it so hard? After all, isn’t corporate productivity what it’s all about?What are the obstacles? Many are simply cultural artifacts from the organization’s history of growth. But often there is resistance from within individualcadres of the business organization itself.Politics and culture enter the picture in many forms. Often, employees won’twant to use the tools they are provided. They find that changing their habits—those age-old, familiar ways of doing things—is challenging, and the value maynot be understood. It must be demonstrated that it is not just a new “tool” but astrategic investment in themselves and alignment with business and/or IT strategy. It’s possible they need the proper training to accomplish new requirementsor need additional support from the Business Intelligence department or Centerof Competency—the organizational structure put in place to make the endeavorsuccessful. Sometimes, they worry about accountability and believe that a changein the familiar processes of their jobs will uncover something they would rathernot reveal. Often, they don’t understand how the new processes that will beimplemented can benefit the overall organization, or they fear that the changemay dilute the value that they are already providing to the organization. They do– 37 –Understanding Your Business Culture“Technology is the easypart. Computers arepredictable,” says JohnBoyer. “It’s the peoplethat are the challenge.Don’t underestimate theeffect of change on thehuman element.”not see the common objective that is being sought. Or, finally, they resist becausethey feel they were not consulted in the process—perhaps because they had needsthat were different from those of the rest of the organization.While these are all natural fears, we’ve found they can become real obstaclesto the success of your BI initiative, obstacles that need to be acknowledged aspart of the dominant corporate culture. Each individual and functional area has tounderstand how the change will benefit their own team, and ultimately, they needto understand how it benefits the organization.Communicating the GoalsWhile people and processes may seem to be the biggest challenge to a successfulBI initiative—especially in organizations where past information processes havebecome rigid or siloed—they can be changed. And the first step is to communicate, clarifying the stated strategic goals of the organization and the value thatcan be provided. This often means ensuring you are using the language thatmakes sense to each individual user in his or her functional area, communicatingthe business alignment strategy that was formed in Chapter 1, and explaininghow the new process will help to achieve those goals. The values and outcomesas they relate to each individual area are thekey drivers for alignment.In some cases, how an individual’s isolated job intersects with the larger goals ofthe organization is unclear. We’ve found thatwhen someone is running independentlyagainst the strategy, it’s often simply becausethey haven’t connected the dots from corporate strategy to their individual area ofexpertise.Without clear communication of thedirection, the value of and goals for managing performance, and the requirements forthose changes, the task of implementingchange through BI can quickly becomederailed. This communication is necessary not in just one department or decisionarea, but across the entire organization. This message for those changes has to be– 38 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy“Reluctance to engage in astrategic endeavor can stemfrom a lack of understandingand alignment,” says BillFrank, Manager, BI Practice,Johnson & Johnson. “Havingan inclusive approach and astrong communication strategy is the best way to ensureneeds are being met for thesuccessful outcome of theorganization.”clear and concise. It has to connect each individual to the value that is importantto them—and to the benefit of the organization.What does this change look like?Transitioning the Culture byActive Team-Based CollaborationWe’ve found that one important behavioralchange that fosters good results is rewardingsuccessful participants rather than imposingpenalties on those who don’t engage in thestrategy. In other words, we need to motivateindividual departments and decision areasand transition them from passive informationresources into enthusiastic stakeholders inthe BI process itself.How do you accomplish that?One of the most successful means is by creating internal business and IT teamcommunities and structures that reassess theinformation processes within the key decisionareas, comparing them against the informationgoals of the larger BI strategy. This includes aformalized structure that brings together the BIteam members, IT professionals, business analysts, and the larger community of stakeholderswho will work closely to achieve success. In ourexperience, this technique accomplishes a number of things:● Educates—All of us have seen how creating a team can more fullyeducate the participants in the overall BI initiative, the alignment tostrategy, and the value it provides while helping to identify how individualjob functions contribute as elements within the structure of the BI process.● Supports Structure—Many of us have witnessed how the creation ofinternal teams creates operational support for the decision-makers– 39 –Understanding Your Business Culture“You need to make surethe key stakeholders understand and invest in theBI strategy,” says Kay VanDe Vanter. “Otherwise,you are constantly pushing against the mountain.”“People can be obstructive,perhaps not intentionally,”says John Boyer. “Give themthe benefit of the doubt; theyare likely acting on the information they have. They maynot have the whole picture.In our role, we can help themmake that connection.”themselves. It facilitates the ability of decision-makers to communicate thebusiness strategy down through the individual decision areas, whilereinforcing the internal organizational structure within that area. In theprocess, we’ve seen how it often provides visible recognition to those onthe team who contribute most effectively.● Reveals Obstacles—Each of us have experienced how a vibrantteam—working diligently to define and describe individual businessproblems—can operate as a mechanism to reveal real-world operationalobstacles early. Often, these obstacles would otherwise have remainedhidden until they were discovered during an implementation phase.Instead, uncovering them early, within the team structure and processes,enabled the team to reconcile the problems before they became critical.● Inspires Collaboration—No man is an island, and no team exists in avacuum. We’ve seen how various business teams working together—within a decision area that is communicating with the BI team—havepermitted valuable cross-pollination of new ideas.● Creates Buy-in—Teaming business unit stakeholders with BI professionalsand IT experts creates the opportunity for buy-in by the team memberswho were initially reluctant. It also provides a valuable means ofcommunicating success within the organization. Each team’s success hasthe potential to become a self-reinforcing mechanism for the entireproject, and many times that success is virally broadcast to other areas inthe corporation.This collaborative approach changes the business culture and is, in our experience, highly effective. Of course, there are many ways to describe it, but we seethis as building the culture. By aligning business strategy with identifiable metrics and then increasing performance through reengineering the information– 40 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy“We are seeing an increase in organizations in the industry that are implementing both BI departments and virtual BI communities,” says TracyHarris, Senior Manager of BI Excellence at IBM. “These organizations areseeing higher success rates by having dedicated resources to manage thestrategy and an open line of communication with the variouscross-functional stakeholders. Together, they can work together to reachthe strategic goals of the organization.”process, each decision area will start to witness an increase in capabilities and aprofound streamlining of business efficiencies. These teams begin to see successbuilding, which helps to develop their passion and engages them in the strategy.By gaining a thorough understanding of both the existing culture within yourorganization and the community of stakeholders and partners that are needed toachieve success, you can begin to define the organizational and behavioral strategy that will need to be implemented to achieve higher success rates.Executive Support2The good news today is that most organizations have a strong level of support—and even push—from the executive suite to use BI and analytics tounderstand the business. However, it may be occurring in silos and may not necessarily be a strategic endeavor that is sponsored by a partnered executive team.So, when we speak of executive support, we are seeing that bringing a number ofexecutives on board for a strategic endeavor is necessary; they work together onthe strategy and the ways it can be deployed across the organization rather than insilos. And we believe that team building—partnering business personnel with BIpersonnel—is a critical tactic, but it’s a tactic that works best if the ranks of thesenior management itself are fully supportive of the initiative.Executives can build alignment with the strategy by lending their supportthrough the four Es: encourage, engage, evangelize, and enlist. Without executives on board to encourage, engage, and evangelize—and to enlist resources asthey are needed—the typical BI and Performance Management initiative can takesubstantially longer or fail altogether. So, how did we accomplish it? We’ve seenthe enlistment process vary quite a bit within each of our organizations.We’ve found that the business leaders in the organization sometimes need tobe sold on the idea of standardization; they need to understand the value of a collaborative Performance Management initiative or the value of broad useradoption. Other times, simply educating the key stakeholders about the goals ofPerformance Management will help to open the lines of communication betweenregions and departments and prevent a silo-driven approach to an implementation. All of us have faced this challenge at one time or another, and we’vediscovered that navigating the business culture of the executives and buildingtheir support is one of the most important factors leading to BI and PM success.– 41 –Executive SupportMining for Executive Buy-InWe’ve seen that the acceptance of BI and PM within the business culture isheavily influenced from the top down, but as the message cascades through theranks, it can become diluted or, due to the busy nature of an executive role, it canbe forgotten if not kept top of mind. Building and maintaining momentum for BIis not only an important goal, it’s crucial in order to transform key executivesinto actual champions for the value of BI.How do you accomplish this?It starts with recognizing the goal. What’s needed in the organization is morethan the cursory nod from senior management. It’s active support. We need thoseexecutive champions to lead the troops toward the goals of BI and PerformanceManagement.They also need to recognize the real cultural obstacles and talk about the needfor a cultural shift within the company’s ranks.Our individual experiences have taught us that successful enterprise-widedeployments can and will change the information culture of the corporation, butthere is a catch: to get to that change, we also need to change our own relationshipswith the wider enterprise. We have to break through the walls that separate ourdecision area from the rest of the organization. We need to be willing to engagemanagement, to be sensitive to their issues, and to speak their business language.These are clearly not simple tasks. They require an awareness of the obstaclesthat lie in the road ahead and a willingness to address those obstacles constructively. In other words, we need to foster a new level of partnership between ITand other key decision-makers. They must become our ultimate stakeholders andour clients.Understanding Senior Executive PrioritiesGetting executives’ attention to recognize the value of and understand BI andPerformance Management can be difficult when they may be struggling withtheir own responsibilities. Nonetheless, they’re probably looking for help in alleviating their problems, though they may not be looking at BI and PerformanceManagement as solutions. Keep that in mind before initiating your approach.The first task is to understand their pain points—what hurts and where—intheir context and their language. So here are some tips.– 42 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyTable 2.1 lists some key roles present in most organizations, but rememberthat each organization is different, and roles are often fungible within the corporation. So get to know your unique organization’s key roles, and then hone yourmessage appropriately. Table 2.1: Key Executive RolesRoleResponsibilitiesTop PrioritiesRequirementsCEOSetting strategicdirection andarticulatingcorporate vision• Ensuring top businessgoals are metsuccessfully, on timeand on budget• Ensuring the vision andfuture strategy is set forthe organization• Convey the message tosubordinates• Ensure that prioritiesare fundedappropriatelyCIOInnovating toimprove thebusiness• Enabling businessinnovation• Improving customersatisfaction• Reducing businesscosts• Creating competitiveadvantage• Understand the issuesin business terms whileunderstanding the ITbenefit and value• Avoid viewing challengeand opportunityexclusively from atechnology perspectiveCFOManagingregulatory andfinancialprocesses• Measuring andmonitoring businessperformance• Meeting fiduciary andstatutory requirements• Monitoring process andbusiness improvement• Understand strategicand productivitybenefits, global processownership, andintegration• Turn data into usableinformation• Turn usable informationinto meaningful insights• Establish a datagovernance frameworkLine-ofBusinessExecutiveDriving day-to-dayoperationalperformance• Improving profit• Increasing productivity• Reducing business risk• Connect withbusiness-area subjectmatter experts• Find champions willingto collaborate onidentifying solutions• Solicit broad-basedsupport• Drive adoptionelsewhere across thebusiness – 43 –Executive SupportWhile it may seem fairly obvious to say that we’ve found that it’s not effective to try enlisting executives within one decision area by speaking only of thevalue of another area of the company, this is how the initiative is communicatedin many organizations. As an example, an IT team may speak ofhow the consolidated strategy will improve service-level agreement(SLA) times, decrease total costs, or increase IT efficiencies. Or afinance team may demonstrate how it will improve financial processes and cut expenses. In fact, in attempting to gain buy-in, it’simportant to avoid the temptation of approaching all senior executives with the same strategy, as they may not see how their area will benefit inthe sample outcomes that are shared. You need to adapt your messages depending on who you’re aiming to enlist. So understanding each executive’s uniqueresponsibilities is crucial, and communicating in their language, identifying thebenefits that will be of value to them, is the key. This point may seem obvious,but you’d be surprised by how often an opportunity to gain support is wastedbecause the wrong executive is pitched the wrong message.Tactics for Engaging the Executive SetWe’ve found there are many different kinds of tactics for engagingmanagement and executives, but we’ve narrowed down the list to a fewkey recommendations:● Speak the Language of Business—You must demonstrate the value ofthe BI and Performance Management initiative in business-focused,non-technical terms.● Know Your Leaders’ Key Pain Points—Every part of every organization feels some sort of pain. The key to maximizing the buy-in potentiallies in under- standing those unique pains before approaching leadership.What are they? How do they affect operations and planning? How are theybeing prioritized? How can the BI and PM initiative help?● Focus on Messaging—Senior leaders love to know what’s going on andalways seek to be on the winning team. Internally communicate key winsto them and their stakeholders to maximize buy-in potential. Articulate thevalue proposition of these wins—for example, a business unit increasedsales, improved marketing campaign effectiveness, or closed the books inhours instead of days—and use business-friendly terms in the process.– 44 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy● Don’t Ask for Money—Never expect leaders to sign a blank check.Dollars are the last thing to mention when initiating contact with a seniorleader. Frame the discussion in terms of value to the organization,business justification, and long-term benefits to competitiveness. Andwhen you do communicate the cost, you need to communicate thequantifiable and indirect value they will be receiving as a counter.● Start Small—Don’t expect senior leaders to instantly understand the BIand PM value proposition. Be prepared to suggest smaller-scale pilotprojects to prove the concept with a series of quick, high-profile wins todemonstrate the value and gain executive trust. Follow up with a roadmapto migrate the organization from siloed analytics to a corporate BIstrategy.● Respect Their Time—Have your elevator speech ready andwell-organized.Keep the Conversation GoingWe’ve found that just because a senior leader buys into BI and PerformanceManagement doesn’t mean he or she will be on board forever. Far from it. Ifanything, buy-in isn’t so much achieved as itis maintained. Plan on continuing to evolvethe relationship with executive-level stakeholders to ensure their support remainsstrong over time.A BI strategy demands a certain degree ofmarketing savvy. Even if you’ve always beenin IT, you’ll need to learn how to sell. Youhave to play a sales role to maintain ongoingsupport at this level. Be prepared to regularlyapproach your executives and show them, inconcrete terms, how you’re going to cut costs,generate more revenue, or otherwise improvethe way things work. There’s a very stronginternal sales aspect to maintaining executive buy-in over time.Use statistics and analyst research that may help to sway your executives tosupport the cause. As an example, Nucleus Research, Inc., conducted a study3 in– 45 –Executive Support“Gaining buy-in is ongoing,”says Brian Green. “It’s definitely not something youachieve and then put on theback burner. You have toconstantly keep the valueadd focused on your keybusiness objectives if you’regoing to keep their buy-in.”which they found that Business Intelligence and Performance Management performed the following functions:● Improved Productivity by up to 20 Percent—Implementing acomprehensive BI/PM strategy can increase the productivity of workersinvolved in reporting, finance, or analysis by up to 20 percent.● Cut Staffing Costs by up to 15 Percent—Efficiencies created by BI/PMhave enabled line-of-business organizations to reduce reporting andanalysis staff by up to 15 percent.● Reduced Assets by up to 15 Percent—Inventory amounts, accountsreceivable, and other assets that are purchased and maintained on thebalance sheet were cut by up to 15 percent after BI/PM systems weresuccessfully implemented.Of course, every organization will find its own area’s savings. But the twokey messages we’ve found that resonate with our senior executives are a) “Doingbetter” requires both “working smarter” and efficiency across all decision areas;and b) achieving that smarter behavioral and cultural environment requires maximizing the use of BI and embracing Performance Management.Value of an Organizational StructureWhere do you start in building the organizational team that can empower BI andPM? How can a team be implemented? To whom does it report? Is it a part of IT,or is it a part of the business organization within the corporation? What value willsuch a team bring to the organization? These are questions that need to be seriously considered before the organization embarks on any enterprise-wide BIstrategy.Let’s speak from experience and from the perspective of the organization’sbottom line.Many of our organizations are responding to the need for strategic BI and PMby creating working teams of IT and BI, both virtual (such as a “community ofinterest” and structured (such as a BI department). These teams are often calledthe BI Competency Center (BICC).In a recent study by the Business Applications Research Center, it was discovered that “Companies with BICCs outperformed those without competencycenters in every issue.”4 The study found that user satisfaction levels improved;– 46 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategygreater penetration of the tools existed within the organization; and notableimprovements in alignment with strategy, process, and data improvements wereachieved.We have seen that the institutionalization of a BI structure can also help organizations lower their total cost of ownership (TCO). BICCs help to drive a lowerTCO of our Business Intelligence and technology solutions with reduced implementation costs and eased deployment risk. They accomplish this through thefollowing:● The Consolidation of Information, Skills, and Knowledge—BICCsdeliver higher and faster rates of adoption of the complete BI lifecycle.Moreover, they provide a “single version of the truth” across the entireenterprise, which can improve user satisfaction and self-service. Bybringing expertise together, repeatable practices are formed, driving fastertime to market, shared knowledge, and increased productivity.● The Creation and Institutionalization of Proven Practices andStandards—BICCs adopt and share proven practices and enforce BIstandards through registration and guidance and have the ability toidentify new opportunities to leverage BI. The impact of standards andshared practices results in a more efficient alignment of the technologiesto strategic goals (competitive differentiation/regulatory requirements)and clarifies the vision for future coordinated BI. This improves costsfrom a software license, services, training, hardware, and supportperspective and improves time efficiency and the ability to leverageskills.We’ve also used BICCs to educate our key stakeholders about the advantagesof employing BI and Performance Management. In fact, our BICCs help to openand build the lines of communication between regions and departments to prevent a silo-driven approach to implementation. In doing so, we can engineer eachBI solution so that it will clearly demonstrate its value through the breadth,depth, completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of information available throughout the enterprise.Defining the BI Competency Center (BICC)5The BICC organizational structure groups people with interrelated disciplines,domains of knowledge, experiences, and skills for the purpose of promoting– 47 –Value of an Organizational Structureexpertise throughout an organization. Sometimes, this team is known by othernames:● BI Department● BI Center of Practice● BI Community● BI Center of Excellence (BICoE)● BI Center of Knowledge● BI Community of Practice● BI Technology Services● Data Mining and Information DeliveryFor the purpose of this document, we will label it a BICC for simplicity. But,by whatever moniker, the general purposes of this team include these:● Promoting and delivering business value through a consistent set of BIskills, standards, and practices.● Enabling successful BI deployments through the development of people,technologies, and processes. The methodology used is designed to makesuccesses repeatable in ways that reflect the needs of the entireorganization or division.● Creating measurements of success that are relevant to the entireorganization, not just a single team, department, or project.In most organizations, the BICC is a formal, organized department. We seethis as increasingly important as the market dynamics and speed of decisionmaking pressure organizations to be highly transparent, proficient, and effectivein their daily operating and decision-making.Today, we see an increasing need for IT and BI to address businesschallenges:● Do More with Less—Reduce our capital expenditures and operationalexpenses.● Reduce Risk—Ensure the right levels of security and resiliency across allof our business data and processes.– 48 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy● Provide Higher-Quality Services—Improve our quality of services anddeliver new services that help the business grow and reduce cost.● Open New Opportunities—Increase our ability to quickly deliver newservices to capitalize on opportunities while containing costs andmanaging risk.● Create Efficiencies—Create repeatable processes and leverage solutions,infrastructure, and resources.● Increase Alignment—Align business goals and monitor them in order toexecute successfully.A BICC significantly assists in these tasks. But let’s explore these tasks in alittle more detail.We have seen that if BI is to extend beyond mere tactical deployments tobecome a broader-based strategic solution, it requires a more managed, predictable approach. A BICC can define the knowledge, standards, and resourcesneeded to make this happen. A BICC is essential to the strategic deployment ofBI because it achieves these goals:● Maximizes the efficiency, use, and quality of your BI across all lines ofbusiness through standards and reusability● 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 anincreasing number of information consumers doesn’t guarantee morepeople will use it)● Helps close the gap between what the business needs and what IT delivers● Enables business agility and improved technology management, helping todrive overall business efficiencyIn our experience, a BICC enables repeatable, successful BI deploymentsthrough the development of people, technologies, and processes. Moreover, itaccomplishes this in ways that make sense to the entire organization or division,rather than just a single project.– 49 –Value of an Organizational StructureOrganizational Design ApproachesSo how did our organizations set up our BICCs? What are some of the lessonswe’ve learned? While each of our experiences is different and aligned to our ownorganizational and cultural factors, there is a set of common elements. And we’vefound that the most successful BICCs are formed through a pragmatic development effort that matures over time. We recommend these tactics:● Start small.● Think strategically.● Systematically accelerate.What we have discovered is that there is no “one size fits all”approach. Every organization has a unique culture and organizational approach, and the BICC must fit within it. Establishing a successful BICCdepends on the right planning. Organizations that take a measured, well-managedapproach that stresses synergy between people, processes, and technologies aremore likely to succeed. The success of this approach is that it will gain widersupport and contribute to significant cost savings while it takes business intelligence to the next strategic level.BICC models vary according to the needs of the organization. Figure 2.1depicts several different organizational possibilities for BICCs.– 50 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyFigure 2.1: Different organizational models for BICCs.6An individual BICC may initially start as an IT-only initiative, designed tofocus on consolidating the system knowledge necessary to ensure a consistententerprise strategy for BI. Or the model may be one that is based uponline-of-business requirements, focusing on functional business skills and specificcapabilities sponsored by business executives. Some BICCs are centralized at acorporate-office level, while others are loose networks or regional and divisionalfederated teams made up of business and IT personnel.However, all organizational structures tend to change, adjust, and mature overtime. Many times, BICCs evolve in synch with the developmental life cycle ofyour BI tools and their level of implementation. For example, competencies andfocus within the BICC will differ in early stages of ideation, planning, development, and maintenance. Early competencies may need to focus on adoption andevangelization, whereas, in later stages, the BICC may need to demonstrate astronger role in articulating proven practices.No matter where the BICC resides, a key element is that it brings togetherseveral functions in an organization for alignment and is the coordinating bodyfor a larger community of stakeholders.Goals and Objectives of the BICCIn our experience, the BICC—whether centralized, de-centralized, based onfull-time employees or a virtual set of community skills—searches for the righttechnologies for the most complete, relevant, and consistent view of information.It attempts to implement and/or support the implementation of the best metrics tohelp drive the corporate strategy of growth and profitability. It tries to use themost effective organizational design and business model to help the companyachieve a shared view of how the company operates by leveraging information tothe fullest potential. The common functions of a BICC can therefore vary.Of course, it’s important again to note that no one-size BICCfits all. The BICC scope should be based on your organizationalneeds and the dynamic considerations of human capital, managedprocess, culture, and infrastructure (hardware and software). Thegraphic in Figure 2.2 illustrates some of the elements to addresswhen building a solid foundation for your BICC.– 51 –Organizational Design Approaches● Best Practices and Standards Management—Provide a clear processand repository for approving and sharing best practices and standards forthe enterprise.● Advise and Consult—Provide a functional area of business with advice,guidance, mentoring, and “internal consulting” so that project teams canbecome self-sufficient.● Community Services—Design and build content, such as commonreports and data packages, for use by the broader business communities.● Communication and Evangelism—Communicate and promote thestatus, progress, accomplishments, and successes, and chart the overallroadmap to the business at large.● Enterprise Architecture—Direct, build, and support the technicalinfrastructure.● Education and Support—Train and educate the business or related ITfunctions for the best utilization of the technologies it supports.● IT Governance Alignment—Plug into the broader IT governanceprocesses and steering committees. These areas can include project andchange management, portfolio management, vendor management, andlicense management.● Data Governance Alignment—Create a suitable framework for, orinterface to, existing data governance disciplines across the organization.– 52 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyFigure 2.2: BICC functions within the organization.7● Business Strategy Alignment—Connect to the corporate businessstrategy. This ensures that the technology-related initiatives will meet themost important needs and priorities of the business. It helps define thelonger-term strategic goals of the organization.The functions of the BICC may also include:● IT Relationship Management—Interact with and influence various otherIT domains (e.g., data warehouse, database, portals, desktop tools, andETL tools).● Vendor Relationship and Product Management—Maintain constantcontact with the BI vendors to understand and influence roadmaps/enhancements, make the vendor aware of challenges, recognize whenthe vendor strategy isn’t aligning with your own, and so on.● Analyst Interaction and Market Research—Be aware of emergingtechnologies, vendor health, and the like.As you prepare your organizational and behavioral strategy, to help determinewhere and how your BICC is best structured, consider the following areas to take apragmatic approach to forming and managing the growth within your organization:● Where is executive support the strongest?● Who is best positioned to help interlock the various business units and IT?● Who are the stakeholders that need to be involved?Remember, the BICC becomes most effective when there is a recognizedneed for BI that crosses functional boundaries. But to succeed, as we’ve mentioned, this BI requirement shouldn’t be a strictly IT-driven initiative. Thebusiness needs to be actively involved in the creation and operation of the BICC.We look to the functional areas of business to empower our BICCs:● Business users● Analysts● Power users● IT support teamsOf course, their specific needs will vary according to their areasof expertise, but those who are facing the greatest challenges shouldbe the primary candidates for creating the BICC. They can help formthe initial community and become the guiding team to drive the firststeps to success.– 53 –Organizational Design ApproachesDeveloping the Scope of the BICCAs mentioned, our findings, working within our own organizations, indicate thatthe BICC’s design will be influenced by business culture, historical deploymentactivity, specific business pain, and measures of success.We’ve found we initially started servicing the business based on a smallerscope of tactical technical aspects of a BICC, such as support and consulting orproject startup assistance. And then, over time, we’ve evolved our BICC modelsand expanded the scope by having the BICC play a far greater strategic andproactive role in our organizations.BICC Roles and PersonnelWe feel you should have a solid appreciation of the skills required to supportyour endeavor. The right selection of people and appropriate skills is paramountto the success of your BICC. The most successful BICCs maintain a mix of skillsin which individuals—either in and of themselves or as the sum of all parts—manage the balance between technical and business acumen. The mandate ofyour BICC will determine which skills, roles, and staffing requirements areneeded. As your BICC matures and the scope of its function diversifies, additionsand changes to the roles and skills may be required to meet the service andcapacity needs of your organization.As an absolute minimum, we believe a BICC should consist of the followingbasic roles:● BICC director/manager● Business analyst● Technical consultants● Educators/evangelists● Technology analysts (e.g., R&D on emerging technologies, roadmapawareness)● Formal relationship managers with sourcing, IT infrastructure, andarchitecture teamsRealize that the people you appoint as participants in the BICC (fixed or virtual) may require additional and ongoing education and certifications to obtainthe competency required to service the functions of the BICC, and these– 54 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategyrequirements will change over time as the overall requirements of the organization change. We think it’s important that you clearly define the responsibilities ofthese roles, including the functions of the steering committee, leadership qualitiesfor the BICC director/manager, and core roles and traditional responsibilities ofthe BICC team personnel.Funding ModelsOne of the more interesting issues that our organizations have had to face is identifying the mechanisms by which the BICCs are funded. Each of us has hadslightly different experiences with funding models, but the variety of experiencesthat we’ve had may be useful to your organization.Most organizations understand the three easiest funding models:● Self-Funded● Shared Service Chargeback● Centrally Funded Central ServiceSelf-funded BICC models are those by which an IT or BI department funds itsown BICC activities. They may or may not engage or interact with others to startsharing best practices, infrastructure, space, licenses, skills, and so on. We sometimes refer to this model as Early Stage BICC Funding. There are, of course, prosand cons in this model.● Pros» Flexible» Agile● Cons» Not revenue-generating, therefore not a sustainable strategy» No connection between the different business strategies and themetrics that are developed» Many people duplicating the BI effort» Skills not leveragedBICC Shared Service Chargeback models are those in which a central infrastructure is put in place, but there is a charge for every department that wants tojoin a project. The charge is assessed by the level of work required (does it in-– 55 –Organizational Design Approachesvolve consulting? do they want project startup help?), with a monthly fee associated for their usage on the system.● Pros» Reduces redundancy of resources in BI projects» Connects data and reduces silos» Creates standards» Improves implementation timelines» Creates efficiency when value for money is continually assessed● Cons» Departmental charges are sometimes onerous» Early adopters may contribute more than “fair” share» Conflicts may develop between corporate objectives and projectobjectives» Investments need to be justified every time there is an upgrade or anew technology added» Requires a level of record-keeping that may not be immediatelyavailableThe Centrally Funded Central Service model is employed when thecharges for infrastructure, human resources, and so on come off the top of acorporate budget for use by all business areas so that organizations feel likethis service is “free.”● Pros» User adoption increases» Skills are leveraged» Overall business value is more readily realized● Cons» Less agile in introducing new technologiesOur experiences show that the BICC—by its very nature as an enterprise-wideservice—will often require an organic and flexible funding model that is something of a hybrid of any or all of the above models.– 56 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyFor instance, in one of our organizations, the BICC is viewed as a shared service that any decision area in the company can use for free. It’s funded at thecorporate level. But there’s a fine line that’s drawn when a project moves beyondthe advisory mode. As long as the BICC doesn’t implement specific projects inthe organization, its cost is hidden in the overall corporate budget as operatingcost. But if the BICC is asked to take on development of a project, it will chargeback to the specific decision area for hours and expenses.At another organization, the funding model is even more nuanced. The BICCis funded out of IT overhead for a certain level of the headcount. Then, as theBICC personnel engage with specific projects, they bill their hours and expensesto the project itself. An initial engagement scopes out and estimates the development work, a draft of a customer service agreement is created to identify the startand end of the engagement, and the BICC quantifies the overall resources thatwill be required.These nuanced, hybrid funding mechanisms represent where our organizations may be at the present time, but we acknowledge that evolutionary changesimpact our models as our BICCs mature. For instance, in one of our organizations, less emphasis is now being placed upon direct billing. Instead, the BICC ismoving toward the Centrally Funded Central Service model, which is reducingthe requirements of direct billing to any particular decision area affected.The point is that the way the BICC is funded reflects how the larger corporation has evolved in its appreciation of the benefits of a central BI strategy andhow the successes of BICC initiatives and activities have been proven. It isimportant for senior management to recognize that the BICC is the face to thebusiness and that strategic investment in platform, licenses, and resources tomake the BICC effective is paramount.Strategically Position the Organization for the BICCIs your organization ready for a BICC? What is the state of your BI infrastructure? How can you recognize the current state of your organization?An importantfirst step is to review your organization’s perception of the BICC and the maturity level of the effort.– 57 –Organizational Design ApproachesMaturity of a BICCAs the BICC matures, its needs, responsibilities, and personnel may change.We’ve also found that the BICC model varies depending on the needs of theorganization as well as its level of maturity.It may be highly focused in IT as a means tohelp consolidate the system knowledge necessary to ensure a consistent enterprisestrategy for BI. Other models may be focusedin finance, operations, or a specific businessunit, but all include key members of functional business areas and executive sponsorsworking closely with the IT teams. SomeBICCs centralize at a corporate head office,while others are networks of regional anddivisional IT and business stakeholders.Whatever the configuration, the goal is tocreate a centralized, consistent approach toimplement, support, and manage BI. This canensure a successful deployment and broaderusage across the enterprise so that BI is predictable, repeatable, and consistent.User Adoption8It doesn’t take long for companies involvedin the process of implementing a BICC to recognize that a key measure of success is the increase in user adoption, in both the number and the diversity of usersacross the organization. Putting BI into the hands of people isn’t enough. It’s notalways the case that you can “build it and they will come.” We’ve found it’sessential to ensure that the technology is accepted and used effectively, and thisrequires that the BICC identify best practices and develop guidelines for successful implementation of BI tools. Below are five BICC success factors for attaininguser adoption.Success Factor 1: Creating Technology StandardsWe’ve found that in the past BI was typically implemented on a project-byproject basis in response to specific user needs, with little attention paid to– 58 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy“Typically, you establish aBICC and supporting organizational structure as you areformalizing your BI standards and goals,” says KayVan De Vanter. “You wouldn’t set up a BICC and then tryto support every BI and Performance Management toolwithin your organization.You need to have a preferredor focused set of tools andan initial BI strategy withgoals and objectives. BI maybe fun and flashy, but this is alot of hard work, and youneed goals and objectivesthat your team can get behind and believe in.”projects in other areas. In many cases, BI was acquired incidentally through otherbusiness applications. This invariably created a patchwork of applications thatare difficult and expensive to maintain and support. The overlapping functionality becomes an increasingly common problem in large organizations, and theexistence of multiple disconnected BI projects leads to higher procurement costs,greater training expense, longer project implementation, and information inconsistency. This is usually the case if an initiative is realizing little value.But creating standards and broadening adoption is a strategic process. It’s oneof the areas where all organizations have had struggles and where the varieddesires of business users come into frequent conflict with technology teamswithin IT. Still, standardization can bring considerable direct and indirect returnon investment (ROI). Here’s how that ROI can be achieved:● Direct Benefits» Reduced Project Costs—With a repeatable approach, new BIprojects can be implemented faster, on time and on budget, with lessrework and fewer cost overruns.» Reduced Technical Infrastructure Costs—With a standard BIarchitecture, multiple projects share technical components, resulting inless duplication, less need to prototype alternative solutions, and lowertraining costs. SLAs are also improved.» Greater Leverage with Vendors—Having standards increases thebusiness leverage with the retained suppliers.● Indirect Benefits» Higher End-User Acceptance—Having a consistent look and feelacross different applications and clear help desk and training policieshelps to increase end-user acceptance and use of the solution.» Greater IT Satisfaction—IT teams have more time to focus on thecustomer delivery aspects of projects and on high-level architectureissues.» Better Use of BI—A standard approach can provide increased accessto relevant and timely data, which enables a more complete view,extending the value and use of information in an organization.» Improved Use of Resources’ Work/Life Balance—As projectsbecome easier to execute and support via standardized platforms and– 59 –User Adoptionpractices, reducing the amount of “emergencies” and “rework,” moretime can be spent on new work and innovation.» Improved Delivery—Through improved use of technology toolstailored to BI and established practices and processes, delivery isaccelerated.Success Factor 2: Converging IT and Business UsersTo build BI implementations that the organization needs and users want, theBICC should be a partnership with the business users and IT to form individualBI project strategies, determine information requirements, and work out issues.This will ensure IT delivers relevant solutions that more users will want to use.Getting the subject matter experts from the business side involved isextremely important since it’s their lives you’re affecting. If you don’t get themon board, their reluctant adoption of the projects will be telling.How to get business users on your side? Solve their pain! Seek out championson the business side that understand the value you can bring to them. We’ve allseen how gaining an early, high-value win was vital to the larger successes thatfollowed. It helps to build positive momentum throughout the organization andfurther the goals of the BICC strategy.Success Factor 3: Providing AccessibilityYou can’t establish a standard and then make it difficult for people to complywith it. Timing is everything, so getting people on board quickly is critical.Otherwise, you can lose your users.Some strategies and proven practices in this area include these:● Free or Low-Cost Access and Entry—Provide “free” access, at least ona trial basis. If users perceive that the software is both available and “free”(or very low-cost), IT can gain significant buy-in. The best strategy is tohave IT cover the software as overhead in an existing infrastructureregionally deployed. It will increase adoption and establish alignment tothe standard.● Self-Service—Find the right balance of self-service and IT support.We’ve found that often a self-service tool can mean fewer headaches andless time-consuming support for the BI team. If users don’t have to wait– 60 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategyfor the BI team to create cubes orbuild reports for them, they can beginusing the tool to achieve what’sneeded and fall into alignment withthe standards sooner.● Enterprise Licenses—In many cases,it’s a good idea to go with a vendorthat offers an enterprise licensingmodel. This model can be managedcentrally and provides for scalabilityas the organization grows or needs toexpand. An enterprise agreement helpsin standards enforcement (e.g., nonegotiation on a project-by-projectbasis, no budget issues). From thebusiness users’ perspective, thiseliminates an immediate barrier ofneeding budget and resources toimplement it, and they can get up andrunning more quickly at a lower cost of entry.● Enterprise Architecture—With an easily expandable platform offering,ramp-up time is reduced; procurement discussions are mostly aboutcapacity planning; support services are leveraged; consistent releasemanagement is offered; and services are more easily managed, upgraded,and aligned with other IT component strategies (e.g., database upgrades).This also enables an excellent view of the BI ecosystem and enterprisemetrics on performance, usage, and the like.Success Factor 4: Providing Product ManagementIt is important to have a single point of contact for managing the BI standard,training, vendor relations, support, and issues resolution. This way, there is noconfusion for users or IT teams, and there are far fewer redundancies. In mostcases, the product management contact should be someone with a technicalfocus, rather than a business focus, but who will work closely with the businessto ensure that requirements are met.Of course, providing a structure for user training is a key requirement, andwe’ll go into that in more detail later in this chapter.– 61 –User Adoption“People want immediategratification. For a strategicBI initiative, you can’t expectpeople to wait three years torealize value,” says JohnBoyer. “You have to plan theinterim solution. How dopeople do business for thenext six months? When people are not provided interimsolutions, they will seek thepath of least resistance. Toincrease success, walk before you run. Align yourgoals in the interim, and thenmerge into the roadmapwhen it’s time.”Success Factor 5: Ensuring Timely, Trusted InformationIf users do not understand and trust the data, they will not use the solution.Providing timely information and confidence in that information—trust, understanding, and the proper reach to the information silos—will also increaseadoption. Many teams will implement BI on an array of data silos without understanding how the information is connected or what information is needed torealize value. And these information silos may have low-quality data that is nottrusted or understood. Or a business user may have to wait too long for requestedinformation, thereby hindering adoption.To achieve timely, trusted information, a strong partnership between IT and thebusiness units is needed—with a business alignment strategy to ensure the goalsare achieved as well as a partnership to ensure the information is high-quality,trusted, and understood.CommunicationIf the organization clearly understands the value and benefits of an enterprise-wide BICC initiative, more users will want to cooperate and learn about it.Broadening the user base requires communication and information-sharing. Itis essential that there is a strong communication strategy in place to spread themessage of the importance of BI to everyone across the organization.We believe supporting user groups or a community of practice—which provide a forum for people to demonstrate their solutions—is a particularly usefultechnique. The idea is to share as much information across the business aspossible.In the communication strategy, these elements should be considered:● Provide a proof of concept.● Invite your vendor to demonstrate the software.● Showcase innovative solutions people have found while using thetechnology.It is also important that the value of strategic BI is communicated, both in terms of how it connects to strategic goals from thebusiness alignment strategy and how often it is used by the business.This ensures ongoing support, especially from upper management.– 62 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyYou will want to understand, gather, and document the major business benefitsgained by the various business units using the solution. For example, is theaccounting department able to close the books in hours instead of days? Weresales increased, or were marketing campaigns more effective? Also, a way todetermine engagement could be by running usage reports on your BI—that is,documenting how many times a particular report is run, by whom, and how oftenit is opened. Regularly communicating key wins in the organization to thebroader team will help to gain and maintain momentum for the initiative.Once the organization understands the key metrics it needs to measure andmonitor, the organization also needs to understand how it can better achieveresults, what results have been seen to date, and how to document and communicate the value.ShowcasingWhen deploying something as large-scale as BI, project champions and theirteams should be prepared to use proof-of-concept successes and a variety of communications tactics to acquire the mandate and then get users progressively moreinvolved throughout the execution phase.Demonstrating the value proposition of your BI initiative through a marqueeproject and building on that success with other wins, communications tactics,demos, training, and recognition will help maintain high-level interest in BI andkeep the whole company interested, engaged, and involved.Getting executive buy-in for your BI initiative is absolutely key, but that support has to be sustained once achieved. Early buy-in must also snowball intobroad user adoption during execution. The best way to keep the momentumgoing and get the troops on board is to showcase your BI initiative—communicate success and demonstrate value, and keep on doing it.How to Demonstrate Value and Communicate Successes9We believe the BICC needs to be able to build on small successes, andthen supporters must sell the capabilities of the BI initiatives. We sell ourselves every day. The tightrope we walk is to avoid appearing as if we’reselling technology or a product, rather than selling a solution. To help youwalk that tightrope, here are some straightforward ways you can showcaseBI to your organization and ramp up company interest to the next level.– 63 –ShowcasingBut before you try any of these showcasing tactics, make sure you’re speakingthe right language. Keep in mind the audience you’re trying to reach, and demonstrate the value of the initiative in the business terms they’ll understand.Select a Marquee Project and Publicize ItWhat pain did a BI project help to solve in your organization? Pick somethingthat’s not too complex (for example, a simplified process for aggregating salesresults across a number of regions), and start telling the story through email campaigns, word of mouth, face-to-face meetings, and so on. Your marquee projectwill demonstrate that the value of BI far outweighs the change it requires.Solicit and Share Other Success StoriesWhen that marquee project story gets a bit tired, identify other new projects youcan talk about. Constantly be on the lookout for success stories, and share themwidely.Talk to the communications department about using existing platforms to getthe BI message out. For example, regularly send out an email newsletter withuser tips, success stories, news, and recognition. Pepper the intranet with BIFAQs, tips, a user blog, news, and other information. Hold regular lunch-andlearn sessions showcasing BI successes, tips and tricks, or business usability andadaptability.– 64 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral StrategyA Successful BI COPAt one organization, a grass-roots BI Community of Practice(COP) has been in existence for 10 years. A large group withglobal representation, the COP provides a forum for leveragingtactics, practicing development vendor presentations, marketingof solutions, and discussing strategy. This forum has led to leveraged solutions, vendor enhancements, shared services improvements, and the creation of a large network of practitioners. Thecommunity maintains a Web site, hosts annual meetings, facilitates vendor demos, collaborates on practices and solutions, andis a main point of contact for vendors and internal IT and businesspartners.Relate the Successes Back to Established MetricsIT and business have partnered to understand the key metrics they need to measure and monitor. Now articulate that ROI to the whole organization bycommunicating your documented wins and sharing the major benefits variousbusiness units gained by using BI solutions. For example, maybe operations identified a critical issue in the supply chain and was able to resolve it before itimpacted delivery. Or perhaps sales have increased or marketing campaigns havebecome more effective. Measure the value and demonstrate it.Demonstrate SuccessYou can engage everyone by gathering people together often and showing themwhat the BICC can do for them. Live or interactive demos are almost alwaysbetter than static feature lists. Use various media creatively to maximize exposureand involvement. Make sure you show some before-and-afters: What was thepain? How did BI solve it?Lunch-and-learns, Webinars, BI user groups, and vendor-sponsored BI UserDays are all great ways to demonstrate what BI is doing for your organization.Train the TrainerTraining is one of the most organic ways to articulate and showcase the value ofBI. A good place to start is by training and certifying business users willing to actas trainers, as they become the point people for sharing knowledge and in-housetraining for general users. Next, train power users and flow major reports andanalysis through them. Hold workshops every month to go through basics inareas such as analysis, score-carding, and reporting, and send individuals for vendor-held training when appropriate. Establish in-house or use externalcertification programs and publicize who has been certified.Keep Management InvolvedThose key executives who bought in early are going want to push the platformout to more users. It needn’t be much more complicated than the CEO standingup in front of a crowd and endorsing the BI initiative. You can hardly get a bettershowcase than that. Make sure these individuals are talking about BI in theirmeetings or large departmental or corporate get-togethers and that they are armedwith presentations, slides, and information ready to use when appropriate.– 65 –ShowcasingGo ViralWe’ve talked a lot about starting at the top and getting executive buy-in, butwhile you’re at it, don’t neglect the ranks further down. Use the early adoptersand natural marketers in your organization to help spread the word on BI. Forexample, one company’s IT department actually engaged the sales team to use itssales conference to talk up the great things IT was doing with BI.Be CreativeRecognize innovators and early adopters, and encourage everyone else to get onboard by having some fun with your BI initiative, while boosting morale at thesame time. One company promoted its BI system with a week-long scavengerhunt. Each morning, they asked the contestants to find the answers to questionson the BI system, which got progressively harder as the week went on. The ideawas to get users to explore the whole system and learn some of the moreadvanced aspects of it, while also learning how BI could help answer their ownbusiness questions. The game ended with an awards ceremony with managementrecognizing the best players and teams.Be ProgressiveLook forward. Don’t be content with simply meeting today’s business requirements. Try to anticipate future requirements and growth. Each quarter, youshould be able to demonstrate new capabilities, functions, and integration. Evaluate beta programs within the BICC so that your team can talk intelligently aboutfuture direction and roadmaps. Evaluate new and supplemental technologies.TrainingHaving IT teams and business users who are unfamiliar with new technologiesand systems is a major hindrance to adoption. Don’t overlook individual preferences and comforts when using technology. Often, individual users may feelembarrassed to let teams know they are not familiar with a technology, or if theydo not have a lot of experience with a technology, they may not know what it cando or what value it will provide them.A training plan is a major element of the organizational and behavioral strategy that is going to help drive adoption in an organization. And we believe– 66 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategyorganizations should maintain a trainingplan that matches user preferences totraining types and needs. This will maximize the value of the solutions.Recognizing that individuals alsorespond differently to the various typesof training, you may wish to consider anarray of training types to increase successas you build your organizational andbehavioral strategy. Consider adding various types of training to your menu:● Public ClassroomTraining—Public classroomtraining provides a highengagement model of training inwhich users are free from thedistractions of their everyday work.Hands-on labs, instructor-led training, and case study exercises can engageusers in a way that will make them more productive with the tools andexpand their knowledge.● Onsite Training—Delivering onsite training for a group of users will alsoprovide high engagement tailored to their area or business unit.● Conferences and Vendor Training—By attending a conference orvendor-led training session, a group of users can experience the deeptraining necessary for their work, get a comprehensive understanding ofthe product and vendor strategy, and meet other individuals outside theirorganization who can help increase their success through knowledgesharing and networking.● Online Training—Due to travel constraints that may exist in times ofeconomic downturns, online training can be a cost-effective way toimprove the knowledge of your users. By also offering these sessionson-demand, you can provide the flexibility needed across various timezones and accommodate busy user schedules.● One-on-One Training—One-on-one training is ideal when the skill gapis substantial and the user is a key individual in the organization whoneeds hands-on training. This may be the most effective training method,– 67 –Training“We find that by proactivelyplanning, we can effectively introduce new technologies,”says Brian Green. “We includefunds for BI staff development inour budget. We also developin-house training sessions forend users to ensure that the BItools and technologies we deploy are appropriately utilized.We publish periodic newslettersand surveys to keep our usercommunity informed and toprovide feedback. The key is toplan and budget for mass communication and for training.”but it may be the most costly. Some project methodologies—agile, forone—allow the project manager to build in a certain amount ofknowledge-sharing through pairing individuals on the team.Communication in the Requirement and Design ProcessCommunication in a project starts with a good understanding of the requirements.One process that is important to establish early isthe standardized recording of the BI prospectsand requests for support.This is clearly one of the opportunities where theBI team can bring together the evolving standardsof the organization to align a proposed BI projectwith other ongoing projects and to bring aboardnew decision areas with the overall businessstrategy.The standard requirements document shouldbridge both the business needs and the technicalrequirements. This means that it should be bothtransparent and easy to understand on the business side but still have enough detail on thetechnical implementation side so that realanalysis of technical requirements can begin.Think of the process as the conversationstarter: a standardized process that is easyfor business users to embrace but criticallydetailed so that good communication is fostered between the business users and thetechnical staff.It begins with a documented requirementrequest, one that is not so many pages that itwill deter the user from engaging. And whatdoes a good requirements form look like?Well, we don’t believe there is a “silver bullet” form, but we do believe there are manythings the request should accomplish:– 68 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy“One of the easiestquick-hit wins is crosspollination,” says JohnBoyer. “The BICC canbe that bee that takeslessons learned in oneproject team to thenext.”“The requirement and designprocess is iterative,” says BillFrank. “It’s an educationalprocess. It is a dialogue. Youcan’t just ask and receive. Visualizing and understandingthe data helps in the designprocess.“If you begin with a businessgoal and clear requirements asto what information is needed,there is a good understandingestablished. It has to be an ongoing conversation.”● The business outcome the user needs to achieve● The information they believe is necessary to complete the request● The dimensions and measures they need to understand● The type of report they need to visualizeKnowledge ShareA centralized repository or intranet site can also help improve communicationand understanding and provide a way for users throughout the organization tofind the information they need themselves and feel empowered. This repositoryshould be not only a repository for all the documentation needed to understandtechnical information, training, and best practices, but also a place for usersacross the organization to understand the value and celebrate successes. It canalso provide a collaborative environment to share and discuss information.Including the plans, business cases, and documented wins against these plans willgo a long way toward helping users understand and recognize the importance ofthe initiative.– 69 –Training“We have developed a strong intake and management process for initiating new projects,” says Brian Green. “Each request is submitted by business users through a workflow tool that routes the request to theappropriate team for a sizing estimate. The estimate then goes back to thebusiness sponsor for review and approval. If an estimate exceeds a predefined threshold, the request will be escalated for higher-level approval.Projects are prioritized based on high-level business objectives andpotential benefit to our customers.“We also monitor ongoing projects through our corporate Project Management Office. We will often use an iterative approach at the outset of aninitiative since business users cannot always visualize everything that canbe accomplished with BI from the start. Through the use of prototypesand iterative development, we can ensure that our customers will be satisfied with the end product.”Managing ChangeManaging change in an organization is often one of the hardest tasks in the equation. Every change requires resources in place to support it. An effectivecommunication plan has to be well-planned and communicated broadly. In manycases, project management or change management officers can provide guidance,so they should be engaged in this process. We have found that some effectivestrategies can make transition a lot easier:● Consider all the possible derailment factors and plan for them in yourorganizational and behavioral strategy.● Keep in mind that your organization’s goal should be that every individualinherently wants to improve the business. Recognize that, while individualstrategies may seem different, we are all trying to achieve the same goals.Be sure you are able to translate overall value into the departmentallanguage.● Remember that professionals don’t like to be told what to do; they want tobe involved in the process. A key to alignment is the carrot, not the stick.● Measure and communicate success. Celebrating successes helps to buildmomentum and allows individuals to understand the results and feel thethrill of accomplishment.Creating a structured approach to BI enables the ability to track and measurethe multitudinous projects that make up a larger BI strategy in the organization. Itpermits strong communication between the various stakeholders and ensures thatbest practices are maintained in the process. With a structured model in place,members of the team can discuss and prioritize the work that needs to be accomplished, while providing a common platform for normalizing the projects toachieve the maximum benefit to the organization.Checklist of Recommended ApproachesLearn and understand your unique business culture and how it affectsyour strategy. Engage others to assess where your political situationsmost often occur and why that might happen, and assess the ability todrive a culture of performance in your organization.Determine your key stakeholders and engage them. Understand who yourbiggest roadblocks are and who your biggest supporters are. Determine– 70 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategywhich executive stakeholders need to be engaged for your success andwhich executives are already on board who can help you champion theinitiative.Create an organizational structure. Define goals, mission, scope, roles,and a funding model based on your unique business culture, currentstructure, and maturity level—and expect this to change over time. Inaddition to a structured and dedicated BI team, build a community ofstakeholders. Determine whether some of your key roles can be donewithin or outside the structured team and embrace them.Study your user adoption. Understand and benchmark your currentadoption to be able to measure success in the future. In addition tounderstanding the number of users and time spent on BI initiatives, alsodetermine where your challenges lie to help you best identify wherefocus is needed to increase adoption.Design a communication strategy. Communication needs to be constantand consistent. And it involves consultation, not dictation. Determinewhich communications tactics to employ in your organization toshowcase and celebrate success, share new practices, and provide openforums for discussion. Ensure contact information is front and center andthat the various groups feel there is an open door for collaboration.Determine your training strategies. There are different levels of trainingthat should be used depending on the type of role. Training should becontinuous as new members join the initiative, as you include newsolutions, and as changes to the initiative are made. A trained user ismore likely to engage in the initiative and costs less to support.Determine the processes and vehicles you’ll need to employ to helpengage users and earn their trust and confidence. This includes processesto communicate requirements, determine priorities, make changes tosystems, and share information. These processes should be built toengage users, not prepared in such a complex fashion that they will deterusers from engaging.– 71 –Managing Change Organizational and Behavioral Strategy OverviewBusiness CultureProvide background on the existing business. Prepare a few words that demonstrate theculture (e.g., consultative, authoritarian, partnerships). In particular, describe the existingBI/IT and business relationship in the organization._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________AssessmentAssess the current situation. Do you have groups that are already working together? Arethere formal or informal teams working successfully together? Are there teams not beingserviced that are critical to success?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Stakeholder AssessmentDescribe who your business champions are by business area, listing particular individuals and their roles. Which individuals and departments do you consider to beroadblocks to the initiative? Which other stakeholders (e.g., information management,IT infrastructure) do you need to embrace?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Executive Buy-inPrepare a matrix of executive stakeholders. Explain their current engagement andknowledge level of the initiative. Rate the level of involvement (high, medium, or low)needed from each of them, and compare against the current involvement provided.Determine each executive’s key objectives and the value this initiative will providedirectly for that person (what’s in it for me?). Give examples of success that can beused to engage each of them. Determine the “ask” that you have of them._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Communication PlanPrepare a communication plan for your stakeholder teams. How often will you meet live,and for what purpose? Will you provide newsletters and, if so, with what frequency?Describe how you will communicate success. How can you communicate value as itpertains to the various stakeholders? Are there company initiatives where you canprovide news and updates? Viral methods? Regular teleconferences? Workshops? Arethere executive meetings or key stakeholder meetings you can join? When and what willyou present to each group, and in what timeframe? How will you solicit feedback?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 72 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy Overview Organizational and Behavioral Strategy OverviewOrganizational PlanWhat is the proposed organizational structure that should exist? Is it virtual, structured,or a combination of both? What are the charter and mission? What are the goals andobjectives? What is the business case for this investment, and what are the key ITefficiency, business efficiency, and business effectiveness metrics that can be appliedto this structure? What functions and roles will it support, and how do you expect it tochange and evolve over time? What is the funding model? What will you name theteams?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________User Adoption and EnablementHow do you plan to manage user adoption? What is the expected growth (which can bemeasured according to your roadmap and business alignment strategy in partnershipwith the business teams)? Will you provide knowledge sharing? Ensure support isavailable? Prepare for project startup? Are there guidelines, processes, and handbooksyou should supply to deliver the right information in a timely manner? How will teamsdetermine who they can go to when they need assistance? How will you bring users andteams on-board? How will you provide accessibility and security?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Training PlanWhat types of training (e.g., technical, data and information) are needed? Who willprovide the training? What methods are needed to satisfy both on-site and remoteusers? Are there “train-the-trainer” opportunities?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Requirement and Design ProcessesHow will teams define requirements? Do you have design and testing processes inplace? Are there templates or Web forms? If so, have these been tested with users toensure they won’t hinder adoption? Is the information designed so that users canunderstand the information they are looking for?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 73 –Organizational and Behavioral Strategy Overview Organizational and Behavioral Strategy OverviewKnowledge ShareHow will you enable knowledge sharing? Is there a Web portal that can easily helpusers access training, help desk, and project teams? Can they share best practices?Read documentation? Easily view roadmaps and plans? Are successes publicized?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Change ManagementIs there a change management team you can engage? What timeline are you lookingfor to enable change? Are clear expectations communicated? Are they supported andunderstood by executives? Is enough time provided in different intervals to ensureongoing success is visible? Are clear communication processes defined? How do youplan for future change (evaluating when change is needed and how often review shouldtake place)?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Measuring SuccessHow will you benchmark over time, and measure against those benchmarks, todemonstrate success? What measures will you monitor to determine the success ofyour communication strategy, organizational structure, user adoption, training, buy-in,and other elements of organizational and behavioral strategy? How will you monitor anddocument these successes and further promote changes?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 74 –CHAPTER 2: Organizational and Behavioral Strategy OverviewChapter 3Technology StrategyIn Chapter 1, we talked about how to align BI program initiatives with the overall business strategy and how an organization can create a roadmapof successes with prioritization that meets the needs and requirements of thebusiness. In Chapter 2, we examined the embedded cultural and behavioralfactors that influence change and the ways an organizational and behavioralstrategy can be planned that will accelerate success and eliminate some of themost common challenges that arise in this area. To a large degree, these chaptersonly touched on the challenges of the IT infrastructure that enables a BIinitiative. This chapter will now address the BI technologies and infrastructurestrategy and focus on a number approaches we’ve found useful in attaining BIexcellence.Often, specifying the various components required for organizations of oursizes is a task fraught with complexities: each of our organizations is unique, andeach has undergone a separate IT evolution. Each has embraced different solutions over time and learned somewhat different lessons in the process. So ourtask in describing a usable BI infrastructure will, of necessity, be to offer guidelines based upon our experiences. Yet the lessons we’ve learned can serve toinform your organization’s BI infrastructure decisions.For instance, we’ve learned—through experience and common sense—thatour BI program strategy shouldn’t be a monolithic, “one size fits all” line of– 75 –attack: different users have different needs, and each user has a variety of differing requirements for accessibility and utilization.We also know that building user confidence in the information system will bea keystone of our BI program approach, while performance, security, compliance, scalability, service, and uptime—among other things—will be benchmarksof our success or failure on the technology front. An agile BI initiative is requiredin order to meet the constant and changing demands of the wide range of userswho need insight into their information.At the same time, we need to be mindful of the costs as we seek to increasethe return on investment (ROI). The goal is to help our organizations gain efficiencies and productivity. This requires us to architect a strategic roadmap bywhich we can chart the goals of our organizations as we leverage existing investments in the current infrastructure.Finally, we need to measure our success, using metrics such as user adoption,customer satisfaction, ROI, total cost of ownership (TCO), the efficiencies created by being able to on-board and complete projects faster, the time savingsachieved through the sharing of best practices, and the use of common resourcesand internal experts and dedicated product management support.Like many organizations, our companies have invested heavily in informationmanagement and business intelligence. In most cases, the historical IT pathwaysour organizations followed weren’t a single-threaded, straightforward, or simpleroad. In fact, the most cogent argument for establishing a new roadmap to BIexcellence is to rid the organization of the technology scramble and cobbledtogether solutions that IT has had to deal with as it struggled to meet businessrequirements. We believe that a comprehensive strategy will provide a measured,and measurable, path to achieve BI excellence.In this chapter, we will explore the following questions:● Why create standards or consolidate a BI infrastructure?● How can we leverage existing IT technology investments supporting BIapplications?● How can IT ensure that the business has the best tools, supportinginfrastructure, and proven practice to enable BI success?● How can we implement a strategic, cost-effective BI infrastructure?– 76 –CHAPTER 3: Technology StrategyWe provide our experiences to enable you to aim for these goals:● A well-defined information infrastructure that can ensure consistent,high-quality information● A trustworthy information base that supports the business strategy● A well-architected decision platform to get the right information to theright people in the right way● A series of best practices that can be shared across the company and breakdown the silos between IT, business, and business unitsStandardization and ConsolidationMany organizations today are choosing standards in their BI, Performance Management, and information managementtool set. Often, they are consolidating various projects to achieve higher levels ofefficiency and to reduce costs. We believethat by choosing standards and consolidatingour BI projects, we allow our organizationsto more efficiently leverage investments intechnology and lower costs while increasing ROI. Consolidation of BI initiativespermits us to develop a more cohesiveview of the data and to obtain a commonsource of information and leveragesolutions.And while the financial reasons tochoose standards for BI technologies areapparent—cutting costs, boosting revenue,and increasing profits—it appears that, justrecently, standardization has become aninitiative that many more organizations areundertaking.Early BI adopters leveraged the powerof BI in their first attempts to achieve aconsistent view of data, but often theseearly attempts focused on specific– 77 –Standardization and Consolidation“Typically, a BICC is establishedaround a set of BI standards,”says Kay Van De Vanter. “Youcannot be successful in yourBICC if you have to support all BItools available in the organization. You need to be able to focus on preferred tools andprocesses. You need to have aBI strategy in place with goalsand objectives—a deploymentroadmap. The BICC is not justthe flashy new team that is put inplace. It is there to support yourBI strategy and standards. Thisis hard work. Also, having standards doesn’t mean that thetools can’t be from multiple vendors, but overlapping functionality should be limited andcomplementary, enabling theBICC to better support and besuccessful in deploying the BIstrategy.”functional areas. Therefore, as multipledepartments and divisions implementedtheir individual BI tools for their internalneeds, they were likely pursuing their goalsin different ways, using various technologies. Or, as in some of our organizations,different tools were acquired as ourbusiness grew through mergers and acquisitions, resulting in toolset fragmentation.But as organizations mature in their information infrastructures and gain the abilityto use that information effectively for decision-making, and as they uncover newopportunities or gain the ability to act andreact quickly to change, the strategic valueof the information is realized. The ability touse the information with reporting, analysis, and other tools begins to createbusiness impact, and growing this ability toleverage the existing data in new waysdrives a BI vision.Of course, to achieve effective use ofthis information, people in an organizationuse BI tools in different ways based on their job functions. It is recognized thatthe right tool is needed for the right use. Some need the ability to drill intodetailed reports or conduct advanced analysis on a daily basis, while others needan at-a-glance view of overall performance. However, the implementation of different BI toolsets for various uses can produce confusing or differing resultswhen a strategic vision is not in place. There may be a consistent view within onedepartment but multiple views across the company. The result can be a reducedability to focus on the outcome of the decisions that are being made and moreemphasis on discussions about where and how the information was derived. Andwhile empowering end users to access and use information is the desired outcome, without governance the use of BI tools can create data anarchy.Fragmentation of BI toolsets in the organization also becomes a support nightmare for IT, while increasing both the cost to the organization and the complexityof the information. This fragmentation lessens the ability of the organization togain visibility into its information sources and reinforces the information silos– 78 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“Technology changes quickly,and the BICC must be in frontof the curve and be aware ofwhat their customers are looking for and at,” says Bill Frank.“If we purchased everythingevery end user saw that theyliked, there would never be astandard. It’s important to educate both IT and the businessabout the current standardsuites’ capabilities, understandroadmaps, and continually assess gaps in the standards thatmight exist (and proactivelylook for candidates to fill thegaps). The BICC should havean ‘R&D’ component to maintain awareness and also provide the standard vendor’sinput on what their usersneed.”that exist throughout departments and divisions. The goal is to have a varied setof standard tools that are available throughout an organization to reduce toolsetfragmentation in individual areas.Creating a common set of standards for BI tools paves the way for BI to beboth a tactical tool and a strategic resource. Our BI programs haveestablished a broad set of standards across these tools, by which wecan help to lead the organization toward its strategic goals in the useof technology.Choosing standards is more than merely an exercise in cost/benefit equations. Several factors need to be considered, includinghow the tools interact and integrate with the various technologies that areempowered by the BI platform or the technologies on which the BI tools depend.Figure 3.1 provides a view of how an organization might implement a standardset of tools and the technologies that need to be considered in the strategy inwhich stakeholder alignment needs to be strong.In this example, the organization has created standards for each technologystack. The standards are managed by different groups, which interact with oneanother. The BI group also supports, consults with, and provides advice to thevarious teams about their standards choices. By establishing information andtechnology standards, our BI programs help to set the pace and ensure the resiliency by which the organization can meet its strategic information challenges.Some areas of our companies still retain specialized tools that were chosen to– 79 –Standardization and ConsolidationFigure 3.1: Sample standards management example.facilitate specific requirements. Byevaluating those tools on an ongoingbasis—both for fit within the portfolioof business needs and for future innovation—and placing those toolsetsinto a context of company-wide standards, we can help to guide and adviseeach sector in making better futuredecisions that will complement theirinternal goals yet connect with thelarger corporate strategies. It is recognized that standardization does notoccur overnight; it is a process overtime. In the process, we’re reducingcosts as individual areas align to thestandards, adding momentum andvalue to the BI effort.Standardization CriteriaIn its recent white paper, Standardizing Business Intelligence, Ventana Researchidentified a number of characteristics to look for when consideringstandardization1:● Broad Coverage—A standard must meet the needs of as much of theorganization as possible. This minimizes the exceptions that can lead torequests for non-standard technologies. In the BI realm, look for solutionsthat cover production reporting, planning and consolidations, ad hocquery, OLAP reporting and analysis, mining, dashboards, scorecards,visualization, and ability to support compliance with government andinternal regulations.● Modern Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)—Standards shouldleverage other standards when possible. Look for technologies that useWeb Services standards such as SOAP, WSDL, and XML. These architectures will be easier to integrate with your existing environments andwill be more adaptable as new technologies and standards evolve.● Scalability—The underlying server technology must support theperformance and scalability requirements of business users who expectfast responses to their business questions. Look for vendors that have– 80 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“As Nielsen has grown and acquiredother companies, we’ve collectedquite a portfolio of technologies,”says John Boyer. “We have had specific initiatives to define convergence and consolidation plans. Theultimate goal is to have a single technology in each domain. Ourshort-term objective is to sunsetolder technologies and map them toa long-term solution. The BICC is involved in evaluating new technologies and creating solutions for gapsthat exist between requirements andthe tool.”distributed architectures where load balancing can be distributed acrossmultiple servers. It is best if they can support multiple environments.● Heterogeneous Data Access—Mostorganizations have many differentdata sources of many different types.Your BI standard should be able toaccess multiple heterogeneous datasources, including structured andnon-structured data.● Global Capability—A BI standardmust be deployable in the language ofthe users’ preference. Since most largecompanies have employees, customers,and suppliers all over the world, a BIsolution must be multilingual and multicurrency-capable and be able to supportdiverse compliance requirements.● Security—A BI standard shouldleverage and support your existingenterprise security. This means youdon’t have to duplicate or change the approach you’ve alreadyimplemented for information security.Portal integration is also important to consider; the BI standard should bedeployable in multiple portal technologies that might be in use in the company.What Drives ConsolidationWhile creating standards around software tools reduces costs and boosts ROI, italone can’t achieve the goals of the BI program. As organizations grow, theyaccumulate layers of information resources. The goal of achieving a strategicplatform of decision-support information may initially have been high on the priority list of the organization when transactional systems were implemented, but itoften becomes a secondary requirement as the actual systems are implemented.Consolidating those sources into repositories that contain common datasets—data warehouses—is the common step toward deriving a single version of thecompany’s state. But data warehouses themselves are often fragmented amongsilos based upon division-level or departmental requirements.– 81 –Standardization and Consolidation“It’s important for a successful BI organization to be ableto offer the ‘right’ tools to address the different needs ofbusiness intelligence users,”says Brian Green. “There’san old adage that says,‘When the only tool you haveis a hammer, everything is anail.’ Having a varied set oftools and solutions availablethrough the BI organizationhelps reduce toolset fragmentation in individual departments and divisions.”We feel the real goal for consolidation isto bring the individual BI initiatives themselves together to unite the BI developmentprojects with the overall requirements of theorganization. A successful BI initiative typically requires that a huge amount of effort bespent on data governance, including dataquality, modeling, integration, and transformation. Even the best BI tool in the industrycannot overcome issues of poor data governance alone. By consolidating these efforts,an organization will achieve important goals:● Lower the total cost of ownership● Allow users to spend less timereconciling data and more timeanalyzing information● Improve information consistency through use of master data and metadatastrategies and accompanying governance models, leading to betteranalyticsTCO is lowered by reducing the number of iterations of analysis that result inthe decision-support metadata: by orchestrating the BI initiatives, the upfront costis higher, but the number of projects in the portfolio will usually decrease. Thishelps to maximize the efficiency of personnel, increases the skill level across abroader set of users, opens the door for hardware and software consolidation, andoffers the potential for a more robust and strategic solution.The information resources that result from BI consolidation can be betterattuned to the goals of the stakeholders if several complementary BI initiativesare addressed in the analysis phase. This is one of the great benefits of the strategic BI program: it delivers a package of requirements to IT that can be morestandardized and more targeted to management’s goals. However, it must be recognized that addressing multiple stakeholders in a common BI initiative is tricky,given that usually only one stakeholder is considered the project sponsor. Havingthe ability to address other stakeholder needs is often the result of both awell-defined BI strategy—with a business alignment strategy and an– 82 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“When standard tools arenot funded at an enterpriselevel, it can cause a disincentive to use the standards,making the adoption of thestandard a difficult task topromote,” says Kay Van DeVanter. “The renewal ofnon-standard software licenses and the maintenanceof existing BI silos appears tothe individual project as aless expensive alternativethan revamping and movingeveryone to a standard.”organizational and behavioral strategy to support the technology strategy—andstrong top-down influence within the organization.The final result can be an information base that is more consistent and moreglobal to the corporation’s requirements, while still serving the needs of theemployees at the line-of-business level. We feel that analytics that result from aconsolidated BI initiative will better represent the “common version of truth” thatour stakeholders expect. This improved consistency also strengthens the users’confidence as they build their analytical models: it’s less likely that departmentsor divisions will battle over the data if thereis a defined common vision. Instead, moretime will be expended doing the work ofanalysis itself as opposed to reconciling differing reports.Finally, if done properly, consolidationcan greatly assist the speed by which business decisions are made. Less time will bespent acquiring the data from the varyingdata warehouses within individual silos,departments, or divisions. Instead, the information will flow more readily upward,toward the top, streamlining the acquisitionprocesses and forming a solid, common platform upon which our decision-makersoperate. Indeed, a well-developed data warehouse can be used as a source to developmarts to support business requirements.Matching User Roles and CapabilitiesWe believe a well-architected IT infrastructure must support the real-world analytic requirements of our users. Although an organization may have clean,consistent, timely data, if it doesn’t have the right set of tools that users are comfortable with and/or it doesn’t deploy the right methodologies to effectivelyaccess, analyze, and act on the data, then our BI infrastructure isn’t doing its job.Our organizations need a set of well-orchestrated information and analysiscomponents that provide a completely defensible view of the business. This iswhat enables a company’s ability to successfully compete and accurately forecast– 83 –Matching User Roles and Capabilities“In our recent BI Excellencestudy, 65 percent of surveyparticipants indicated theywere consolidating their BIand Performance Management systems within the nextsix months to five years,”says Tracy Harris. “In addition, 48 percent of organizations indicated they hadalready begun this processor already had enterprise-wide practices in thisarea.”for the future. So we believe therequirements for a well-architectedIT BI strategy should:● Support a Broad Set ofUsers—Whether it’s for theexecutives who expect anat-a-glance view at theirdesks or on the road or thebusiness analysts who needto create complex analysesand drill deep into the data,the BI capabilities should beable to support diversegroups of users operatingfrom a consistentinformation platform. Thatplatform should be available,engaging, and usable so thatdecision-makers will want towork with the data. It needsto be available from anywhere, in the way users want and need it. Therequirements of the various users must be taken into consideration:reporting, analysis, at-a-glance dashboards or scorecards, planning,advanced analytics, and other capabilities that are needed by a myriadof users.● Provide High Performance—Complex, data-rich reports can often causelong wait times for users who expect timely results in a fraction of asecond. And, as information volumes and users increase, BI teams needto plan for an infrastructure that can scale and continue to deliver highperformance.● Enable Action—Information is only as good as its ability to enableaction. By delivering event alerts, ensuring information is timely andusable and linked to other technologies such as forecasting and planning,or allowing access to information when mobile or in real-time, you ensurethat users can best act on the needs of the business in a timely way.To achieve this kind of IT BI architecture, we must have a thorough understanding of the business dynamics and the cultural dynamics.– 84 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“I’ve seen problems when the businessrequirements are based on a previoussolution,” says John Boyer. “You can’tforce a technology into someone else’sbox. It will fail. When you are replacing atechnology, revisit the business requirements from scratch. It’s a perfectopportunity to get closer to a better solution. Another problem that’s easy tofall into when gathering the business requirements is ‘solutioning.’ Even whenthe requirements are ‘It has to look exactly like X,’ the question is ‘Why?’What are the requirements behind it? Ifthe users can be flexible with the business requirements—or at least the wayit looks—you’ll be much further aheadin the end.”We can’t stress enough that our aim is to deliver the right tools to the rightpeople. Users need to access information according to their roles and businessneeds. It’s absolutely clear to us that a monolithic, “one size fits all” approachcannot deliver these elements from the IT BI architecture. As a result, we areconstantly tuning our IT infrastructure to provide the toolsets that deliver the bestsolutions within a context of standardizationand consolidation. The technology strategyneeds to plan for the right set of tools to satisfy the business requirements set out by thestrategy and must continue to evaluate newcapabilities throughout the program’slifecycle to continually meet the newdemands of the organization.Gaining IT EfficienciesWe’ve already discussed some of the technical and financial advantages of standardization and consolidation in terms ofreduced TCO and IT support. But we can take these thoughts a further step toidentify how those advantages can be translated directly into IT efficiencies.For instance, it is one thing to identify a set of requirements for standards andconsolidation but quite another to identify how to accomplish those requirementsin a comprehensive and structured manner. The task is particularly daunting fororganizations that are large and/or are experiencing rapid growth through acquisition of new companies. As user communities grow, so too does the demand formore ways to interact with the information through dashboards, customizedreports, and so on. These demands often result in the need for additional tools,training, and support.But the proliferation of BI tools can quickly become an overwhelming burdenfor IT, which has too many tools to manage and too many requests to service. Itcan also become confusing for the business user: Which tools should be used?Whose numbers are trustworthy? Often, the result is that business users revert toold tools and spreadsheets out of a sense of frustration. Standardization alsomeans that business processes have to change for people who are onnon-standard tools or are using manual processes for their reporting. The initialcosts to migrate to a standard platform can be daunting, and businesses might be– 85 –Gaining IT Efficiencies“The BI organization shouldhave an ongoing R&D mission to review and evaluatenew capabilities,” says BrianGreen. “This idea isn’t always easy to sell, particularlyin tough economic times.Nevertheless, planning forR&D as an ongoing effortreaps many rewards.”reluctant to fund an initiative that causes them “pain.” As we mentioned in Chapter 2, a strong leadership position, in both IT and the business, that is related tothe long-term benefits is paramount to the success of BI standardization.Fragmentation and ReversionAs the BI infrastructure of tools expands to meet the demands of users, it canaccidently create a dynamic that erodes the ability of the business users to successfully implement those tools. Why? Because users will have their ownpreferences, their own past training experiences, and their own criteria for usability. If there are too many BI tools, they will balk at learning another skill. Theymay reach for the tool they know the best.This dynamic then reduces the ROI of the BI tools and increases the TCO ofthe overall BI infrastructure. It results in diminishing returns, not only for IT butfor the organization as a whole. Users end up reverting to spreadsheets, information becomes more fragmented, additional time is spent reconciling silos ofinformation, and projects fail, raising costs for the entire organization.This dynamic of “toolset fragmentation/tool reversion” causes many projectsto fail, and these failures reduce the return on BI investments. As user populations stop using the tools provided by the BIstrategy, the overall TCO for the IT infrastructure rises. This demonstrates why thevarious business stakeholders need to beinvolved in the process of choosing the standards and need a strong consultation processin the business alignment and organizationaland behavioral strategy development. Manystandards might be chosen through the original use by business departments; it’simportant to the success of the strategy toapply the appropriate structure around them.IT and business stakeholders need a clearperspective on this dynamic and the way itimpacts the overall organization. IT is justone of several stakeholders in the BI framework that propels our organizations forward.If IT and the business can communicate how– 86 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“A lesson that we havelearned is IT needs to bemore efficient. Users arevery good at cranking out information in a spreadsheet,”says Kay Van De Vanter. “Ifthey are directed to use theBI tools for all of the information they require and thenthey are informed that all thedata is not available—andprovided an estimate of sixmonths or longer to acquireit—they walk away, find another solution, or build aspreadmart.”BI adds value to the overall organization, they are well on their way to justifyingthe investments in a standard set of BI tools and processes.Using the Business Value HierarchyAs previously mentioned, the Business Value Hierarchy is a good model to usewhen developing the technology strategy for the BI program. This hierarchy canserve as a framework whereby the different levels of value at different levels ofthe organization are considered and the means by which we communicate thosevalues is kept in mind.The first level of that hierarchy, as noted in Chapter 1, is IT efficiency. ITefficiency focuses on improving cost structures and improving the processesaround the IT business intelligence work activities.But we can’t simply focus on IT alone because IT is just one functional areawithin the organization. We have to look at business efficiency overall. And thisspecifically includes the opportunities to improve decision-making—opportunities that are made available by business intelligence.Once we can articulate the benefit that these business uses are going to realize, we can start talking about business effectiveness, which is at the top of thehierarchy and really focuses in on what these improved decision-making capabilities accomplish in our organization’s ability to achieve strategic goals andobjectives.The goals, for instance, might be improving net sales, decreasing cost structures, and increasing customer satisfaction. In other words, we have to rememberand understand that the whole reason for deploying business intelligence is forimproving and enhancing our organization’s ability to achieve these larger goalsand objectives. Therefore, as we spend our resources on addressing the problemsof data and toolset fragmentation—through standardization and consolidation—we need to look at the larger picture, beyond the costs of individual tools and thesilos of individual data warehouses. In other words, we have to aim for the goalsof overall business effectiveness while we are struggling with the TCO and ROIissues within IT itself. This realization expands the framework by which IT measures BI TCO and extends it to a larger corporate framework.– 87 –Gaining IT EfficienciesA Larger TCO FrameworkIt’s important to recognize that the fragmentation of BI toolsets creates a basicconundrum for TCO, and that conundrum is the hidden costs that impact everyBI project the organization undertakes. IT often looks only at licensing fees insetting the benchmarks for TCO, but this is actually a relativelysmall component of the overall, long-term BI spend. In reality, anupfront spend for enterprise licensing may actually reduce costs byremoving an analysis and negotiation phase from projects and mayhelp promote the standard.Many other bottom-line expenses are also associated with BI projects. For instance, on every project, significant costs are associated withhardware, software maintenance, internal and consulting labor, and the creationof processes and practices. Having to negotiate a licensing agreement on everyproject can be frustrating for both the IT department and the vendor and mayeven delay projects and make IT look “unorganized” to business partners. In thegraph reproduced in Figure 3.2, software license fees represent only 20 percent ofthe three-year TCO related to the implementation of any BI project.As discussed in the IBM white paper How to Reduce TCO and Increase ROIof Business Intelligence,3 we believe that if organizations can simplify,– 88 –CHAPTER 3: Technology StrategyFigure 3.2: Total cost of ownership.2standardize, and consolidate the BI architecture using a better framework, IT canaccomplish the following goals:1. Reduce complexity of deploying BI and increase deployment agility2. Cut the effort in meeting business requirements and deliver more efficient and effective BI projects3. Save time managing the BI solution and reduce TCOLeveraging Existing InvestmentsSome of us have had the experience—when discussing a consolidated BI infrastructure with the business users and IT—of justifying how the infrastructurerelates to ERP or other application systems. For instance, a senior-level executiveor an IT specialist might ask, “Why are you using a separate BI environment forthis? Can’t we do all of that through our ERP system?”Indeed, many application suites (e.g., CRM, ERP, SCM) do offer modulesthat address wide varieties of information needs with application extensionsdesigned to provide decision-support. And we often find ourselves using thesemodules to feed our data warehouses and BI environments.There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, as long as everyoneremembers that the particular underlying application system is probablytransactional by design: it records and documents decisions made at the transaction level, and it may not have been designed for BI specifically. There is often afair amount of confusion within the various application constituencies about thevalue of BI generally. The key is to communicate the larger vision of BI and toensure that the politics of or preferences for any particular toolset don’t overwhelm the goals of the BI infrastructure.In our experience, particular IT areas or application suite constituents—thosewho are partial to one application—usually come on board when they comprehend the larger BI information issues. What they need to understand is that we’rebuilding the BI infrastructure to leverage the work they are accomplishing withtheir particular application suite.So what are the arguments for leveraging existing application suites?– 89 –Leveraging Existing InvestmentsLeveraging Existing SuitesIn our environments, the business models for the overall corporations—and thestrategic planning associated with those models—often far exceed the limitationsof the various application suites that have been deployed. While the tools areoften good for line-of-business decision-support—for the particular user area orthe division—they require quite a bitof configuration to become flexibleand agile enough for the uses of thelarger corporation.Moreover, if our IT departmentsare supporting multiple applicationenvironments across multiple divisions (in some cases, even down tothe lowest operational level), the complexity of maintenance becomes extremeand burdens IT with high levels of sustaining support costs. Meanwhile, the complexity slows the organization’s ability to respond to changes in the overallbusiness model. It also increases complexity at the transaction level and confusesthe “consistent view” of the data across the larger organization.We feel that the better overall solution is to architect a comprehensive Business Intelligence Information Platform—one that provides a common businessmodel—that sits above the diverse divisions and transactional applications andreaches across the entire organization (Figure 3.3). This common business modelis the official repository of the common view of data. It responds to the transactions that arrive from various solutions (e.g., CRM, ERP, SCM) but is not heldcaptive by the processes that create the transactions.– 90 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“We need to be aware of the ‘ivorytower’ views of separate groups thatare managing architecture in case theyget too far away from real needs,” saysKay Van De Vanter.Figure 3.3: Business Intelligence Information Platform.In other words, we want to actively leverage the transactional systems to feedour BI architecture and obtain a common business model. This leverage retainsIT’s—and the business communities’—ability to run the line-of-business applications by handing off the decision-support data to the BI Information Platform.This also permits the overall organization to build the upper-level decisionsupport environment without requiring lower-level decision areas to scrap orrebuild their transactional systems.It’s not necessary to try designing these models from scratch. Many excellentmodels and blueprints are available from both software and ERP vendors as wellas independent or specialist data warehouse organizations.Delivering the Information PlatformThe goal of a “common view of the data”—the common business model—satisfies many of the information challenges in our BI systems.Without this common repository of information—consistent among all decision areas—the difficulty in developing real performance management metricsbecomes exceedingly problematic. On the other hand, achieving the architecturethat connects the variety of systems together into a cohesive repository is equallydaunting. The technical complexity is a monumental undertaking.● How does IT ensure a complete view of all information in support ofcurrent and future business needs?● How does IT build confidence in the data and ensure that everyone usesthe same view of data across the organization?● How does IT scale to support mission-critical deployments and minimizestrain on IT?● How does IT gain value from existing investments with the flexibility torespond to new business demands?What we have learned in our experience is that a solid technical platform isrequired. Without it, it’s difficult to ensure long-term success with a BI initiative.However, with the right information architecture in place, the solution canchange and grow as the organization’s needs evolve—including new capabilities,new users, new data sources, new technology environments—all without addingextra burden on IT.– 91 –Delivering the Information PlatformHere are some of the elements of what we believe are key to this informationplatform:● A platform that can reach all the information reliably and in a timelyfashion with a roadmap that identifies all the data sources, not just themajor transactional systems (when the BI platform is missing critical data,its use will decrease)● A complete, consistent view of information in terms that businessunderstands, owns, and trusts, which requires active involvement of thebusiness to help define the terms and definitions● A system management capability to confidently deploy, manage, and scalethe infrastructure while achieving on-time service commitments● An architecture that is flexible and resilient for integrating third-partysolutionsOpen Data AccessWe believe that providing flexibility and optimized access to data is a keyrequirement of the architecture. We see the need for an architectural layer thatsits above data sources and transactional application suites, enabling the transformation of the underlying data into the common business model (Figure 3.4). Anopen data access layer permits the underlying applications to feed the data intothe model, using ETL, caching, or direct updates.There are a host of advantages in building the BI architecture in this manner:● Broad Information Reach—Data professionals can gain access to datawherever it resides using published interfaces across transaction systems;– 92 –CHAPTER 3: Technology StrategyFigure 3.4: The Common Business Model with open data access.warehouses (relational and OLAP); flat, legacy, third-party integrationtools; single query engine (SQL and MDX); or modern sources.● Flexible Data Sourcing—Analysts have a choice of data-sourcingstrategies—from ETL to Enterprise Information Integration (EII) to directsourcing.● Single Query Service—Data professionals can be assured of consistentand predictable queries across all data sources (OLAP and relational).Consistent Business InformationConsistency in information is an issue for many organizations. Variationsdevelop across the business through acquisitions, consolidation, and expansion.Business users need to be involved in defining a common set of definitions, business rules, and calculations across the business units. This daunting task canderail a common BI platform by delaying deployments and increasing costs aseach area argues for its interpretation. This links back to the strong businessalignment and organizational strategy in which an agreed-to roadmap and buy-infrom the business is achieved. Organizations need to start with smaller subjectareas that have more consistency across divisions. Showing off their success andcapabilities to sell it to the next subject area for implementation is critical. Wehave seen that the “big bang” theory for this activity takes too long and usuallyfails.However, if done correctly in a series of successes over time, this approachenables the following advantages:● Consistent Information—Providing information users will be able totrust in order to adopt the solution. Consistency ensures everyone in theorganization is working with the same information across all BIcapabilities.● Common Business Model—Data modelers can apply consistent businessrules, dimensions, and calculations to data, regardless of its source.● Model Once, Package for Many—Data modelers can build one modeland deliver information in digestible-sized subsets for specific usercommunities. The users receive only the information relevant to them andare not overwhelmed.● Data Security—Security can apply to users or groups all the way down togranular row and column security. Data governance can be sustained.– 93 –Delivering the Information PlatformFinally, data modelers can respond quickly to the varied business demands forspecific views of data without compromising the enterprise IT model or makingthe user wait.This architecture allows IT to iterate quickly to respond to one-off businessdemands. It also means IT can create combinations of data unique to the businessneed and ensure that the business continues to use the enterprise model as itssource of information.Information GovernanceAs our BI information infrastructures have matured, one of the critical tasks thatour BI teams have supported has been information governance. The way information is governed in an organization is critical to the success of the BIprogram—whether the BI team is actively involved in the governance processor is supporting the information governance team.With the silos of data that exist inorganizations, there is often littlecross-functional collaboration. Manyorganizations do not have formalizedinformation governance and stewardshipstructures, with defined roles and responsibilities that we believe are critical to aBI infrastructure. There is a high price toimproperly governed data: it can lead tobad decisions, missed opportunities, andincreased risk for an organization. Inmany organizations today, governanceprograms tend to focus on the IT side ofthe governance equation rather than onthe way the business manages its information (e.g., the ERP system sent 250Krecords and the data warehouse received250K records). In addition, many decisions are made on data outside the sanctioned systems (such as employeemaintained databases, spreadmarts, or non-authoritative systems). Many systemshave duplicate, stale, and inconsistent data, and there are few policies establishedto manage the information. And, when controls are put on the information, they– 94 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“Data governance is an important but oft-overlooked pillar ofthe BI strategy,” says Bill Frank.“People may not realize how important data governance (including the establishment of itemssuch as metadata and semantics) is to the entire project.‘What is this?’ ‘How is this calculated?’ ‘What are the objects inmy solution? ‘Where are theycoming from?’ Answering thesequestions is one key to creatingbusiness confidence in theinformation.”are often counter-productive to thebusiness needs, creating a cycle formore non-authoritative systems beingproduced in the business.And while pockets of governanceexcellence may exist within organizations, there is typically no enterprisewide approach. However, a properinformation governance strategy canprovide rigor and discipline to the process of managing, using, improving,and protecting organizational information. The information governance teamneeds to be brought into the equation toensure the success of the BI initiative.Whether the BI program helps to support or manage the informationgovernance initiative, alignment and astrong partnership with those who manage these processes is critical.Gaining Confidence in InformationYet another key challenge in the development of the technology infrastructure inrelation to the information management is in the confidence in the informationthat is provided. While that is a core component of information governance overall, the inability to access, trust, or understand information may not only disruptthe decision-making process but also hinder overall user adoption of a BI initiative. How many times is the BI tool blamed for the information it uncovers in theorganization? This again demonstrates the importance of critical alignmentbetween the business suppliers of the information and the teams that manage andgovern that information. And an organization can consolidate its informationinfrastructures only if users have bought into the strategy and aligned withconfidence.If users fully understand the meaning, the source, and the context of the information within a given report or analysis and they trust the numbers they see, theywill use that information to make business decisions.– 95 –Gaining Confidence in Information“It is desirable to establish a formal data governance team withwell-established roles and responsibilities using Six Sigmaprocesses,” says Bill Frank.“This will span business contentand IT content encompassingmaster, dimensional, andmetadata. Similar struggles occur in technology standards andarchitecture governance. Governance is always evolving and is akey to success. Without governance across all components ofthe BI, there is a risk of failure tothe entire BI program.”From our perspective, improving confidence in the data is crucial not only tothe success of our BI and performance management investments, but to the success of our overall organization. This is where metadata becomes invaluable.Metadata tools must be integrated into the overall BI architecture. Many vendorssupport this capability, and some provide the ability for end users to manage orcontribute to metadata management. These are important considerations that ITteams tend to overlook when selecting a tool.As mentioned in the IBM white paper Improving Confidence by IncreasingUnderstanding in Information,4 providing business confidence in informationoften relies on the following three areas:● Understanding—Users need to understand what the data means andwhere it came from in their reports and analysis. This usually involvesunderstanding the definitions around the data and the lineage of where itcame from.● Trust—Users need to be confident that the information is correct and canbe trusted. This usually involves data integration capabilities such asprofiling, cleansing, and de-duplication.● Relevance—Users need unencumbered access to data based on securityentitlements. They need to be able to quickly gather all the informationthat is relevant to their view of the world. Dimension management is anexample of a technology that can provide relevancy to users.We believe that organizations with this baseline of data management maturitywill get better value from their BI systems. They are also more likely to outperform organizations less mature in data management. So building confidence is akey requirement for our BI initiatives.– 96 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“Shared stewardship between business and IT in these areas is vitally important,” says Brian Green. “The business steward detailshow the data is used in specific business processes and decision-making, while IT has the responsibility of understanding howthat data can be properly integrated and optimized.”Deployment ConsiderationsAs our organizations have grown and embraced BI technologies, we’ve all beenfaced with the need for a variety of deployment options for our BI infrastructure.And, as the needs in our organizations have grown or as technology has changed,these decisions have had to be reviewed, evaluated, and considered in the technology strategy to ensure the business needs are met. Bringing those options intoa strategic decision framework has been one of the most important tasks that ourIT organizations have encountered, and their solutions—though varied androbust—have a number of things in common.First of all, our organizations needed a BI platform that could be confidentlydeployed and would perform with predictability. Technical complexity of the BItools and resource constraints within IT could potentially limit the ease and speedof our BI projects rollout, and unless the IT organization chooses deploymentsolutions that are resilient, future maintenance costs or change management complications could quickly soar.We knew there were important potential issues that IT needed to consider:users without access, users with access to the wrong information, poor performance, random system crashes. All these potential issues could shake theconfidence of the user community and destroy its willingness to adopt the BIsystems.These are some of the IT technical requirements that needed to be addressed:● Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)—Some of our IT organizations hadSLAs with the business side of the organization. This meant our ITorganizations needed to know that they could trust the technology solutionbeing deployed and that downtime and poor performance weren’t going tonegatively impact the users.● Change Management—IT wanted a means to streamline the process ofassessing the impact that future proposed changes might have, as well as aconsistent way to introduce the change as upgrades became available.● Security Transparency—IT wanted solutions that would meet thehighest security standards and leverage existing security standards thatwere already in place.● Performance and Scalability—IT wanted a BI system to meet rigorousscalability requirements, so that as the organization grew it would have a– 97 –Deployment Considerationsvariety of future potential deployment options that could meet the needs ofgrowth.Deployment ParadigmsOf course, the technical requirements of our IT organizations have become animportant part of our BI standard processes, and as various technology deployment paradigms have advanced, our responsibilities have been to becomeadvisors to and partners with IT to resolve and chart direction.At present, there are essentially four BI deployment paradigms available toorganizations of our size and complexity (Figure 3.5). While some are more commonly used today, various options are available, including these:● Enterprise software deployment● Virtualization● Optimized business system deployment● Cloud computingLet’s examine what each of these paradigms offers to our organizations.Enterprise Software DeploymentThe value of deploying the BI environment using our existing enterprise systems permits us to leverage our current IT infrastructure and mesh thedeployment of BI with IT’s current strategies. It permits IT to plan for future– 98 –CHAPTER 3: Technology StrategyFigure 3.5: BI deployment paradigms.expansion and cost-effectively scale the deployment as our user communitiesgrow. It’s the natural first level of deployment for our organizations, as IT is ableto integrate the BI platform with the existing heterogeneous hardware platforms,security, portals, and Web environments.Most of our organizations have started out with precisely this paradigm ofdeployment.VirtualizationOur organizations are well aware of the value of virtualization: it holds the promise of scalability, flexibility, and improved systems management as our usercommunities grow. And the opportunity to lower capital requirements and costshas been alluring. Some of our organizations are still in the evaluation phases inconsidering virtualization technologies, and some of our IT organizations havebegun making modest investments.Optimized Business SystemAnother BI deployment option is the optimized business system, which deliverspackaged BI components on a preconfigured hardware platform. Optimized business systems promise to accelerate the deployment of the BI solutions with a“turnkey” kind of environment that doesn’t require high levels of IT expertise.This paradigm offers flexibility and extensibility for analytics software, as wellas adaptability to meet initial requirements while positioning for future growth indata and users.Cloud ComputingThe final deployment paradigm that some organizations are considering is thecloud. This option places the BI applications on a shared network across theenterprise. It lowers the cost and increases the productivity by provisioning BI asa service while maintaining corporate governance and control.Choosing the Right Deployment OptionHow an organization chooses a BI deployment option is a reflection of IT’slong-term strategy balanced against the immediate needs of the organization topursue a BI agenda. Table 3.1 summarizes the pros and cons associated with eachoption.– 99 –Deployment Considerations Table 3.1: Comparison of Deployment OptionsDeployment OptionProsConsEnterprise softwaredeployment• Flexibility• Integration to existingservices• Control• Longer initial implementation• Potentially less resilient toimmediate changeVirtualization• Maximized resources• Reduced costs• Technical requirements• Customized environments(e.g., not possible)Optimized businesssystem• Quick deployment• Controlled ROI• Less flexible than enterprisesoftware or virtualizationoptionsCloud computing• Lower cost• Increased productivity• Increased risk of securityexposure• Limited integration The deployment option that is right for your organization may also depend onyour organization’s level of maturity and the complexity of the environment youcurrently support—and it could changeover time. In addition, an organizationmay choose a mix of deployment optionsdepending on the use, such as a sandboxenvironment in the cloud with the production environment on the enterprisedeployment. The most important advicewe can offer is to position the BI infrastructure so that future deploymentchoices are not limited. Deployment paradigm options are important to ensurethat the investment in the BI architecturedoes not become bottlenecked in a technology with a limited future. At the sametime, options that meet the specific strategic needs of the corporation today butare flexible to the changing technologicallandscape of tomorrow, will provide anexcellent IT investment strategy foryears to come.– 100 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy“With each deployment type,there are challenges that need tobe understood,” says JohnBoyer. “For example, when moving to a virtualized environment,you may first evaluate the capacity you need by checking existinghardware utilization. Don’t makethe mistake of looking only at theaverage CPU usage of the existingboxes and size from that. It islikely that the average CPU usagedoes not take into considerationusage spikes. You need to knowthe maximum CPU usage of theexisting boxes, too, in order toplan the virtual environmentappropriately.”Processes for Change and DevelopmentTechnology changes can impact behavior and user adoption, and preparing fortechnology changes needs to be planned early in a technology strategy. Whilethese processes need to be considered in the organizational and behavioral strategy, they also need to be revisited in the technology strategy.Consider the following points when planning a technologystrategy:● Implementation of Standards—The “big bang” approachrarely works. Consider migrating and sunsetting technologies over time in planning with business partners. Inaddition, provide incentives to business areas to buy into theprogram—with corporate-funded license costs, support for standardsystems, and services to help them on-board—so that the reasons tomigrate to standards become more compelling.● Testing—Ensuring that a technology, a new report, or a new upgrade isstable and delivers the right approach for business users is extremelyimportant in order to achieve user adoption and buy-in. The trust of theproject is at risk if an hourglass turns too long, a report delivers the wronginformation, or a new technology produces errors.● Requirements—Ensure that processes for new requests are in place andthat teams can understand how to easily ask for the support they need.Processes that are too long, cumbersome, or ill-defined will deter usersfrom engaging.● Roadmaps—Ensuring that stakeholders understand and are consulted onshort- and long-term vision is important. Be transparent in planning, anddeliver lead times to teams before embarking on changes. Understandingthe plan and vision are important to maintaining buy-in. A roadmap thatdelivers timing, expectations, and strong communication on the steps willhelp to engage the various partners that are needed.Recognize that clear processes are key to a successful technology approach.Change can be difficult and can impact the ability to achieve the envisionedgoals. Clear communication and planning will help to avoid many common pitfalls that are encountered in technology initiatives.– 101 –Processes for Change and DevelopmentDelivering a Successful Technology StrategyTechnology delivers the innovation needed to improve business outcomes. However, delivering a technology strategy that meets the business needs can becomplex and wrought with challenges. Business Intelligence is a technology thatcan touch every area of the business, and it is interconnected with various technologies that can hinder or improve its success.A successful BI technology strategy needs to be broad and must have the ability to adapt and change over time as new innovations enter the market or asbusiness needs change. During planning, consideration must be given to the various business stakeholders—and to the various IT stakeholders—who will helpincrease the success of the BI program.By understanding the business alignment strategy that will help to effectivelyexecute on the business goals as well as the organizational and behavioral strategy that is needed to improve stakeholder alignment, a technology strategy canbe delivered to achieve BI excellence.Checklist of Recommended ApproachesAssess the current technology environment in your organization. Seewhere success has already been achieved, and identify best practices thatare already in place. Set goals for the information technology initiativeand determine how it can be achieved in incremental successes.Determine the set of stakeholders that need to be involved in theinitiative, the core technologies that are needed for BI, and the additionaltechnologies that extend, leverage, or support the BI initiative. Thesetypically include the core BI tools—reporting, analysis, dashboards,scorecards—as well as planning, financial performance management,advanced analytics, and information management tools that can helpdeliver success.Understand how your business alignment strategy affects the capabilitiesthat are needed in your technology strategy; a technology is an enabler ofthe business and needs to support these requirements. Demonstrate how aset of standards and the consolidation of BI initiatives will provide valueto the users—in terms they understand. Articulate the benefits in terms ofIT efficiencies, business efficiencies, and business effectiveness.– 102 –CHAPTER 3: Technology StrategyDefine the standards in the various BI domains that will provide thebroadest range of capabilities for your platform, recognizing thatdifferent tools are needed for different users. Consider the users whoneed to use the system and the ways they need to use it (what their jobsand roles are). Align and engage these user communities to helpdetermine the standards.Plan how the BI platform can support the delivery of information to yourusers with the consistency of information as the key. Ensure that theneeded information can be accessed in a consistent way. Consider howthe platform can scale as user communities grow, how the right level ofsecurity can be applied, how it can remain open and agile, and how itwill integrate with the technologies needed today and tomorrow.Understand the governance approaches that currently exist in theorganization, and determine the role that the BI program can play.Engage your information governance specialists and support and alignwith those teams.Consider the various areas of information management that will affectuser confidence in the information, and ensure that a strong partnershipwith those teams is created.Consider your deployment options to ensure you can meet future needs,and do not limit yourself for future ability to execute.Remain open in communication. Consult teams about the roadmap andvision, and remain transparent in that vision. Develop a process formanaging upgrades and changes and rolling out new initiatives. Considerthe ways that delivery of new information and technology changes canimpact teams.Determine a plan to remain agile, to introduce new technologies, and toremain innovative and competitive with the solution. Recognize thatconstantly changing standards can fragment a successful program butthat standards need to be continually evaluated over time to allow forinnovation and growth.– 103 –Checklist of Recommended Approaches Technology Strategy OverviewStandardization and ConsolidationWhy are you considering standardization? What are the benefits (articulated in ITefficiencies, business efficiencies, and business effectiveness)?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Standards ManagementWhat team will manage the standard? What are your recommendations for thestandards that the BI team will manage? Why is each standard recommended? Whatfunding model will support the standards? What standards will the BI teamsupport/advise/consult with (e.g., financial performance management, informationmanagement, advanced analytics)? What process will you have in place for evaluatingstandards and introducing new standards? How will you remain agile in deliveringagainst the needs of the business?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________User CapabilitiesBased on the business alignment strategy, which users require access to BI tools? Whatis the requirement based on the need, and what tools do they need based on their jobrole? What interactivity level is needed? Are there access needs to be met (e.g.,Web-based, mobile, offline)?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Total Cost of OwnershipHow do you expect to improve total cost of ownership with the chosen solution? Howcan you improve efficiency and cost across technology choices—from a softwarelicense, hardware, services, training, consulting, and productivity perspective? How willyou leverage existing investments? What additional value will be achieved for theseexisting investments?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________BI PlatformWhat requirements do you have for your BI platform? What information sources do youneed to access? How do you plan to manage information? What requirements are therefor security? What scalability and performance requirements will you have over time?How can you ensure agility in meeting the needs of the business?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 104 –CHAPTER 3: Technology Strategy Overview Technology Strategy OverviewInformation ManagementWhat information management technologies do you have in place? How will you provideconfidence in information from an understanding, trust, and reach perspective? Whatwarehousing strategy underpins your BI strategy? What teams are responsible for theseareas, and how do you engage?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Information GovernanceWhat information governance initiatives are taking place in your organization? How willthe BI strategy interact with and support these governance initiatives? Whatstakeholders and communication vehicles are in place to support these strategies?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Deployment OptionsWhat deployment options exist in your organization? What deployment options arebeing considered? How will you evaluate new deployment options as they becomeavailable? How can you anticipate future needs for additional infrastructure options asdemand grows?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________InnovationHow do you plan to continually evolve your strategy as technology evolves? Whatmechanisms do you have in place to monitor new technology needs and changes? Howcan you test new innovations and evaluate their value? What is your roadmap over timeto introduce new upgrades or solutions in the short and long term?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Measuring SuccessWhat benchmarks will you put in place over time to assess success? How will youmeasure success in terms of IT efficiency, business efficiency, and businesseffectiveness?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ – 105 –Technology Strategy Overview SummaryThe Journey to BI ExcellenceEach of us recognizes that our journey to achieve excellence in business intelligence is still progressing, and that we are still adapting to the uniquechallenges faced by our organizations. We see our journey not as asingle-threaded path toward a monolithic solution but as a strategy that willevolve over time and change as technology changes. We need to remain agile andto change with the needs of the business. It is a strategic endeavor to enable ourorganizations to link strategy to execution—to find new opportunities, respond tochange, and help make smarter decisions. With a clear vision and awell-thought-out approach, we can better meet the current and future needs of theorganization as a whole.By connecting BI more closely to the goals of the organization and aligning tothe business strategy—thereby improving business effectiveness—we can helpour teams work toward the goals that matter to the organization as a whole.That’s where our business alignment strategy starts. Consistent alignment andintegration of an organization’s data, within the context of the business strategy,leverages the basic elements of data analysis into realistic business measurementsand metrics—using KPIs, dashboards, and other such tools. These consistentmetrics are the bricks that will help pave the way to new successes for theorganization.– 107 –Interest starts to pick up incrementallyafter a series of initial wins in servicing theneeds of a few key stakeholders. Inspiringenthusiasm for the larger goals of the organization and creating an organizational andbehavioral approach that will improve collaboration and productivity can result inbusiness efficiency.While many areas that have separate silosof information might be executing pretty wellon day-to-day strategies, many may be distracting from or aligning poorly with thegoals of the larger organization and its long-term strategy. We’ve demonstrated,using what we call an organizational and behavioral strategy, how we’veapproached these problems. Although there may be differences with each of ourapproaches, there are also many common elements that we see as being effective.It starts with assessing the culture of the organization, identifying the politicalstructure, understanding the perspectives of key stakeholders, and then seekingthe ways and means to bring about the needed support.Finding key stakeholders who want to champion the vision of a comprehensive BI system is clearly important. The creation of a competency center—calledby many different names and existing in many different forms within our separate companies—can help define the mission, the goals, and the scope of theoverall BI vision. It’s a key mechanism in changing how our companies approachthe issues and requirements of BI. This BICC—consisting of both IT and business users—charts the path and measures the progress along the path to BIexcellence.There are likely several people in your IT and business areas who truly understand how BI can make a difference, and it is important to assemble them in theseinformal or formal groups. If you are one of them, take a lead: set up meetingsfor vendors to showcase their offerings, for your internal teams to present theirsuccesses, and to reach out to senior management and executives. You may besurprised at how receptive they will be.Finally, driving continual innovation and IT efficiencies through a comprehensive technology strategy that includes standards, consolidation, andgovernance can translate into better results with a lower total cost of ownership– 108 –Summary: The Journey to BI Excellence“Project teams must acknowledge that some decisions may need to be madefor the greater good of theenterprise rather than benefiting a single project,” saysJohn Boyer. “This is especially true when attemptingto converge multiple streamsto a single technology.”for the entire IT infrastructure and a better return on investment. Our processes ofestablishing standards aren’t aimed at providing the “one size fits all” solution.Instead, using the collaborative approach of the BICC to study and devise desiredstandards, we approach each user request for particular tools or reports from anadvisory perspective. Based on the organization’s needs, we offer a span of standard capabilities that we feel will achieve the desired results at the mostappropriate cost, delivering the greatest efficiency.In other words, our IT technology strategy is not to replace all tools in one initiative, but to deliver the best possible information that is appropriate to ourenvironments. As we work on this strategy, we’re mindful of the modes of delivery that our various users require, and we try to position our infrastructurethrough a variety of deployment modalities. We also keep an active eye on thecompetitive horizon for new, innovative capabilities.Our concept is to construct a BI technology platform that is representative of ourorganizations’ needs—a platform that isbroad enough to meet the challenges of ourcomplex enterprises. As this platformmatures and evolves, it is being guided by thecollaboration of the members of both business and IT. This technology strategy doesn’tpresuppose IT domination in the decisionmaking; instead, it recognizes that there isboth a demand side (business) and a supplyside (IT) to the requirements of BI excellence. However, it is IT’s responsibility toproactively communicate the capabilities andgovern the use of the BI tools and platform.A Framework for ChoiceWorking in our different enterprise-level organizations, across a variety of industries and market sectors, we have attempted to distill our real-world BIexperiences into this strategy framework so that others might achieve similar BIsuccesses. We’ve demonstrated the impact of three separate strategies to achieveexcellence in BI:– 109 –A Framework for Choice“We find that the businessrequirements are constantlystretching the limits of technology,” says John Boyer.“For example, in order tomeet service-level objectivesfor performance to the enduser, we have had to bringtogether the brightest mindsacross IT—in networking, database, BI, and security.”● A business alignment strategy by which the goals of the organization arealigned with business priorities and delivered in high-value wins that linkclosely to business effectiveness● An organizational and behavioral strategy by which the culture andbehavior of the organization can be fine-tuned to increase businessefficiencies● A technology strategy that can deliver IT efficiencies with aninfrastructure to enable the organization in its quest for BI excellenceWe believe this BI excellence strategy framework, which is depicted in FigureS.1, describes the best chance of arriving at a destination where these increasedlevels of business value of BI can be achieved. The three tiers of strategy don’tmap only one-to-one to the three value drivers—they in fact deliver value acrossall three—but there is definitely a stronger link to each level of value with a specific strategy area and a framework that provides focus in a strategy exercise.We have also been able to put forward some proven practices and tactics andhave provided lessons learned to enable a fast start to success. We offer all this asa potential blend of strategies and tactics that other organizations could replicate,adjust, and use at different times in their quest for BI excellence. It is obviousthat while each organization should consider all three levels of strategy, there isno silver bullet or single road to success. What is right for your organization willdepend on your existing level of maturity, culture, organizational structure, andvision. However, this book gives you the steps needed to craft a well-definedvision, with some solutions to overcome common challenges along the way.– 110 –Summary: The Journey to BI ExcellenceFigure S.1: BI excellence strategy framework.Measuring SuccessMeasuring the success of the BI strategy is potentially one of the most criticaltakeaways of this book. If nothing else, remember that you need to continuallybenchmark your efforts to ensure you understand where you started and the success you have achieved in your program. Measure against the goals and thebusiness case for each initiative to determine whether those goals are beingreached. Document the organization’s wins, and make sure they are compiled,archived, and publicized. We’ve learned that success measurement comes inmany forms: business effectiveness, business efficiency, and IT efficiency. However, in addition to measuring the overall initiative or focused projects against thebusiness value hierarchy, you need to measure each component of your strategyalong the way. For example:● BI Competency Center success● Training and communication program effectiveness● Business and IT alignment improvements● Customer satisfaction with the program● Technology innovation and architecture and infrastructure improvements(including licensing and service models)● Cost structure improvement and a move from lagging to leadingindicator-based analysisAlthough this can be a time-consuming endeavor, it is one that is worthwhile.Understand that this is also not a one-time initiative but a continual process. As goals areadjusted and new requirements formed, youneed to define and track new success measurements as well.The Future for BI ExcellenceWe believe that the current successes our companies are experiencing are linked to and supportedby our business intelligence systems and thestrategies that have enabled them. But we knowthat our tasks in BI are not finished. To be effective, they must continue to evolve.– 111 –Measuring Success“It’s important to regularlypublish updates to yourstrategy and measurements,” says Brian Green.“Doing so will help to reinforce, in the minds ofthe larger organization,who is part of the BI organization and what it does.”Industry analysts predict that the future of BI technology will be an era inwhich our current systems must radically and rapidly adapt to an integratedglobal marketplace. These analysts believe this future is one in which the use ofBI tools will be democratically expanded throughout the enterprise, empoweringdecision-makers at all levels of the organization. That is why a common view ofthe enterprise is becoming increasingly important. This requirement will continually spawn new and innovative tools that command this area over time.How can we position our organizations to embrace such a future? Where willadvances in technology lead us as information tools spread to every level andsegment of society? How can our organizations respond to the changes and challenges of this evolving, intra-connected, highly personalized, and data-intensiveglobal economy?We are already seeing the convergence of BI, advanced analytics, performance management, and information management tools and strategies. We arealso seeing social networking and collaboration being brought into the BI platform. Cloud computing, location intelligence, and new devices are all beingwatched by our teams to ensure we keep fresh with the changes to technologiesthat can be applied to a successful BI strategy. And each request by the businessis evaluated to ensure that as we create standards and consistent BI platforms, wealso evolve with the market and improve the technology infrastructure that powers business decisions.We believe that by positioning our corporations with the strategies of BIexcellence, evolving with the future is within reach. Instead of struggling toimplement BI within individual silos and maintain parallel systems, our challenges will instead be to innovate upon a fundamental platform and expand theaccess points of our enterprise-level BI infrastructures. Instead of laboring toachieve consensus between business users and IT departments, our collaborativestrategies will place us in the implementation lead, enabling us to embrace thenew technologies in a structured, cost-effective, and profitable way. Moreover, asour management continues to demand better results, higher rates of efficiency,and more cost-effective solutions, we trust we’ll be ready to meet those demandsrapidly, vigorously, and with the backing of our user base.That is, after all, the ultimate promise of BI excellence: to enable execution ofa more effective business strategy with the right technology, people, and processes in place. We hope this book is a practical guide to your future with BI andthat it helps you achieve a similar level of BI success and excellence.– 112 –Summary: The Journey to BI ExcellenceNotesIntroduction1. The New Voice of the CIO. Copyright IBM, 2009.2. “IBM Cognos Study.” Computerworld, March 2009.3. Pervasive Business Intelligence. TDWI, 3rd Quarter, 2008.4. Roland Mosimann, Patrick Mosimann, and Meg Dussault. ThePerformance Manager. Cognos, Inc., 2007.5. Roland Mosimann, Patrick Mosimann, and Meg Dussault. ThePerformance Manager. Cognos, Inc., 2007.Chapter 11. IBM Institute for Business Value. Breaking Away with BusinessAnalytics and Optimization. Copyright IBM, November 2009.2. “BI Excellence Study.” Copyright IBM, September 2010.3. Wikipedia, s.v. “Balanced scorecard,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard (accessed September 7, 2010).4. Wikipedia, s.v. “Six Sigma,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma(accessed September 7, 2010).– 113 –5. Wikipedia, s.v. “Total quality management,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_quality_management (accessed September 7, 2010).6. “BI Excellence Study.” Copyright IBM, September 2010.7. Richard Connelly, Robin McNeill, and Roland Mosimann.The Multidimensional Manager. Cognos, Inc., 1997.8. Roland Mosimann, Patrick Mosimann, and Meg Dussault.The Performance Manager. Cognos, Inc., 2007.9. Roland Mosimann, Patrick Mosimann, and Meg Dussault.The Performance Manager. Cognos, Inc., 2007.10. “Performance Management” presentation, Meg Dussault, October 2009.11. “IBM Cognos Study.” Computerworld, March 2009.Chapter 21. Cindi Howson. Successful BI Survey: Best Practices in BusinessIntelligence for Greater Business Impact. BIScorecard, November2009.2. Getting Executives on the BI Bandwagon. Copyright IBM, May 2009.3. J18 – ROI Evaluation Report: IBM Cognos Software. NucleusResearch, May 2009.4. Organization of Business Intelligence. Business ApplicationsResearch Center, August 2008.5. Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center, IBM,February 2009.6. Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center. IBM,February 2009.7. Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center. IBM,February 2009.8. Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center. IBM,February 2009.9. Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center. IBM,February 2009.– 114 –NotesChapter 31. Choosing a Standard for Business Intelligence: Simplify the ITEnvironment, Reduce Your TCO, and Increase Your ROI. CopyrightIBM, January 2009.2. Derek Lacks, “TCO Presentation.” Copyright IBM, 2010.3. How to Reduce TCO and Increase ROI of Business Intelligence.Copyright IBM, July 2010.4. Improving Confidence by Increasing Understanding in Information.Copyright IBM, May 2008.– 115 –Notes
