Implementing Strategic BI Initiatives

I stumbled upon a white paper, Business Intelligence Strategy: A Practical Guide for Achieving BI Excellence by Boyer, Frank, Green, Harris and Van De Vanter which is a perfect follow-up to my previous post, Business Intelligence in Healthcare.

Many organizations are struggling to implement strategic BI initiatives that can help improve enterprise-level access to the information needed to support business improvement. Unfortunately, many organizations have found themselves with silos of knowledge that are difficult to reconcile, complex to comprehend, and limited in their ability to provide the needed insight.

Why is there such a discrepancy between the needs of business and the ability to meet these needs with business intelligence (BI) initiatives? We believe the reasons are often because many implementations are treated solely 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 a
BI program is rolled out.

In other words, the obstacles to a successful BI implementation are not solely technological in nature; in fact, they are often societal within the organization itself. 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 in an organization. The projects that succeed are most often the result of a successful combination of people, process, and technology strategies because it is difficult to have a successful technology endeavor when the other ingredients are not present.

Businesses in all industries are having similar challenges as healthcare organizations with implementing BI. However, there’s one consistent theme cutting across all industrial boundaries, BI cannot be implemented in a silo.

To implement a BI initiative successfully requires an enterprise-wide approach. Divisional leaders must commit to working across divisional and functional lines, and provide SME resources to the BI project team. The SME’s must be able to understand their data, how it interoperates with other divisional data, and willing to champion BI to their respected division/area.

At least then, you will have the "people" ingredient referenced by Boyer, Frank, Green, Harris and Van De Vanter correct for achieving a successful BI implementation.