common mistakes in business intelligence strategy

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In a recent study by Gartner, Inc., a leading IT research and advisory company, a list of disability strategy - or no strategy at all - as one of nine "serious mistake" in the Business Intelligence (BI) project implementation. A good BI strategy, on the other hand, is the key to a successful implementation, helping to maximize return on IT investment.

How do you know if your BI strategy was flawed? Here are seven signs - how many applied in your organization?

1. BI systems are not seen as relevant.
This often indicates a lack of consultation throughout the organization. This causes a lack of buy-ins, and potential users do not see what the BI system has to do with them. If the beneficiaries of the system is not involved in the design of these systems may not be successful if implemented. BI strategy, if any, not including the requirement to consult widely internally.

2. Seeking strategic advice from the vendor
An upper-dependence on software vendors that could cause conflicts of interest where the vendor siezes chance to get what they want (more sales) at the expense of what the organization needs (appropriate use of the software).

The most common example of this would be a solution where overselling OLAP cube reporting application will do a better job for users who are concerned. OLAP cubes provide the information summarized in the hierarchy, and there are many advantages to this, but the ease of reporting is not always one of them. In addition, the number of users for whom the appropriate OLAP cubes are almost always less than those who need a standard reporting applications.

3. Continuation of past
Doing things "like they always do" is the enemy of a good BI implementation. This can too often lead to attempts to cut the budget, and often result in inappropriate decisions, such as a report from a spreadsheet where what is needed is a fair assessment of delivery of BI tools that are available. The use of solutions that exist only because they're in place is a sure sign of flawed strategy, and is very important to be aware of the latest BI methodology and applications.

Changing the habits of a person is often not easy, and may require training, but a certain level of change needed if you want to maximize the benefits of BI for your organization.

4. Management of hot air balloons
When budgets start out of control, you start seeing a lot of pet projects thrown into the sea. This is what I call management by "hot-air balloon." Like a hot air balloon, remove the goods from the project makes a lot lighter and more buoyant. The problem is, this process also makes a lot of BI projects is less functional and effective.

The problem is, more often than not, failed to properly assess the project cost in the first place. Does the project have been split to start by making the cost more manageable? The message here is, better or less and give a promise, than promise the world and let people at home when reality hits the economy.

5. Information silos
A silo of information occurs when the data from one computer system can not communicate with each other. This is the kind of problems that the project Business Intelligence with a good strategic plan to identify and correct.

gross information is very costly to an organization because the benefits of hidden information within the organization to that part. This problem is usually solved by making the strategic decision to create and maintain a data warehouse. A data warehouse collates data from various places into a series of one or more''market data, in the process of reform and re-calculating the data to make it more useful for Business Intelligence.

6. Inaccurate metrics
Metric (I use that word as the BI vendors like Cognos IBM to use it) to monitor changes in the months in the performance and are often based on calculations of the various items of data. They can be inaccurate in several ways. For example, data can be entered incorrectly, or miscalculated because the metric is defined wrong. Or that his own calculations could be wrong. Often there is no single definition of metrics - a strategic mistake - or they may over-reliance on sources of data are inherently unstable, such as spreadsheets. This is a strategic mistake, because they can be overcome by policy decisions such as avoiding the spreadsheet input as possible and publish a dictionary metrics to the organization as a whole.

7. There is no sustainable development of BI systems.
Unlike, for example, accounting systems or CRM (customer relationship management) systems, Business Intelligence adds value to the system being reviewed and improved continuously. The project has a 'cycle' which involves the BI review your needs regularly. New metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) are found, these need to be added to the data warehouse and made available to appropriate managers. New data mart that is not within the scope of the original project may come on board in later stages.

Article Source:
Copyright 2008 Clive Margolis, at http://www.acestar.co.uk/
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