![\"world-class-bi-banner\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/worldclassbibanner.jpg?resize=690%2C310&ssl=1\" "\\"world-class-bi-banner\\"")
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I was asked this question last week at an internal meeting for the BI teams of a large Nordic telecom company, who had invited me to do a presentation on BI trends. Here\u2019s my answer:<\/p>\n
\u201cA world-class BI organization is one that successfully changes the information CULTURE of the organization\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Business intelligence is about business and people, not information and technology. Information is useless<\/strong> unless you actually change something in the way your organization does business. And technology is useless<\/strong> unless it actually gets to the people who should be using it.<\/p>\n A truly successful BI program is one that not only provides value to the business with every project, but also inspires the company as a whole to push to the next level of information use.<\/p>\n I regularly present on the topic of best-practice BI, with topics like \u201cWhy BI Projects Fail and What to Do About It<\/a>\u201d, where I go through a long list of the BI problems I\u2019ve seen repeatedly over the last two decades. In this post, I\u2019ve extracted the top five that I think make the biggest difference in the long run:<\/p>\n If you\u2019re in charge of BI, your job is not providing a technical infrastructure, nor information, nor keeping internal customers happy \u2013 it\u2019s using information to improving the way the company works.<\/p>\n BI projects aren\u2019t delivered when you have built the data warehouse and started providing the reports to the business people \u2013 that\u2019s just the start of the real project of changing the business.<\/p>\n Yes, of course the business people think that\u2019s their <\/em>job, but it\u2019s the mindset that is important. Focusing on the end goal \u2013 even though you are not directly responsible for it \u2013 leads to the types of behavior that correlate to BI success:<\/p>\n As an example: somebody comes to you with a strong business need for better data, but the only way to achieve it is through manual information gathering and spreadsheets, and it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with your existing DW or BI infrastructure. Is it still part of your business? Yes! (note this doesn\u2019t mean that your team necessarily does the work).<\/p>\n You should be THE go-to person in the company that best understands both the business information needs and what\u2019s feasible. You should be a clearing-house for best-practice \u201cbetter run business through better information\u201d, using whatever means are necessary.<\/p>\n BI is a crucial interface between the tens of millions of dollars invested in your information systems over the years, and the people who are in a position to unleash some of the value in that investment.<\/p>\n Ultimately, BI projects never fail because of technology alone. Things go wrong all the time, of course, but it\u2019s only if non-technology factors like leadership and expectation setting have been neglected that a BI project truly fails.<\/p>\n There are myriad signs that indicate underinvestment in people: the intended audience is disappointed with the solution(and IT replies \u201cbut that\u2019s exactly what you asked us for!\u201d); user adoption is systematically under-funded, with little ongoing training; executives don\u2019t understand \u201cwhy it all seems so hard \u2013 I just want these numbers!\u201d; business teams end up downloading information into Excel because that\u2019s what they\u2019re used to; etc. etc.<\/p>\n If 75% of success is about people, why aren\u2019t we spending 75% of our time on it? If your job is world-class BI, you should be spending a lot more time listening, explaining, evangelizing, and leading than you do \u201cimplementing\u201d.<\/p>\n For example, the iPod wasn\u2019t the first MP3 player, it wasn\u2019t the most advanced, and it certainly wasn\u2019t the cheapest \u2013 but it was the simplest to use. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s the first MP3 player that most people ever heard of.<\/p>\n We design our BI implementations for our power users, and implement what they want \u2013 typically lots of complex data and \u201cfeatures\u201d. Apple designed something for everybody, but keeping the number of features deliberately, even artificially low.<\/p>\n I\u2019m convinced that Apple employed somebody whose job it was to say \u201cno\u201d: \u201cCan we add some more buttons?\u201d \u201cNo!\u201d \u201cCan we add search?\u201d \u201cNo!\u201d \u201cCustom playlists?\u201d \u201cNo!\u201d.<\/p>\n Once the iPod was a success, more features were slowly added, and it\u2019s a formula that Apple has repeated with newer devices like the iPhone and iPad \u2013 launching with fewer features than the competitors and aiming for volume first, and then extending.<\/p>\n The Web 2.0 world has followed a similar model: Facebook and Twitter did one simple thing well first, then built a community, then provided more features. Even video games follow this model. They start out easy: level one is about understanding the basic controls, and then you slowly build up skills level by level.<\/p>\n How does this apply to business intelligence? You should aim to roll out some simple analytic information to everybody in your organization \u2013 such as travel and expenses, or breakdown of mobile phone bills, or budget spending, or time management. And it should be incredibly simple to use \u2013 basic reports, with every fancy option turned off, and with no extra logon required.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve done this (and promoted it widely), you\u2019ll find that people soon come and ask for more information, other types of information, and more features. People get used to having information, their expectations get higher, and you\u2019ve started changing the information culture from the bottom up.<\/p>\n Unlike rolling out BI to power users, widespread information to everyone sets up a long-term virtuous spiral of people accessing, using, and demanding information.<\/p>\n It\u2019s notoriously hard to predict the return on investment on business intelligence projects, because \u201cyou don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know\u201d: having better information reveals new areas for improvement.<\/p>\n As a study by IDC showed<\/a>, the majority of BI benefits are typically in \u201cbusiness process enhancements\u201d which can be very hard to determine in advance.<\/p>\n By following #1 above, you\u2019ll have a better idea of what the business benefits of your project really are, and be able to take credit for them (Sadly, if a Marketing VP, say, improves campaign performance thanks to improved business intelligence, they don\u2019t often include a big \u2018thank you\u2019 to the IT organization when they tout their performance to the board)<\/p>\n But this can only take you so far. For all the insistence on \u201chard numbers,\u201d executives \u2013 like the rest of us \u2013 are surprisingly anecdote-driven. Just as charities know that focusing on the plight of one child<\/a> is more effective than a series of statistics, you need to be able to tell the stories<\/em> behind the numbers. You need to collect real-life examples of how your projects have helped individuals in the organization transform the way you do business.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the crucial test: if you suddenly find yourself in the elevator with the CEO of your organization, do you have a compelling, 30 second story to tell about how somebody spotted something in the data (a risk, an opportunity, a problem), and was able to act on it? If you don\u2019t, start researching how people are using the data you\u2019re providing. I guarantee you\u2019ll find a great story (and if you don\u2019t, then you really need to rethink the foundations of your BI initiative).<\/p>\n With twenty years of experience to draw on, it\u2019s not that the industry as a whole doesn\u2019t know what best-practice BI looks like. But it can be very hard to put into practice.<\/p>\n BI remains a stubbornly complex, hard-to-simplify technological and business problem. It takes time, the environment is ever-changing, and there are no real silver bullets or shortcuts. Every successful project I\u2019ve seen was the result of professionals doing the right incremental things day after day.<\/p>\n You have to roll with the punches and stay pragmatic. It\u2019s not about having a perfect data architecture (nobody will ever achieve this). It\u2019s about making endless iterative improvements, making the right painful tradeoffs, and picking yourself up after every business complaint.<\/p>\n If it helps, you should realize that while you only ever hear about the problems, business people do appreciate the power of the information that you\u2019re providing. For example:<\/p>\n Ultimately, the best way to change the information culture of the organization is to lead by example, and being a tireless advocate for better run businesses. Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A World-Class BI program is one that changes the information culture of the organization. Here are five steps to help get you there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[100,158,160,172,198,204,1149],"class_list":["post-12159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-practice","tag-analytics","tag-best-practice","tag-bi","tag-bicc","tag-business-analytics","tag-business-intelligence","tag-world-class"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3a7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Focus on Changing the Business<\/h3>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/image40.jpg?resize=312%2C292&ssl=1\" "\\"image\\"")
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2. Focus on People<\/h3>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/image310.jpg?resize=429%2C242&ssl=1\" "\\"image\\"")
The figures to the left came from a old IBM survey about IT in general, but ring especially true for business intelligence projects. We spend over 90% of our time on data and technology, while 75% of project success or failure depends on people, process, organization, culture, and leadership.<\/p>\n3. Provide Some Simple Data Access for Everyone<\/h3>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/image131.jpg?resize=258%2C211&ssl=1\" "\\"image\\"")
You must, of course, focus on the BI projects that provide the most value to your organization. But there\u2019s one thing we have to learn from the consumer world: the most effective way to build demand for your product or service is to provide something that\u2019s \u201ctoo simple\u201d, and then create a community around it.<\/p>\n4. Tell Stories<\/h3>\n
![\"storyteller\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/storyteller.jpg?resize=305%2C340&ssl=1\" "\\"storyteller\\"")
Obviously, people need to believe in the benefits of BI if you stand a chance of changing the culture of the organization.<\/p>\n5. Stick With It<\/h3>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/image221.jpg?resize=274%2C341&ssl=1\" "\\"image\\"")
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