Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Make BI a Killer App

258 Pages·2008·4.62 MB·English

by  Howston C.

Successful
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Secrets to Making BI a Killer App
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DOI: 10.1036/0071498516
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For Norman
About the Author
Cindi Howson is the founder of BIScorecard®, a resource for in-depth
BI product reviews, and has 15 years of BI and management reporting
experience. She advises clients on BI strategy and tool selections, writes
and blogs for Intelligent Enterprise, and is an instructor for The Data
Warehousing Institute (TDWI). Prior to founding BIScorecard, Cindi
was a manager at Deloitte & Touche and a BI standards leader for a
Fortune 500 company. She has an MBA from Rice University. Contact
Cindi at [email protected].
About the Technical Editor
Elizabeth Newbould is the director of business intelligence at Dataspace,
Incorporated (www.dataspace.com), one of the United States’ foremost
data warehousing consultancies. Elizabeth has more than 15 years of
experience working with business intelligence and data warehousing
solutions. Her e-mail address is [email protected].
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Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments xi
1. Business Intelligence from the Business Side 1
Business Intelligence by Other Names 1
How Business Intelligence Provides Business Value 2
The Business Intelligence Market 7
Battle Scars 13
The Research 13
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 20
2. Techno Babble: Components of
a Business Intelligence Architecture 21
Operational and Source Systems 22
Data Transfer: From Operational to Data Warehouse 25
The Data Warehouse 28
Data Warehouse Tables 30
The Data Warehouse Technology Platform 33
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 34
3. The Business Intelligence Front-End 35
Business Query and Reporting 35
Production Reporting 39
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) 40
Microsoft Office 44
Dashboards 45
Scorecards 46
Performance Management 48
Analytic Applications 50
Emerging BI Modules 51
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 51
4. Measures of Success 53
Success and Business Impact 53
How to Measure Success 58
Return on Investment 59
Number of Users 61
v
vi Contents
Other Measures of Success 67
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 68
5. The LOFT Effect 71
The Role of Luck 71
Opportunity 75
Frustration 81
Threat 82
The Role of Time 85
If There Is No LOFT Effect,
Is Successful BI Still Possible? 86
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 87
6. Executive Support 89
Executive Support and Success 89
Which Executive Is the Best Sponsor? 91
Getting Executive Buy-In 95
The Role of an Executive Sponsor 97
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 98
7. D Is for Data 99
Data Quality 99
Successful Data Architectures 106
Master Data Management (MDM) 107
Right-Time Data 110
Data Quality’s Chicken and Egg 112
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 114
8. The Business-IT Partnership 115
Voices of Frustration 115
The Business-IT Yin-Yang 116
Meet the Hybrid Business-IT Person 119
How to Be a Better Partner 121
Alignment 123
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 125
9. Relevance 127
Relevance Brings Clearer Vision 128
Relevance Improves Patient Care 130
Relevance to Continental Gate Agents 133
The Role of Incentives 134
Personalization 135
Requirements-Driven BI 136
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 137
Contents vii
10. Agile Development 139
Waterfall Development Process 139
Agile Development Techniques 142
Sharper BI at 1-800 Contacts 147
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 148
11. Organizing for Success 149
Enterprise vs. Department BI 149
The BI Steering Committee 155
Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICC) 156
BICC Guiding Principles 158
BI Shake-Up at Corporate Express 159
BI Team Leaders as Level 5 Leaders 161
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 163
12. The Right BI Tool for the Right User 165
The Importance of BI Tools 167
The Role of BI Standardization 168
The Right Tool for the Right User 173
The Most Successful BI Module 180
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 182
13. Other Secrets to Success 183
The Role of Culture 183
Promoting Your BI Capabilities 188
Training 195
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Numbers 197
Best Practices for Successful Business Intelligence 198
14. The Future of Business Intelligence 199
Emerging Technologies 199
Predicting the Future 204
BI Search & Text Analytics 205
Advanced Visualization 208
Rich Reportlets 210
The Future Beyond Technology 211
Words of Wisdom 212
Appendix A: This Successful BI Survey 215
Appendix B: Recommended Resources 227
Notes 229
Index 237
Preface
Business intelligence consistently rates at the top of companies’ investment
priorities. Despite its priority, businesspeople routinely complain about
information overload on the one hand and the inability to get to relevant
data on the other. BI professionals complain about lack of executive sup-
port and business users who don’t “get” business intelligence. As a technol-
ogy, BI usage remains modest, with significant untapped potential.
A couple of “aha” moments led to my writing this book. After I spoke
at a business intelligence and performance management user conference,
an IT person stopped me to say how inspired he was, that he felt motivated
to talk more to the business users and less intimidated by them. In truth,
I hadn’t thought anything I said was all that inspirational, and it certainly
wasn’t new. And yet, I had forgotten how big a problem the IT-business
disconnect can be, particularly for BI, which lies at the crossroads
between business and technology. Shortly after, I read Jim Collins’s book,
Good to Great. In my spare time, I am not normally a reader of business
books, but I had heard Collins at another user conference and was curi-
ous. In reading this book about what leads some companies to outperform
others, it got me thinking about why some companies succeed with busi-
ness intelligence and others fail. At the same time that I was judging the
TDWI Best Practices awards—offering me previews of some who have
encountered wild success—I was working with a company who couldn’t
get their BI initiative off the ground. Neither the business stakeholders
nor the systems manager were convinced of its value. The information
technology (IT) department was creating customized, inflexible reports
directly in the source systems. An IT manager seemed to be the lone voice
advocating something better, but he was at a loss to articulate the value
of BI. These moments led to an article I wrote last summer for Intelligent
Enterprise, “The Seven Pillars of BI Success.” Initially appearing in
viii
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