> Perhaps the first thing to consider when looking at what business intelligence can do for you is ROI.

IBM, which sells the popular Cognos BI suite, defines return on investment in terms of productivity. IBM solution specialist Mac Bryla says, typically, BI results in a 20 percent increase in productivity, in finance, and reporting and analysis.

However, there is a need to understand exactly what BI can do. To this end, Bryla detailed IBM’s “best-practice use of business intelligence, as a performance management tool” at its recent “Better Intelligence. Better Business” conference, where it also showcased its new Cognos Express package tailored for SMEs.

He outlined five tips for getting the most out of BI. But first, he says, you need to ask: what do we want to achieve?

Bryla says managing performance is at the heart of business intelligence, and you need to break this down into three sections: making money; costs, and support.

Sales, marketing and customer support are in the making money section; product development, operations and finance are in the cost sector; and IT and HR are in the support corner.

And performance management itself is a three-stage process, says Bryla. This starts with monitoring and measurement; then planning, based on the former two; and, finally, reporting and analysis.

“Everyone in IT has an understanding of these things, but they don’t have hard numbers,” he says.

What’s needed is to point the company in the right direction towards not only realising an ROI on its BI investment, but using it strategically to make the business more effective.

The aim is to get beyond the “no strategy, no organisation, no business case, internal politics impasse”, says Bryla, and also emphasise the people in putting business intelligence in place.

Five steps to BI nirvana
1) Prepare a BI and Performance Management strategy
First, identify your company’s top business objectives, and then, below this, list the priority business objectives of your various business units.

These could be, for example, price or customer satisfaction. In the case of the latter example, you might want to, say, monitor call centre information to determine customer satisfaction rates.

The point here is to ensure that strategy drives the BI solution chosen, and that PM is linked to business objectives, says Bryla.

This means you might ask people how they want their data, and how they want to access it.

Preferences can run the gamut, from sales people wanting to access data while on the road to people wanting it via the web or Microsoft Office. It also includes providing explanations around, for instance, profit. What does profit really mean? You could explain exactly how it is worked out, says Bryla.

2) Build a business case
This is a combination of maths and “selling the dream”. The basic question you will be asked is: how can we afford it? To successfully put the business case for BI, a close linkage between business objectives and technology leading to, say, the possibility of 30 percent growth is the way to do this, says Bryla.

Performance management also needs to be cross-departmental, providing visibility into, for instance, what are the highest performing products, or customer satisfaction levels or buying patterns.

Accordingly, your business case needs to demonstrate the following:

• Quantative and qualitative value

• How BI will provide visibility into what’s happened in the past, what’s happening now and what could happen in the future

• The business efficiency gains expected

• The core IT efficiency gains expected

• Qualify and quantify business performance now, and what it could be in the future

3) Navigate internal politics and culture
There are a myriad of reasons why people might not welcome the changes you are suggesting, says Bryla.

These can include being used to the current system or vendor loyalty – what we have now is 50 percent good, so why risk a change?

To overcome these and other objections you need to communicate, nay “evangelise”, your “standards-based solution”, says Bryla, emphasising the benefits to be gained.

In short, you need to present your business case to people generally, to promote understanding of it.

Although there is less friction between business and IT nowadays, as both are more savvy about each other, you nevertheless need executive buy-in to help you promote your case, says Bryla.

He suggests pointing to the company’s current BI solution and what it can do, and saying: we can do this company-wide.

But, be aware that some change management is involved, to overcome people’s fears. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get in there too, and emphasise the advantages.

Start by using ROI figures to sell people on what will be; then emphasise intangible benefits to show what could be, says Bryla.

“Sell the dream,” he says.

And he has a whole list of things BI can give the business that can help in doing this.

Beginning with:
• Dashboard accuracy – these will give you “true information”

• Visibility into the business – this will tell you what’s happening

• The ability to make changes quickly, as the information justifying them will be there

• Accountability

• Consistency (across the organisation)

• Profitability – i.e., better analysis, leading to better profits

• Possibility – analysis of what’s really going on opens up brand-new possibilities

• Better decision-making – no more “blind hope” decisions

4) Organise internally for success
An important element of pushing through this kind of BI update programme is setting up an internal Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC), says Bryla. Bigger companies often have people who do this as a full-time job, but smaller companies can emulate this by getting together a group of relevant people whose job is to then implement the new business intelligence strategy and solution.

What’s most important here, says Bryla, is that they have the power to enforce decisions, otherwise the implementation won’t happen.

5) Deliver a ‘whole solution’
A bits and pieces solution just doesn’t deliver the BI goods.

But what exactly is a whole solution?

Bryla defines it not in terms of technology or modules, but by what it does. A “whole solution” is:

• Reliable

• On time

• Provides a complete, consistent view of information

• Can be scaled up cost-effectively, as new users come on-board

• Can be adapted to the existing infrastructure

• Provides the right capability to the right people – C-level execs might just want a fancy dashboard they can drill in and out of quickly; while power users will want to be able to go in, and slice and dice data; operations will probably just want daily or weekly reports and some prompts.

> For more information, go to:
http://ibm.com/cognos/champion

9/12/21_ex_m_h

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