How to Implement a Successful Business Intelligence Platform

W. Edwards Deming (Engineer, Statistician, Professor, Author, Lecturer and Management Consultant) said, "In God we trust; all others bring data." With that quote in mind, I have often heard of a Gartner report that between 70% to 80% of Business Intelligence projects fail.  I usually stick with the mantra that "90% of all statistics are made up on the spot"; However, in my experience that statistic does not seem too far off.  I have dedicated my life and career to data and to business intelligence because there is so much power in the ability to back up words, ideas and thoughts with meaningful data and analytics.  I know how important data is to business and how much of a competitive advantage can be derived from knowing key indicators that drive the bottom line.

I can't speak to the complete accuracy of the notion that upwards of 80% of business intelligence projects fail but in my professional experience in having worked with hundreds of clients in their Business Intelligence endeavors, I can certainly attest to the fact that the failure rate is high.  There are several key factors that I have seen in my career as to why these projects either don't get off of the ground, lose momentum, fail to prove ROI or are simply rejected for various reasons in the end.  I certainly don't pretend to know all of the reasons why a project may fail and I can't list all of the pieces a project must have in order to be successful.  I have, however, identified 9 steps that have been beneficial both to me and to my clients as we have gone through the journey of BI.  Over the next several weeks, I'm going to expound on each of those 9 steps - why they are important and where the potential pitfalls are in each one of them.  As I go through this process, I welcome any feedback or thoughts that others can provide.  I want to reiterate, I don't pretend to be able to give the end all solution but I hope to provide some thought provoking insight into the world of Business Intelligence.

IDENTIFY KEY STAKEHOLDERS

The first step in creating a successful analytics program is identifying the key people who will be involved in both the project and the use of the application.  First is identifying the various types of stakeholders who may be involved. This could range from the Executive Sponsor (CEO, CMO, COO, etc…) to the Analytics Director or to the business analyst who is used to generating manual reports on a daily or weekly basis.

The importance of integrating Project Sponsors at the management level cannot be overstated.  Executive buyoff for the project is integral in the overall success of the project as clear expectations and common goals need to be made at this level.  It is also important to sell current capabilities when discussing the high prioritized items that are needed for quick wins and momentum gains within the first weeks of the project.  I have seen too often where future capabilities are sold without the ability to execute and it quickly derails the project, creates distrust in the relationship and removes the feeling of being a true partner to achieve common goals.

It is also important to understand what pieces of the project are important for each person within the team.  For an executive sponsor, they are going to want to see metrics at a high level that will give them the ability to ask necessary questions that are important to the overall success of the company.  Next, for an analytics director or business analyst, it is important that they have the ability to further dive down into the data to get at the 'WHY' of the questions that are being asked from the higher management.  Ease of access, speed to insight and ROI are also going to be very important to the executive sponsors; Whereas, integration, data quality, ease of report creation will be items that are important for the data architects and business analysts.

Now that there is an understanding of who is going to be involved in the various aspects of the project and what areas are going to be important for them, it is now imperative to understand how the project is going to affect them in their everyday work.  New processes and technologies have a tendency to make people nervous. They don't understand what it may mean for the future of their roles within the organization or they may not feel comfortable learning a new process or software.  To help alleviate some of these concerns, it is important to understand their current processes.  Dive into the weeds as much as possible in order to get a feel for their current methods of reporting, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), data cleansing and data distribution.  Figure out important questions such as - Who does each person report up to and how will the new process affect their current line of communication?

Once we have a greater understanding and insight into each team member's role, it is now important to address how each of their current job functions may be affected.  Ultimately, there is a reason we are rolling out a major BI implementation. It may be to create efficiencies within processes, to be able to combine multiple data sources into a single location, to provide real time data, etc… Any one of these reasons will have a positive impact on both the organization as a whole as well as the individual players on the team.  Roles may have to change but those changes are generally for good - even for the individual contributors that are affected. At this point, it is important to bring team members into the discussions and decision-making processes for the project. Involve those who will be affected by the change into the conversations quickly. You want them to feel like they have a say in the process. Get them invested in the project.  This will ensure project support and will deter a lot of the push back you get when you simply push a process or technology on to an individual or team. This isn't to say that each member should be in every meeting.  You certainly don't want a business analyst to override the vision of the CMO but it is important to approach the business analyst, in the context of the overall vision, and let him or her contribute thoughts on how that vision can be executed at his or her level.

In our next segment, we will discuss more in depth the process of understanding organizational goals and the need to set priorities based on the Pareto Principal of identifying the fewest Key Performance Indicators that will have the greatest impact within the business.