Business Intelligence – Not a simple software development project

Business Intelligence – Not a simple software development project

1. Introduction

One of the critical errors organizations commit very often is to treat a Business Intelligence (BI) project like any other software project, even if they understand that the project is complex and the scope is large.

In this article we will try to explore the challenges of a BI project, by defining what they are, and by summarizing the areas to focus on, if we have to successfully deploy a BI solution.

2. BI Solution – A Perspective

Before we explain what a BI Solution is, it is important to understand several wrong conceptions that people have about them. There are several simplified assumptions made about a BI project, each of which is incorrect. Some of them are:

ƒ Since a BI project is a top-level information providing solution, the objective of integration is kept very broad or lacks focus, or has the wrong sponsors.
ƒ Management Information System and BI are considered similar except that MIS summarizes operational data whereas BI looks at summarizing data for decision-making.
ƒ A BI solution is assumed to be the same as a Data Warehouse project
ƒ There is a failure to recognize BI Projects as cross-functional ones involving both IT and the Business. In some organizations, the IT Department sponsors the project while in others, the Business sponsors it.
o IT sponsored projects have a broad scope, but run longer …
o Business sponsored projects complete faster but the solution lasts for a shorter period
ƒ There is a lack of recognition that data source identification and mapping are business-consulting issues and not IT issues.

First we must recognize that BI projects are about Information Integration and Presentation. The number and variety of such operational systems depends on the age of the business, the variety of products & services offered and the evolution of
the enterprise. But for the people managing the business, the operations have to be seen in a consistent context – a context that enables them to view the business with a set of key business indicators. Then we must understand that information presented in a BI solution is a ‘business key indicator’ and not a traditional functional performance indicator like ROCE (Return On Capital Employed). Examples of key indicators could be ‘Time to process a redemption request’ for a Mutual fund,
‘Components of Customer Balance’ for a credit card business etc. There is a need to build these key indicators to know the health of business at any time. The critical step towards getting values for these indicators is integration of information from multiple operational systems.

From the above it is fairly clear that a BI solution is not the same as a functional MIS solution or a project on building a Data Warehouse and reporting numbers. It is a cross functional project that must have comprehensive business user representation,
with users who can understand the meaning and usefulness of data/information. Then the role of the IT team comes in, to get the work done with suitable tools or technology.

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