truth, so there is alignment between strategy
and operations and any disconnects are eliminated. Finally, it acts as an enabler for profitable
growth by providing managers with an in-depth
analysis of their business, as well as a single set
of budgets and plans, so everyone is on the
same page, has a finger on the pulse of their operations and can make decisions based on facts
rather than instincts.
So what are the capabilities of a BI system? At
its core are capabilities such as ad hoc query, re-
porting, dashboards, scorecards and analysis, as
well as planning and budgeting. BI systems cre-
ate high-volume, high-resolution reports that
are run on a regular basis. An example might
be a sales manager’s report showing monthly
sales and associated sales commissions sorted
by salesperson and then by customer. Dash-
boards can help users quickly visualize and
understand the trends and issues within their
environment using elements such as charts,
gauges and red/yellow/green light statuses. Ad
hoc queries can access an organization’s data
to ask, for example, “What were total sales to
a specific customer last December?” or “How
much of a specific part do we have in inven-
tory?” Advanced analysis allows users to view
data across multiple classifications or di-
mensions such as product, customer, region,
time period, etc. and slice-and-dice the data
to look at various combinations, such as the
sales in each region for December or which
products each customer purchased last year.
Scorecards monitor business metrics and key
performance indicators that might include
customer satisfaction, profitability and sales
per employee. Budgeting and planning allows
you to create top-down and bottom-up plans
by cost centers/general ledger codes, collab-
oratively finalize them and publish them to
the team to monitor, manage and track ongo-
ing performance against such plans.
However, with limited IT resources and bud-
gets and the inability for the operational and ex-
ecutive staff to take on multiple new initiatives
simultaneously, midsized organizations need a
comprehensive plan to deploy such a solution.
Roadmap for BI
I recommend midsized organizations imple-
ment BI in phases so they can successfully
deploy and realize the benefits under limited
budgets and resources. It ensures that midsized
projects can start with small steps and achieve
success to be built upon. Such an approach pro-
vides for organizational learning on small bud-
gets, where mistakes are not expensive. It also
ensures that the lessons learned from initial BI
deployment can be reused to build a roadmap
for broader, company-wide BI implementation,
which prioritizes high-impact areas and incor-
porates potential change management issues.
One preferred approach uses a three-phase
roadmap for BI deployment:
Phase 1 (Crawl): The objective in this phase
is for organizations to become comfortable with
BI technology. Implementers should focus on de-
ploying those aspects of BI that can have an im-
mediate impact on daily decision-making, while
“Focus on deploying those aspects of
BI that can have an immediate impact
on daily decision-making”
