Optimize the BI Program for a Better ROI Squeeze more juice from the fruits of your BI labor. Info-Tech's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.© 1997 - 2012 Info-Tech Research Group

Introduction Business Intelligence (BI) programs are costly ventures. Optimizing your BI program is essential for realizing greater return on your investment. Organizations must aim to embed BI as a mission critical component of every work program in a cost effective way. This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You: CIOs and IT managers charged with managing the enterprise business intelligence program. Business intelligence professionals looking to fine-tune BI deployments. Introduce the critical components of BI optimization. Provide guidance on BI strategic development. Diagnose the health of your BI program. Recommend best practices for healing the most common BI ailments. Use this research to develop an optimization strategy that increases the use of BI in your organization and decreases the cost of delivery. Establish a vision for BI and fine-tune your people, processes, and technology to create a business-centric BI program.

Executive Summary Gaining more value from your BI investments means providing better information to more users at a lower cost of delivery. The challenges facing organizations looking to extend the reach of their BI program are the same as those that face organizations during their initial deployment. Organizations must gain buy-in from targeted groups, encourage end-user adoption, manage the accompanying changes, and ensure that BI capabilities address the real needs of the business. To be successful, there must be: A strategic vision to guide the BI program. A governance framework for managing change. Adequate training and change management for staff. More efficient development processes and standards to reduce technology costs.

Optimize BI Extend Reach and Capabilities Build a Vision for Enterprise BI Align the Business and IT Optimize BI Govern the Process Empower the People Reduce Fragmentation

Optimize a BI program in three ways: extend reach, enhance information & decrease the cost to serve The BI value proposition: The value of BI lies in its ability to provide information to the business in a timely fashion so that it can answer business questions and support business decisions. The three main optimization opportunities: Increasing the reach of BI by making it available to more groups/users (BI for the masses). Enhancing the information that is ready for use by improving the functional capabilities available to end users. Reducing the cost of delivering information to end users. An optimized BI program delivers improved functionality to more users at a lower cost to serve.

Functional Capabilities End-user adoption, end-user abilities, and BI fragmentation are the main obstacles to optimization Obstacles Extend Reach Extend Functional Capabilities Reduce Costs End-User Adoption End-User Abilities BI Fragmentation Underutilized BI capabilities result from: Lack of vision for BI Poor business/IT alignment Insufficient staff training Lack of a BI culture BI fragmentation and higher costs result from: No BI standards Deploying BI as a point solution Inefficient development approach 1 2 3 Optimize Poor end-user adoption results from: Poor governance Lack of executive accountability Poor change management Insufficient training IT driving BI

End-user adoption, end-user abilities, and BI fragmentation are the main obstacles to optimization Reach Functionality Cost to Serve Establish a Vision Embed BI as an integral component of all business work programs and measure against corporate objectives. Align with business needs and leverage tool capabilities in order to meet the information needs of all user groups. Part of the vision for BI must be how IT is going to manage ongoing maintenance and support and increasing demand. Govern the Process Effective governance – in particular executive sponsorship – encourages end-user adoption. A BICC can create and embed enhanced functionality that provides better and more timely information to users. Governance reigns in haphazard BI deployments and provides an oversight mechanism for lowering costs. Empower the People Proper end-user training allows users to feel comfortable using BI tools minimizing pushback. With proper training, users can create custom functionality by building their own reports and tools. Self-sufficient end users reduce the strain on IT helpdesks and can find answers to their questions at a lower cost. Reduce Fragmentation Make use of reusable components and adapt to business needs quickly. Understand the layers of the BI architecture to aid in making design choices. Standardize on a BI solution whose capabilities and product roadmap align with business needs now and in the future.

Vision Create a vision for BI by enabling the corporate strategy and supporting business processes with technology All enterprise applications, especially BI, must be designed and implemented to enable strategic objectives and the business processes that support them. Establishing a vision for BI depends on the alignment of the technology development lifecycle with the business strategy lifecycle. The goal is to derive business requirements from the corporate strategy and develop enabling technologies that can deliver the requisite information to business users.

Aim to embed BI in regular business work programs where performance can be measured BI needs to be viewed as an integral component of business operations. At a minimum, Reporting and Analytics must be part of every company initiative for performance management. For every initiative, e.g. new campaigns, new products, etc., ask the question “How are we going to measure success?” For example, in a marketing campaign management program, you would need metrics to evaluate the success of each campaign objective and the marketing strategy overall. Metrics could include: Types of campaigns Response rate of campaigns Take rate (% of individuals that purchase the product) Campaign Management Strategy Campaign Objectives Campaign Action Plan Implement BI to Measure Success Embed BI in Regular Work Processes Initiate Action Plan Measure Results If a certain project has measurable ROI, we will document that. But now BI is just the cost of doing business and part of the infrastructure. A better measure of success is the growth in the number of uses for the data and the number of users who are successfully getting the answers they need to their business questions. - Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App by Cindi Howson

- IT Services Consultant Successful BI initiatives are characterized by a strong alignment between the business & IT Business/IT alignment refers to the degree of mutual collaboration between the business and IT. Organizations with strong business/IT alignment are characterized by a high degree of trust and shared decision-making between the two functions. A major aspect of building business/IT alignment is ensuring that IT initiatives (including BI) are relevant to the needs of the business. IT should have a comprehensive understanding of what business users require from the BI tool set. It’s important to avoid a “build it and they will come” mentality: legitimate business needs should be the driving factor behind BI deployments. Build a strong relationship by finding a champion for BI in the business. The more senior the champion, the more likely that the business can lead the charge. The ideal champion is someone in a senior executive role, such as a CFO or COO. Most organizations have shared responsibility for BI need identification There are aspects of the BI project that the business won’t understand, and there are business requirements that the IT people shouldn’t guess at. - IT Services Consultant Ideally, the business should be in the driver’s seat for BI. IT should support and enable the business. The stronger the business/IT alignment, the more likely BI will be adopted and successfully utilized by business users.

Make BI as scalable as possible: scalability drives adoption and allows for rapid deployment to new areas of the business A scalable approach to BI can be a powerful method for helping to drive adoption while reducing the time and costs associated with rolling out BI to new departments and business units. Scalability refers to those solutions which can be easily and inexpensively deployed to new users or user groups. A scalable BI solution is one that expands tools to new users without large increases in infrastructure, software, or support costs. Users Number of BI Users Total $ While scalable solutions typically require more up-front investment, they pay off as the user base expands. Users Number of BI Users Total $ High end-user adoption is one of the hallmarks of optimized BI. As such, a BI solution that can be painlessly “scaled up” to new users or departments is tremendously valuable.

Info-Tech Research Group Helps IT Professionals To: Quickly get up to speed with new technologies Make the right technology purchasing decisions – fast Deliver critical IT projects, on time and within budget Manage business expectations Justify IT spending and prove the value of IT Train IT staff and effectively manage an IT department Sign up for free trial membership to get practical solutions for your IT challenges “Info-Tech helps me to be proactive instead of reactive – a cardinal rule in a stable and leading edge IT environment. - ARCS Commercial Mortgage Co., LP Toll Free: 1-888-670-8889 www.infotech.com