Johannesburg, 26 Mar 2008
Business intelligence (BI) should be seen as a business initiative and a business ownership venture. It is, and always should be, about making correct business decisions in not only a faster and better manner, but also to ensure that it adds value to all business processes.
Previously, IT departments operated as part of the company, delivering solutions to the business as soon as possible and with user requirements as the key driver.
Today, IT departments have started to operate like independent companies within a company, ones that want to make as much money as possible, stretch the work out as long as possible and have business pay for extras that may not result in any immediate benefit to the BI initiative.
The truth is that IT departments are taking over BI initiatives and in some cases, they are hijacking it. Although this may be a harsh statement, the reality is that data warehouse projects are failing because they are not delivering business requirements on time and within budget and are not focused on the end-user anymore.
Today, understanding the customer, knowing the customer and believing the customer is still king, is indeed the modern business mantra. It is this mantra that should always be apart of every BI initiative, data warehouse architectural design/methodology, logical and physical data mart designs and ETL processes to ensure end-user focus.
The disconnection between a project`s original intent and its final result is mostly a case of incorrect ownership. As such, the proper project owner, steering committee representatives and project management methodologies should assist with the understanding of the original intent by the business - as well as the boundaries the initiative will be developed in. While IT normally works within the centralised governance guidance, it should be adaptable to the customers` needs and should have different governance guidance for the different business initiatives, ie application development and BI. As soon as IT starts to overlap governance structures or tries to cross-breed different methodologies, it isn`t healthy irrespective of customers.
Notable problems usually start with generating business requirements when it comes to asking the business "What must this solution do for you?" Perhaps IT is phrasing the question incorrectly, misunderstanding the answer or perhaps not asking the question at all? Sometimes the right questions are asked and understood but still needs to incorporate other requirements as well. As such, wherever IT tries to take sole ownership of a BI initiative, there is a 99% chance that it will fail. The main reason for this is where operational issues are brought into or made part of BI initiatives. IT departments want to clone a transactional system with added history from where the warehouse must be sourced. It also wants to provide a transactional reporting system without impacting the actual source system. This might be a worthwhile project to implement but it should not be part of the BI initiative and the business should not be held ransom to pay for it.
Business has a specific requirement when it comes to BI and that is a solution for quick and correct answers to specific questions. Data is also vastly growing in volume and to wait for this "clone" to be loaded before the actual warehouse can be loaded, can become a major problem with batch window availability.
However, with the increasing use of consulting companies to assist IT department with the implementation of a BI initiative, success of such an initiative can be achieved, but it is important to make use of a company with a proven track record. Some companies are still under the impression that a BI project is a simple summarisation of relevant source data. Many application-focused companies think that they can build a data mart because it has much less tables and processes than a transactional system and is only used for reporting. This is where the whole BI initiative goes down the drain. Business losses money and the business intelligence communities` reputation take a big knock.
There are solutions available and a lot of success stories to prove that business and IT can get back on track to make the BI adventure a joint initiative. It has taken years to prove to business how important BI is to the successful running of a company. Let`s not go back to the dark and unintelligent ages. Let`s play nicely. Treat business and IT initiatives as a parent-child relationship, listen and understand each other. With this in mind, great successes can be achieved and BI can grow from strength to strength.
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