BI in the driver's seat

Part one of this series explored the idea of having the suitable control panel for the vehicle being driven, aka, the company. Companies have evolved from Jaguar XJs into nuclear submarines, but it seems like the control panels used to steer these now super-companies have not kept up with the times. It was concluded that enterprises need to make changes in the areas of people, data, and technical architecture in order to achieve their strategic vision.

Business intelligence should become the control panel that empowers management to effectively steer the organisation towards strategic achievement. This can be achieved with a model to gear BI specifically towards supporting strategic execution towards achievement.

The model provides clear guidelines regarding people, data and technical architecture to be considered while designing, developing and operating such a BI solution.

Key people that should be directly involved in the BI system start with the business and IT executives. This involvement goes beyond strategic sponsorship. Both business and IT executives must be involved in driving content of the BI system throughout the lifetime of the BI system. Each executive has a unique role to play, from the CEO driving the culture change for analytics, to the CFO that remains a strong owner of content since the “bottom line” KPI remains financial.

The next team is made up of professional analysts, which consist of business users specialising in analyses (statistical and modelling) and interpretation of data. This is essentially a business function, because the necessary business insight is required to interpret trends in the data effectively in the context of strategy execution. They should have close contact with the Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) team to ensure the BI technology and data content is continuously aligned with the changing nature of the strategy execution environment.

Finally, there is the traditional BICC, equipped with BAs, architects and developers. This team must understand the concept of gearing the BI technology to support strategy execution and what special features are required from the technical architecture to achieve this goal.

BI solutions have mastered the art of including internal data from all areas of the business in the data warehouse. However, often these subject areas remain in separate data marts or silos. In order to operate a nuclear submarine, it is essential to integrate data by modelling the cause-and-effect relationships between the different business areas to facilitate business decision-making.

Strategy committees put a lot of effort into market research to ensure their strategy is relevant within the current economic environment. The reason why strategy execution lacks flexibility to adapt to changes in the environment is that the external environment data that formed the strategy is not included in the data warehouse to enable management to monitor the environment factors. Management might as well shut down their sonar equipment steering the submarine blind.

The technical architecture is essentially an intricate network of technology, technical and business processes, with the heart being the traditional BI architecture with extract, transform and load (ETL), staging area, data warehouse, and data presentation layers.

Companies have evolved from Jaguar XJs into nuclear submarines.

Yolanda Smit is senior BI business analyst for PBT.

This probably represents 75% of all BI solutions. But, does a warehouse filled with historical data constitute business intelligence, or is it still only business knowledge? Advanced analytics such as data mining, predictive modelling, forecasting, simulation, optimisation and statistical analytics models convert knowledge into intelligence. This forecasting outlook is essential for decision-making and should therefore also feed into the BI presentation layer.

Finally, to effectively utilise the “intelligence” for strategic achievement, the BI solution should integrate strategic, tactical, and operational plans by incorporating an enterprise performance management (EPM) system into BI. This serves as an instrument to communicate strategy in the organisation, as well as to monitor strategic performance against original goals set.

So, in reviewing the difference between a Jag and a nuclear submarine-type company, the suggested model addresses the gaps and ensures that BI becomes the required nuclear submarine control panel:

By involving business and IT executives, professional analysts, and properly skilled BICC team, the BI system acknowledges that the enterprise is no longer managed as a single-driver Jag.

By incorporating internal and external data integrated through properly modelled cause-and-effect relationships, the steering team is empowered to monitor the external environment and effectively adapt strategic initiatives maintaining flexibility.

By expanding the technical architecture to include advanced analytics, business knowledge is boosted into true business intelligence, integrated with EPM system data, ensures strategic awareness and alignment throughout the enterprise.

In conclusion, expanding the traditional BI framework to incorporate external data, advanced analytics and an enterprise performance management framework provides management with all the control-panel tools to steer their nuclear submarine company towards successful strategic achievement.