The 'Jerry Maguire' moment

A simple Google search using the term “business intelligence (BI) failures” reveals the debris of many over-hyped, technology-driven BI projects that have been implemented in organisations across industries for many years.

Many projects promise so much, yet end up delivering so little.

David Logan is principal consultant at PBT Group.

In fact, the statistics available on BI project failures are rather alarming. There are myriad reasons why BI projects fail, including the fact that many businesses today still do not fully understand the meaning behind this technology, and therefore end up ineffectively implementing a BI solution - which often results in the fact that the real benefits of a BI solution are not felt within the business. The reality is that there is so much more to BI than meets the eye, and in my experience, the common determinant of success for a BI project is that moment I like to refer to as the “Jerry Maguire” moment.

Anybody familiar with the movie will remember the scene when Cuba Gooding Jr shouts down the telephone line to Tom Cruise: “Show me the money!” (and then, of course, Cruise eventually shouts it back). It is certainly a memorable scene from the movie, with Gooding Jr as the famous football player client and Cruise as his elite agent.

This concept has amazing parallels in the field of BI - many projects promise so much, yet end up delivering so little, being waylaid along the way with a big, monolithic project approach, data quality challenges, technology choices and a slowly reducing focus on the journey from reports to insight and to value. The point I am making here is that successful BI projects require combined effort from both an IT and business perspective within an organisation, and need to be ruthless in their focus on the end result of achieving positive business value and results.

Let's consider this by way of some real-time local and practical examples.

A local, countrywide distributor of perishable goods sends a wide variety of goods out to customers via trucks on various different routes. A 'report'documents the amount of goods returned to the business each day. The 'insight' is that the saleable value of the returned goods is drastically diminished and that a small proportion of the routes are responsible for oversupply. The 'value' is the combined cost savings and revenue opportunities (in rand terms, amounting to millions annually), possible by accurately forecasting the quantity of perishable goods to be loaded onto each truck. The reality - fewer goods are returned and more goods are loaded onto routes that are undersupplied.

Another good practical example is a third-party sales channel that acquires customers. A 'report'documents the number of sales in each geographic location each day. The 'insight'is that the quality (in value terms) of acquired customers in certain locations is deteriorating and that perhaps the commission incentives are driving this behaviour. The 'value' (again in rand terms amounting to a few million) is the commission saved by highlighting and changing the third-party behaviour to be more aligned with the supplier.

In each of the above instances, successful BI provides a measurable 'value', which is derived from the concluded 'reports' and crucial 'insight' gathered. The tools, architecture and software life cycle are all necessary stages in this process for it to be a successful one. Today, however, it seems that businesses are not paying that much-needed attention to this process and these stages, which often results in the fact that BI projects implemented result in failure.

BI today should be seen by all industries and businesses using it as more than just a buzzword or a dashboard tool to capture and integrate data. Rather, BI is a tool that turns data and information into useful assets - all of which can assist businesses in not only managing various processes effectively, but also to manage risks as well as anticipate internal and external opportunities in the business. This can also create a clear competitive edge for a business as well as stimulate innovation against constant market change/trends and competition.

So the next time a customer yells: “Show me the money!”- then the company's ability to do so immediately will distinguish its BI project as being a success, from the ones that are found in the Google search bar mentioned above.