Assessing Where BI Can Be Effective

The first task in a BI progam [and the first goal of the BI roadmap] is to identify what the business wants to achieve, and how business intelligence can support that need.

Look for opportunities in your organisation where business intelligence can:

1. improve the quality of day-to-day decision making
2. add value to operational efficiency
3. support tighter collaboration

BI Value Assessment

1. Where can business intelligence be used effectively?
2. Who will use the application?
3. What information do they need?
4. How will the outcomes be measured?

Assessing Where Business Intelligence Will Be Used Effectively

Every organisation is structured differently, but each has a set of core processes that create value streams in the organisation to meet corporate objectives. By reviewing these processes across functional areas and business units we can identify areas where there are:

• Operational inefficiencies - effectiveness in meeting goals in a timely manner
• High costs for the outcomes
• Opportunities not being met
• Poor decision making and/or high volume of decision making
• High reliance on data for operational management or decision making
• Source of key reporting used by other areas of the business

Don't constrain this review to just the normal areas of the business reliant on data, such as executives, finance and marketing. An holistic review of critical functional areas and processes across the entire organisation will quickly uncover many opportunities for consideration. Unlike financial analysis, BI techniques are applicable to 90% of the business. Poor processes can often be significantly improved and better managed with business intelligence capability.

At a retail store - improvements in employee selling performance, loss prevention, and warranty data collection can result from BI.

In a production line - BI can result in better scheduling and managing of the product mix.

In services marketing - BI can support laser targeting of product offerings to better defined customer segments.

In a supply chain - BI can promote more accurate forecasting and better stock utilisation.

Look for areas of the business that are containable for your first effort. Applying business intelligence to functional areas is a great place to launch your business intelligence program. Functional areas are generally:

• Easier to define - their BI applications are more tactical, linked to the management of specific operations and outcomes, rather than strategically impacting the entire organisation.
• The requirements easier to scope - source data often comes from only one or a few OLTP systems as opposed to cross-functional or business-unit level applications that typically combine data from multiple sources.
• The benefits are easier to realise and measure - the success is easier to communicate and showcase to other areas of the business.

NEXT: Assessing Who Will Use the BI Application

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