Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

Top 20
Tips for OLAP Success : "Here are 20 quick tips, some obvious, but others
counterintuitive, which are all based on real-world experience and research
data."

I’ve got a lot of time for Nigel Pendse, the industry analyst behind
this article
for DMReview and The OLAP Report,
the "vendor neutral" resource site for OLAP technology. Nigel has kept true to
the core principals behind OLAP and business intelligence and although he’s not
always been the most complementary about Oracle’s products, he’s been a great
advocate of OLAP technology and not been afraid to call Oracle on the way
they’ve migrated Express to Oracle OLAP over the years. Nigel helped me with
the article
I wrote last year for DMReview and has a good understanding of the way
Oracle, and Microsoft are building OLAP functionality into their core database
products, and moreover he’s always been a great advocate for the customer when
dealing with OLAP vendors.

Three of the tips that Nigel raised I thought were worth pointing out here.
The first one I thought was particularly relevant considering a couple of
projects I’ve worked on recently, where the client wanted to use just one tool -
Discoverer – to do all of their reporting, even though complementary tools such
as Reports or Excel would probably fit some users’ needs better, but would
involve extra overhead from a support perspective.

"2. Don’t try and force every project to use one "corporate
standard" tool.

There may be IT benefits in doing this, but the projects are unlikely to
deliver the potential business benefits if you insist on using potentially
unsuitable products for every project or override the end users. Remember
that it is better to have two successful projects using different products
than one integrated but unsuccessful project that conforms to IT standards
but doesn’t deliver business benefits. The OLAP Survey 3 confirms that
selecting a product just because it is a corporate standard does not lead to
successful projects. So, even if you have established corporate standards,
set up a clear "waiver process" to evaluate whether new software should be
used."

The next one is one close to my heart, and concerns the benefits you can get
from hiring experienced, BI-focused consultants to better ensure project
success:

"16. Do use consultants to help choose and implement BI solutions.

Try not to use the same firm for both selecting the product and then
implementing it. Implementation consultants will always favor products they
know, rather than those that are right for the task. Equally, not until you
know which product you will be using can you select consultants who are
known to be expert in it.

Avoid using large, famous, general purpose consultants – they cost more,
take longer and usually deliver less than smaller, more focused, BI
specialists. Always choose the implementation consultant after choosing the
product and make sure that everyone who will be implementing the solution
has already used the product in at least one previous project; don’t let
consultants learn to use the software at your expense."

The last one concerns the role of business users in scoping and driving the
project. This one is a bit harder in practice, as although we’d all love users
to generate the demand in the first place, lead the project and define the
requirements, in the end what usually happens is that the project is an IT
initiative, and it’s IT that usually end up driving the project. Anyway:

"17. Try to ensure that projects are led by business users involved
with the project.

In-house IT experts may have little BI experience and projects need to be
business led. The OLAP Surveys consistently found that the most successful
projects are led by external BI specialist consulting firms, and projects
that are business led achieve more than those that are IT led. Of course,
experienced IT people must be fully involved, but the project should always
be "owned" by the business."

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