The Balancing Act

Put simply, if BI is delivered well it should generate two things…..firstly, answers [no pun intended] to the questions that the business know need to be answered….but then quickly followed by questions (the silent tidal wave of all the things that the business always wanted to do/know/ask, but just never had the capability).  The up side to this is that, given a data model that withstands the test, the toolsets allow end-users to deal with the tidal wave themselves.  The down side is that this runs the risk of opening up some sort of Pandora’s box…..badly written reports, measures calculated differently by different people, a back catalog of reports written but no longer used, inefficiency, inefficiency, inefficiency…  The whole things just needs managing.

And this is where the tricky balancing act arises.  For me, it is essential that the BICC takes responsibility for implementing a set of policies, processes and roles and responsibilities, all moulded into a Governance Framework, that lays out the ‘rules of engagement’.  Policy should cover off the main building blocks which will feed into the solution design (such as the security and access, data retention, SLA’s, metric ownership, report accreditation etc.).

The processes required to underpin your BI usage will naturally fall into three main buckets:  those that are internal to the BICC; those that relate to end-users and their relationship with the BICC; and those that relate to how the BICC interacts with IT in the delivery of ongoing change;  Again, the processes can’t really be prescribed but should be drawn up based on what is going to work and be adopted (factoring in BICC scope, resource profiles, organisational culture and so on).  However, the types of area that might be considered may be;  In the first bucket: how data quality is monitored; usage tracking; catalog housekeeping;  In the second bucket: report creation; change request; 1st line support; master data correction;  In the third bucket:  Work Take-On; Operational Schedule Management; 2nd/3rd Line Support; and so on.

Further to this, it is essential that the users of the system know what they are able to do and how they should be doing things…..in other words, they need to be trained and understand best practice!  And all I’ll say is that training needs to be seen as something more than a one-time session, scheduled at some point just before the system is implemented.  To my mind, the single most important difference between BI solutions and other transactional systems is that BI solutions are organic – they grow and change shape over time and along with the business.  For this reason, when the BICC thinks about its training strategy, it should be thinking about how it communicates out change and best practice in order to maintain effectiveness.  And whilst we’re on the subject of communication….

Getting Passionate

I believe that the best BI solutions (again technology set to one side) are where the business has a level of enthusiasm, whether natural or developed, for information and what can be done with it.

Therefore, and in addition to all the other strands of activity that might fall under your BICC, it is incumbent on the BICC to evangelise.  To advocate the usage of information for the benefit of the business.  And to fight the corner for investment in BI (regardless of whether the BICC actually owns a budget or not).  If the BI solution is well defined, designed and delivered, it will start its life being highly thought of by the business.  If it is not then protected, guided and grown, it runs a risk of slowly becoming delinquent and returning a reducing benefit.  At the outset, the BI solution will be used heavily.  If it is not then grown in the right way, it will become less useful, less useable and return a reducing benefit.

So, one of the key roles of the BICC has to be to communicate.  It has to develop methods of communicating out strategy, policy, process, change and best practice.  It has to develop methods of capturing feedback, to understand what works and what doesn’t, what is being used and what isn’t, what new data is needed and what existing data isn’t.  It has to develop methods of communication which ensure that change is defined, designed, delivered and managed efficiently and within the timeframes that the business needs.  Finally the BICC needs to develop methods of communicating with the outside world.  With solution vendors, so that the technology roadmaps can continually be compared and re-evaluated.  With 3rd Party BI partners, who might be engaged for implementation, support or ongoing consultancy.  With other, like-minded user organisations, in order to support innovation.  And, if the strategy is such, with suppliers, customers and others in the value chain.

On the bright side, there are usually people scattered around your organisation who are natural ‘data’ people.  It’s always a good idea to engage these people in what you are doing, not least as they may feel the most threatened by your BICC organisation.  They should be seen as potential ‘BI champions’ and future advocates of BI within their given departments and may prove a useful vehicle for communicating out the BI message.

Back To The Top

To summarise, BI technology comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the organisations using them come is infinitely more shapes and sizes.  I would argue that, regardless of shape or size, to make best use of BI technology, a mechanism is required to manage its usage and to coordinate any associated efforts and decisions.  However, it is important to recognise that there is a continuum between a full-blown BICC on one hand, and nothing on the other.  For any BICC-like initiative to be successful, the specifics need to be guided by the size, shape, culture and objectives of your organisation.  If you are competing in a fast moving environment, where information is the life-blood of your business, then your BI is likely to need greater coordination and may, therefore, warrant a heavy BICC investment.  If your organisation see’s reporting as a necessity rather than a differentiator, then the management and coordination will be completely different.

The historical challenges for the acceptance of the ‘BICC ideal’ revolved largely around justification of the costs, especially where the benefits tend to be seen as indirect and somewhat intangible.  However, an ever increasing number of organisations are looking towards their information asset as a source of competitive advantage and, as a result, are seeing the value not just in BI per se, but also in the coordination of its BI efforts.  

So, if you are embarking on a strategic BI initiative, then it’s important that you look beyond the technology and the development lifecycle.  Start thinking in terms of how your BI is going to be used and how it is going to be managed as it evolves over time.  And, if you have implemented BI but seem to be seeing a reducing benefit over time, then it might be worth looking at whether your BI is becoming delinquent.  If it is, it might be time to do something about it.

If you have already implemented, are in the middle of implementing, or planning to implement a BICC-style organisation, I’d love to hear from you to understand some of your experiences.

BI Strategy

The starting point for any non-tactical BI initiative should be the development of a BI strategy map.  And it’s worth noting that this statement holds, regardless of the circumstance…whether a greenfield project, a migration to a new, pre-selected technology stack or where heritage applications are remaining in place.  That’s to say – the BI Strategy should be technology agnostic, not technology driven.  The form that your strategy takes is likely to be heavily influenced by the type of BI organisation that is planned or already in place.  Where a full-blown BICC is being built, then it is likely that the strategy will be a more formal mission statement.  Where something more subtle is being planned (say, a sub-team within an existing department), then we may be talking about some slide-ware which is used to disseminate the message. 

Regardless of form, the BI Strategy should be all about laying down the foundations for:

➡  How information will be utilised by the business to drive competitive advantage

➡  How the business is going to make best use of its information and technology resources

➡  What ‘genetic makeup’ the BICC will have (i.e. will it be business driven, IT driven or, most realistically, blended?)

➡  How the BICC is going to enable the business to leverage maximum value from the investments made in BI

➡  How strategic delivery will be resourced (internally, externally or blended)

Clearly, the BI Strategy must be aligned with the organisations wider strategic objectives and it will often help in communicating the message, if a) a high level vision of the delivery roadmap and b) the BICC’s roles and responsibilities can also be developed at this stage.

 Information Delivery

The second thing to be recognised is the importance of delivering information in a consistent, coherent and accurate way.  To me, this is central in building the business’ confidence in the BI they use.  Confidence will increase usage which will result in reliance and then dependency.  So, ultimately, ‘information delivery’ will factor heavily in the success or failure of the BICC itself.  Unfortunately, it is also probably the trickiest thing for the BICC to achieve.  And here’s why.

Under the ‘Information Delivery’ umbrella I would group the following activities:  Solution & Data Architecture; Data Quality Management; Data Stewardship; Metadata Management; Presentation & User Experience.  In a nutshell, then, this is where the BICC gets its most technical and so (if predominantly a business lead team) it is where the BICC will be least knowledgeable and least self-sufficient.  This is why the ‘genetic makeup’ of the BICC, as I have described it previously, is so important.  It also seems to be the area of most debate….should the BICC be 100% business focussed?  Should it be an extension of the IT department?  Should it be a blend and, if so, what is the balance of power?  The answer will inevitably vary from organisation to organisation (and, again, there is probably no “one size fits all” answer), but my view aligns with the consensus – that a BICC should be a blended team, but business lead.  As a minimum, senior people to represent solution and data architecture should be incorporated (unless you are lucky enough to have someone who can do both!). Such a composition should help to ‘sell’ the BICC at senior levels, smooth its inception and also ensure that the right architectural decisions are made along the way.  As vendor solutions and product portfolio’s continue to grow, the number of ways of ‘skinning the cat’ can increase exponentially.  A bad ‘technology’ decision could constrain future opportunities, whilst a decision based purely on the commercials will likely result in the same outcome.  Decisions in BI, therefore need to be balanced and require the representation of both business and technology expertise.

Data architecture is essential in the information delivery equation.  A data warehouse with missing data will not be capable of supporting user requirements.  Even where there is built in latency to allow for those unexpected requests, if the data warehouse is poorly modeled your users will be equally constrained and frustrated.  The same is true of your metadata design – build your semantic layer to support the reporting requirements alone and your users will not be able to easily fulfill their ad-hoc analyses.  DW and Metadata design need to go hand in hand and, if not, will result in an increased overhead for IT and BICC respectively.  Data quality is important in protecting the integrity of the information being consumed and user experience will have a large say in how comfortable the user community feel about actually using the BI.

Putting all this together makes ‘Information Delivery’ certainly the most tangible and probably the most complex aspect of the BICC’s remit.

Next time, I’ll look at some of the less tangible aspects, maintaining some level of control and generating passion for information.

In this series of blog posts (my first since joining Rittman Mead in October), I’m going to take a look at some of the ways in which BI can be managed effectively, by considering the place of the Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) in the real world.

Much has been written about BICC’s over recent years and, although there are one or two variations on the theme, the general consensus as to the purpose of a BICC and the reasons why enterprises would implement a BICC are pretty well established.  I’m not going to pick over the debate, suffice to say that my crystalisation would be this: 

A BICC, or it’s equivalent, should exist to achieve four key fundamentals:

➡  To architect and then champion the enterprise BI Strategy

➡  To ensure that information is delivered to the business consistently, coherently and accurately

➡  To manage the tricky balancing act between end-user self-sufficiency, freedom and flexibility on the one hand and business control and alignment of efforts on the other

➡  To generate and maintain a level of passion for information within the business…..or (as I appreciate that this may be a tall order!) at least a level of awareness and interest. 

Beneath each of these pillars sits a number of key elements and core activities, which I’ll address in subsequent posting’s over the next few days.  But before diving in, there’s an important question that I think needs addressing……

So, Where Are All These BICC’s, Anyway?

It occurs to me that despite all of the hype and the discussion underpinning BICC theory, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the uptake in and establishment of BICC’s has, at very best, been patchy.  There is certainly no obvious correlation between the uptake of enterprise BI and the implementation of BICC’s…..the “every good BI project must have a BICC” maxim definitely doesn’t hold true.  And talking to people on the subject, it becomes obvious that a fair number of people are aware of the BICC concept, but know of few who have implemented (or at least attempted to implement) one. 

But I wonder whether this view is valid or not.  Based on my experiences, I’d suggest that there is already a significant amount of BICC-like activity happening in organisations….it just isn’t being driven under a ‘BICC banner’ and invariably does not adhere strictly to the theory.  In fact, I suspect that a lot of this activity is happening without consciousness of the BICC phrase – it’s just being done because it makes sense.  Indeed, I have been in organisations where the suggestion of something called a ‘Business Intelligence Competency Centre‘ would have gone down like a lead balloon.  However, talk to people about the principles, imperatives and benefits behind the BICC and I would receive near universal agreement.  And this is principally down to the fact that, for any business serious about using information to drive competitive advantage, the benefits case for a BICC is, in the main, very compelling.

 I suspect that the biggest challenge facing most historical BICC initiatives has been in the quantification of its value proposition.  Aside from efficiency gains arising from the delivery of BI systems, the benefits are largely intangible (how you put a figure against a benefits line of “Making Better Decisions” may have to wait for a future blog!).  And when compared to the costs associated with setting up and then running a BICC, in most cases, the equation just couldn’t be balanced.  It invariably depends on the business understanding the value that can be unlocked through its information assets.

Importantly, in my example above, the organisation had a near unstoppable thirst for information and also wore the psychological scars from a history of loosely controlled information (you know the story…..a proliferation of MS Access, departmental reports which were irreconcilable with each other, let alone back to the core systems, board meeting disputes over whose sales figure was correct etc. etc.)

So, if businesses are undertaking BICC-like activities (whether structured or not, consciously or not, whether called a ‘BICC’, ‘MIS Team’, ‘Group Reporting function’ or whatever), what are the things that they are trying to achieve?  And if you are about to embark on a strategic BI initiative, what are the non-technology things that you really should be thinking about? 

In my next post, I’ll return to look at the four fundamental areas in more depth, starting with BI Strategy and Information Delivery…