How to Create a Successful

Business Intelligence Programme

Peter Dillon-Parkin
Able Solutions UK Ltd

1-800-843-8733
www.learningtree.ca

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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Introduction:
The Business Intelligence (BI) Paradox . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. The Business Intelligence Challenge . . . . . . . . 2
2. Defining Business Intelligence Needs . . . . . . 2
2.1. What Data is Needed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2. What Are the Desired Outcomes
for the Business?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Success Factors for Business
Intelligence Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. The Five Levels and Six Critical
Attributes of BI Maturity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1. Level 1: Informal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1.1. Critical Attribute 1:
Strong Executive Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1.2. Critical Attribute 2:
Key Stakeholder Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2. Level 2: Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2.1. Critical Attribute 3: Early
Creation of a Business Intelligence
Competency Center (BICC). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2.2. Critical Attribute 4:
Clear Outcome Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3. Level 3: Managed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3.1. Critical Attribute 5: Tying .CSFs
and KPIs to Business Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4. Level 4: Controlled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4.1. Critical Attribute 6:
Analytics Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.5. Level 5: Optimised . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Driving Your BI Initiative Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
About Learning Tree International. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Introduction:
The Business Intelligence (BI) Paradox
Back in the 1980s, I recall being asked by a client—a major supermarket
chain in the UK—to provide them with reorder figures for every one
of their stores. At that time, I was unable to accommodate their request
for two very good reasons: First, there were no tools available to me at
the time that would allow me to work with the databases on the mini-
mainframe I was using and, second, I couldn’t build a file big enough
on the mini-mainframe, since the maximum size I could achieve was
66MB! Back then, the lack of tools meant I had to invent my own,
which was quite challenging. Ultimately, the only way I could meet
the customer’s requirements was to offload the data onto a PC and
purchase an external 100MB disk to hold the data, along with a copy
of the Paradox RDMS to analyse it.
But this example is just one of many from that time. The early business
intelligence (BI) initiatives—Decision Support Services (DSS), Executive
Information Systems (EIS) and Management Information Systems
(MIS)—had the same mission as BI initiatives of today, which was
to provide accurate answers to questions about the enterprise in a
timely manner, support decision-making activities with accurate
intelligence and identify actionable outcomes. And yet they all failed,
banished to the dustbin of history. What’s more, they foundered
primarily because they lacked the appropriate software tools and tech-
nical infrastructure—the facilitating technologies—that could support
the needs of the business.
Fast forward to present day: Now many households possess over a
terabyte of storage distributed over various devices, making the
sizing issues I faced in the ‘80s seem quaint. In addition, the technical
infrastructure that underpins BI—databases, storage and front-end
functionality—are now largely commoditised, meaning that any
technology company that wants to assemble and bring to market a
BI solution can do so. There are also many robust, reliable business
intelligence tools widely available, from open source software to
commercial offerings like Microsoft BI Studio, Cognos, SAP and
so forth.
Furthermore, technical issues that plagued early BI initiatives have
virtually disappeared to the point where a reasonably intelligent
database manager can design a digital dashboard or use a PivotTable
to report on data in Excel. Add to this the fact that the storage required
for the denormalised databases that support BI initiatives has become
quite inexpensive, and the twin problems of tools and storage have
been comprehensively vanquished.
So why, you may ask, in the BI Rapid Survey Report(1) carried out
by the National Computing Centre, did 21% of respondents report
that their BI system did not have the data they needed? And why,
according to the same report, have 87% of BI projects not lived up
to expectations?
This is the business intelligence paradox that I will address in this
paper along with providing strategies that will ensure the imple-
mentation of a successful BI programme.

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1. The Business Intelligence Challenge
Organisations often suffer because they pay too much
attention to vendors who sell BI as a cure-all for unspecified
ills. In fairness, the vendor’s job is, after all, to sell as much
consultancy as they can (or as much as is asked for). However,
a vendor can never know our organisation the way that we
do, hence the need to identify the desired outcomes of a BI
initiative internally before engaging with vendors. However,
this requires a common vision within the organisation as to
what business intelligence actually is and what it can
(or won’t) be used for.
Let’s begin by understanding some terms. A “closed-ended”
tool is one that performs only one function. A cookie cutter is
a good example, as there’s really only one thing we can do
with it. Many organisations buy BI solutions as if they were
similarly closed-ended—a “fix” for a problem that is often
unstated. Their opposite—“open-ended” tools—are more
flexible. They are like a saw, which can cut trees but can also
be used to make furniture, build a house or even be played as
an instrument.
Treating BI solutions as closed-ended tools leads to impreci-
sion about what we want BI for. BI is an open-ended tool that
requires the definition of needs and objectives before we buy
into a solution. And be aware: if the guy we’ve put in charge
of doing that assessment works for the business that sells a
solution, I believe you can guess with some degree of certainty
which solution we’re going to get.
In short, early on in the process of selecting a BI solution, we
need to analyse the usefulness of BI to our organisation and
what outcomes we expect from our investment.
2. Defining Business Intelligence Needs
So what must be considered first? The perceptive manager
needs to ask questions about BI:
• What is the desired outcome from a BI solution?
• Have we presented a strong enough business case
in support of the BI solution?
• Who do we need to talk to within the organisation?
Outside the organisation?
• Should we attack strategic or tactical problems first?
• What problem should we start with?
• Is there a “minimum option” where we get 80% of
the benefit for 20% of the investment?
• What data is needed?
• What are the desired business outcomes?
• After all this…do we need BI at all?
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As these questions are being addressed, it’s critical to start
building a cross-discipline team in the areas of business
analysis, project management, IT and the wider business
community as their involvement will be crucial to the process.
2.1. What Data is Needed?
BI consists of both enabling and facilitating technologies.
Enabling technologies are technologies that generate the data
that BI “consumes”. Examples of enabling technologies are:
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
 Applications used by large organisations to manage
inventory, resources and business processes across
all departments in the enterprise.
• Electronic Point-Of-Sale (EPOS)
 Systems that streamline stock control and ordering
systems through bar-code scanning and allow the
automatic processing of credit card payments
for goods.
• Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tagging
 Inventory data stored on a tag transmitted via radio.
Often used to track buying habits, this technology
is leading to an explosion in the sheer volume of
data due to the possibility of all tags being unique
rather than generic.
Businesses often focus solely on these types of enabling
technology to provide data for their BI initiatives. This data
is both structured and internal to our business—in short,
the data we already have easy access to. Many organisations
only analyse structured and internal data. But there are other
types of data, too. For example, unstructured data refers to
data we have access to but haven’t systematised, such as
e-mails, project plans and the information stored away in
filing cabinets. On the other hand, external data refers to data
we don’t possess but need to know about, like competitor
information, published comments and share-price graphs.
According to IDC/Teradata (2), 55% of the information that
decision makers currently deal with for decision making is
unstructured and external. This is why users of BI systems
complain about “missing data”. Alastair Sim of SAS puts it
best: “Organisations are not using BI to drive the decision making
that will allow them to grow and innovate because they are not
seeing structured and unstructured data as a single source”.
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2.2. What Are the Desired Outcomes for the Business? potent technology of the past, are the key reasons that the
Early in any BI initiative, the BI Manager needs to consider previous attempts at BI mentioned in our introduction failed.
what the desired outcomes of the business are. In practice, Instead, the notion of BI as a tool needs to be weaved into
there are two approaches to achieving desired outcomes: the fabric of the organisation if it is to be successful. Man-
agers should forget that they are using a “revolutionary
• Tactical
technology”—or whatever buzzwords are currently in
 Looks at a specific organisational business problem favour—and use BI in the same instinctive way that they
and uses BI to find a solution now use Excel or PowerPoint.
 Expects both costs and benefits to be short term
Unless this happens, the end of the process will have each
 Example: A tactical goal for a bicycle manufacturer department or manager owning individual spreadsheets or
would be to reduce the amount of rework on the
databases, none of which gives a “single version of the truth”.
assembly line
In today’s terminology, this is often referred to as the
• Strategic “Balkanization” of data.
 Supports the long-term business-oriented aims and
objectives of the organisation 4. T
 he Five Levels and Six Critical
 Expects the costs of those long-term benefits to be Attributes of BI Maturity
spread out over time
The first thing we should do before proposing to implement
 Example: A strategic goal for a retail business would BI is to take a hard look at where we currently stand. After
be to maintain and then increase the proportion of all, it’s hard to create a plan to move forward unless we
sales they get via the Internet know where we’re starting from. As a solution, we can
For new BI initiatives a tactical approach is recommended. identify what planning and skills we need to improve or
It’s considerably easier to justify, will give a quicker implement a BI solution by modeling its levels of maturity.
payback and, best of all, does not exclude a simultaneous
The chart below shows a model of Business Intelligence
long-term strategic approach. Obviously, the best value
Maturity Levels. Looking at each level, it becomes clear
for the company is in strategic BI, but it’s harder to get
that some decisions have a greater influence on our success
money for that and harder still to demonstrate that the
than others. Ideally, we want to graduate to the next level as
organisation is getting its money’s worth. Fortunately,
quickly as possible, so the key attributes that must be achieved
most tactical BI projects lead to the strategic ones, and
in each to move forward are identified here.
the data accumulated while fulfilling several tactical
outcomes is reusable for analysis in a strategic approach.

3. Success Factors for Business

Intelligence Initiatives Level 5
Optimised

To be successful, individuals involved in a BI initiative Level 4

Controlled
should ideally possess skills in several areas. Skills including,
BI Maturity

among others, project management, communication and Level 3

Managed
data analysis. Even if we are pursuing tactical success, we Level
Level 12
need to think strategically about managing BI. In essence, the Defined
organisation is radically changing how data is accessed by Level 1
Informal
taking its exclusivity out of the hands of experts and giving
free access to it based on the needs of the business. Time

To some, this is sacrilege, but bear in mind, that a “data only

Business Intelligence Maturity Levels
in the hands of the few” approach, coupled with the less

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4.1. Level 1: Informal
At this level, there is no official business intelligence policy
within the organisation, and BI is implemented through
spreadsheets, Access databases and similar tools. Data
gathering is done independently, not shared properly, and
there is no company-wide awareness of BI. The BI that exists
is at departmental or even individual levels (Balkanization
of data), which means it may occupy quite a lot of company
time (money) without producing maximum returns,
resulting in comparatively little return on investment (ROI).
4.1.1. Critical Attribute 1: Strong Executive Support
There has to be strong executive support for BI. Any lack of
enthusiasm at the top will filter downwards. The problem
with effecting any change in an organisation is simple:
employees, given a choice between doing what they are
told to do—or imitating their superiors—will always do
the latter.
A key component of obtaining strong executive support is
a convincing and detailed business case for BI. Letting
executive management know the advantages to the
organisation and themselves is crucial to getting them on
board with the solution. The reason organisations find
themselves at Level 1 is generally because of a lack of
executive support.
4.1.2. Critical Attribute 2: Key Stakeholder Identification
Early identification and prioritisation of the key stakeholders
is crucial. After all, if we don’t know who will benefit from
a BI solution, it is unlikely that we can persuade anyone that
it is in their best interest to support our initiative. Likewise,
if we don’t know who is opposed to our initiative (and why),
we will have problems developing convincing counter-
arguments. Lastly, if we don’t know who will be impacted
by it, we will have difficulty determining the key outcomes
that our initiative needs.
4.2. Level 2: Defined
At Level 2, the organisation has usually gone ahead with an
“IT-only solution”, often using internal transactional data
only. There is generally an improved and focused custom
reporting function, but BI functionality may not be used by
many employees due to a lack of awareness or a belief that it
is too technical and time consuming. Users often choose to
stick with their spreadsheet- or database-driven analyses.
This level is problematic: money has been spent with little
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advantage gained, leading to a negative ROI. At worst, this
initial lack of results may lead an organisation to become
sceptical as to the ultimate benefits of the BI solution, which
can easily lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of disappointment.
4.2.1. Critical Attribute 3: Early Creation of a Business
Intelligence Competency Center (BICC)
Many organisations identify a BI need, assign a project team
to fill that need, and upon completion of the task, reassign
the team to non-BI projects. Knowledge gained is therefore
lost. By retaining a permanent, knowledgeable team, an
organisation can:
• Maximise the efficiency, deployment and quality of
BI across all lines of business
• Deliver more value at less cost and in less time through
more successful BI deployments
• Proactively drive end-user adoption
Business Intelligence is an accelerant for change in an
organisation. If change is not managed, it becomes disruptive
and negatively effects productivity. The BICC helps manage
change by helping an organisation become one that learns
from its mistakes and remembers what was done, why it was
successful or unsuccessful, and reuses the successful strate-
gies while discarding the unsuccessful ones.
BICCs help promote information democracy, making sure
that all workers can access the information that will empower
them to do a better job, and creating synergy among people,
processes and technology. Ideally, BICCs should be permanent
departments in all organisations and can even be staffed by
employees as a secondary, part-time responsibility, separate
from their primary jobs within the company.
4.2.2. Critical Attribute 4: Clear Outcome Identification
Outcome identification—what outcome(s) the organisation
desires, and whether they are tactical or strategic—flows
out of stakeholder identification and determines:
• Knowledge—what knowledge is needed for desired
outcomes and where is it?
• Information—what information structures can be
identified from knowledge gathering and how can
these same structures be beneficial?
• Data—what sources of raw data are needed to
populate the information structures?
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Pursuing the answers to these questions requires both logic and creativity. We also need specific information at various
steps in the BI process. Looking at the generic BI road map (Figure 1), we can see that the Justify section requires some
answers from our stakeholders.
One approach that can be used to extract answers from stakeholders is to use a Business Intelligence Meta Model
(Figure 2) to facilitate brainstorming from Outcomes and Insights through Data.

Justify Plan Analyse Design Build Deploy

Identify Evaluate Define Database Applications Implement

Desired Transactional Detailed Design
Outcomes Data Requirements

ETL Evaluate
Write Project Analyse Data Metadata
Business Initiation and Metadata Repository
Case Proposal Design Metadata
Repository

Prototype
Deliverables ETL Design
Data Mining

Figure 1: Generic BI Road Map

Outcomes and Insights Knowledge Acquisition

Is the proposed change an: What are the high-level
business requirements?
Improvement?
Is it a:
Optimisation?
Business Case?
Feasibility Study?

What data do we need to Where will we find information

measure in order to establish: about the proposed outcomes?
Whether the proposed change Has anyone else done this?
is justified? If so:
Whether the benefits have How did they do it?
been delivered? Were they successful?

Data Information and Structure

Figure 2: BI Meta Model with Brainstorming Questions Used to Justify a BI Initiative

The figure above shows the Meta Model for the Justification aspect of a BI road map, showing the types of questions you
would ask within each section. Using the BI Meta Model (BIMM) enables us to focus on what is needed to define our BI
programme; the data, the right level of data, and so forth. It’s important to understand, however, that the BIMM is less
about giving you the “right” answers straightaway, but more about helping you arrive at them sooner.

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4.3. Level 3: Managed
At Level 3, the basic project management of BI is in place
within an organisation, usually in the form of a Business
Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC)—a coalition of
business, IT, and project personnel. Even so, poor BI
leadership can be an issue at this level, mostly due to
managers and users still resistant to the idea of BI, resulting
in a lack of enterprise-wide acceptance. This situation can
lead to isolated ROI gains within those departments where
the BI in place is accepted, but not across the organisation.
Furthermore, critical success factors (CSFs) are recognised
and identified, but they may not match Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) which may be determined by instinct
rather than derived from actual business drivers.
4.3.1. Critical Attribute 5: Tying CSFs and
KPIs to Business Drivers
Many business initiatives aim to obtain benefits—greater
efficiency, better morale, quicker access to information—
that are hard to quantify. We can easily accept that “greater
efficiency” is a good thing, but trying to quantify its precise
cash value to the organisation can be a challenge. These
benefits are essentially intangible but need to be measured.
Understanding what drives the organisation is a key com-
ponent of many methodologies (the Balanced Scorecard,
to name one) because it recognises that the success of
those intangible elements of the organisation—customer
responsiveness, staff training, leanness—are critical to the
financial success of an organisation.
Therefore, when identifying these key values, they can
be classified as “driving” strategy, organisation or
operations:
Strategic Drivers influence:
• Market attractiveness
• Growth, concentration, innovation, customer power
• Competitive strengths
• Market share, quality, intellectual property
Organisational Drivers influence:
• Culture
• Leanness
• Training and development
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Operational Drivers influence:
• Customer satisfaction
• Product excellence
• Productivity
When we clearly identify these drivers, critical success
factors can also be established for them, and in turn, key
performance indicators for each CSF. These may be qualita-
tive rather than quantitative, but appropriately measuring
intangible benefits is better than inventing a cash value
and being surprised when it does not materialise.
4.4. Level 4: Controlled
The key difference between Level 4 and previous levels is
strong business sponsorship. Usually, a BI “champion” has
initiated enterprise-wide selling of BI to the organisation
through the establishment of a BICC. The BICC can then
take the ongoing role of proactively selling and project
managing BI across the enterprise. The BICC plans and
introduces change management programmes to deal with
the business transformation that BI will engender.
Key business drivers are identified and documented
and used to identify both CSFs and meaningful KPIs. A
programme to capture external and unstructured data is
started, both to provide the right information for decision
makers and to integrate the organisation’s Balkanized
information. At this point, the organisation will often start
to use analytics/data mining on transactional internal data
to look for patterns of use that can bring about efficiency
improvements and enterprise-wide gains in ROI.
4.4.1. Critical Attribute 6: Analytics Awareness
As stated above, organisations have a tendency to measure
what is easy to measure—internal transactional data.
Extending the sensitivity of the organisation to external and
non-transactional data presents a fuller picture to decision
makers of both the organisation and the competitive envi-
ronment. It is also the start of continuous improvement for
the organisation. If measures are appropriate, the organisa-
tion can start to improve the processes. More importantly,
the measures can be refined by examining what else might
impact them, and the organisation can refine existing KPIs
and create new CSFs that would never have been spotted
without the ability to analyse large volumes of data.
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4.5. Level 5: Optimised References

At Level 5, there is company-wide acceptance of BI, 1
www.ncc.co.uk/aboutncc/press_rel/Business_Intelligence_
which is treated as one of a range of tools for managing
Implementations_fail_to_meet_objectives.cfm
information within the organisation, just like Word or
Excel. The BICC-managed BI programme allows individual 2
“Taming Information Chaos”, IDC/Teradata White Paper:
users and departments to participate in the continuous
ww.teradata.com/t/page/175052/index.html
improvement of BI tools and solutions. The key business
drivers, CSFs and KPIs, are refined using analytics data,
and external and unstructured data are integrated into
the BI solution. Analytics and data mining yields are fed
back into a company-wide knowledge management
process, and there are enterprise-wide gains in ROI and
cost savings due to optimising BI processes.

5. Driving Your BI Initiative Forward

The BI Maturity Levels Model
Determine the level of your organisation. Be honest:
There is no shame in being at Level 1 of the model, but
be aware that it is risky to invest heavily in technology
and consultancy without a clear idea of what the likely
workload for your organisation will be.

Strategic or Tactical BI?

Identify your desired outcomes and categorise them.
This way you can tell if tactical outcomes are on track,
and there won’t be the temptation to guarantee short-
term justification for a long-term strategic outcome.

The Six Critical Attributes

Which of the Six Critical Attributes of BI Solutions are
in place? Determining this will do more to ensure the
success of a BI solution than any other action by moving
the organisation up the BI maturity levels and helping
to identify whether the initial approach to BI should be
strategic or tactical.

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About Learning Tree International About the Author

Learning Tree International is a leading worldwide Peter Dillon-Parkin
provider of vendor-independent training to managers
Business Analyst
and IT professionals in business and government ABLE Solutions UK Ltd
organisations. Since 1974, over 2,000,000 course pdillonp@yahoo.co.uk
participants from over 65,000 organisations worldwide
have enhanced their skills and extended their knowledge Peter Dillon-Parkin is a Business Analyst, writer and
under the guidance of expert instructors with real- instructor who founded ABLE Solutions UK Ltd to
world experience. Learning Tree develops, markets and provide training and consultancy for public and private
delivers a broad, proprietary library of instructor-led sector organisations.
courses focused on the latest information technologies,
management practices and key business skills. Peter has worked in the software, banking and media
industries, as well as provided training for NGOs and
Learning Tree International annually trains over the military. He is the published author of the book,
94,000 professionals in its Education Centres around “Business Intelligence: Smarter Not Harder.”“
the world. Learning Tree also provides training in a
number of additional cities and on site at customer
locations in 43 countries. For more information
about Learning Tree products and services, please
call 1-800-843-8733, or visit our Web site at
www.learningtree.ca

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CA1006 BIP WP
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