A few of my articles on Business Intelligence have referenced Gartner's statistic that only about a third of all Business Intelligence projects are successful. Given this, almost anyone involved in Business Intelligence should probably be hungry to find out everything they can to help increase the chances of a successful Business Intelligence implementation...
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Given the complexity involved in implementing Business Intelligence, an interesting piece of rigorous academic research was conducted by Yeoh and Koronios a few years ago, with the objective of identifying the critical success factors (CSFs) applicable to the implementation of Business Intelligence systems in large and complex organisations.
Their overall finding was that non-technical factors, such as organisational and process factors, were more important in determining the success of Business Intelligence applications than technological and even data related factors were.
Indeed, a business-oriented approach to a Business Intelligence project was found to be a significant critical success factor, meaning that it was best to have a clear business objective for implementing Business Intelligence in order to best ensure success. Without clear articulation of the actual business need for Business Intelligence, the project isn't quite doomed, but it's certainly less likely to be successful than it could otherwise be.
There may thus be only one or two things to watch out for, next time you're in the presence of a Business Intelligence project, in order to estimate the probability of success of the project:
- Did IT "sell" Business Intelligence to the organisation, or did business express a particular need for it and approach IT for support?
- If business expressed a need for Business Intelligence, how did they express that need? Was it well articulated in terms of a particular business problem or was it vague?
If the need was expressed by business (not by IT) as an overall strategic business vision for the enterprise as far as data and information is concerned, then according to the research, you're on to a good thing if you're part of the implementation team.
Even better, if business articulated that vision in terms of a well articulated problem requiring resolution, supported by a sound business case, qualifying and quantifying the benefits of improved access to information, the costs associated with achieving this objective, the skills and manpower requirements and commitments, a consideration for operational risk, and anticipated timelines for implementation, then you're in the pound seats, provided appropriate stakeholder support and project management are in place.
Again, if the Business Intelligence intervention is not properly aligned to the vision of the organisation, supported by an active business sponsor, then how can it be expected that the intervention be a success?
This is the outcome of modern research. But what did one of the founding fathers of data warehousing, Kimball et al, have to say about getting BI right? The top two items are:
- Commitment and sponsorship of the project from senior management
- The business need for creating a BI implementation
So where did it go so wrong that Business Intelligence experiences such a high failure rate? Nothing's changed in terms of the critical success factors of implementing Business Intelligence in all this time, but yet only 30% of Business Intelligence projects are successful. I would suggest that we all listen to Kimball et all, as well as the likes of Yeoh and Koronios, and spend more quality time at the business end of the Business Intelligence project. By doing so, the results have a high probability of being successful.
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