How to deliver Business Intelligence into an organisation

Transcription

1 2017 How to deliver Business Intelligence into an organisation Alistair Sergeant Purple 1/27/2017

2 Why 80% of organisations implementing a Business Intelligence platform fail

3 When a business decides it wants to get a better understanding of its data, to make key strategic decisions, and deliver against organisational objectives; it s a great first step. But then typically their next step is to speak to the IT department and then they wonder why the project fails! An organisation s data is its Intellectual Property; it s the lifeblood of the business that helps make strategic decisions, which ultimately have a serious impact on outcomes. But with such great importance stowed upon this data we should see the business taking ownership of it, rather than it being handed over to IT as something that is solely within their remit. The fact of the matter is; we live in a world where every organisation needs some level of Business Intelligence (BI) delivering key critical data to business users in real time. However, because many find it daunting to even think about working with real time information, often the easiest thing to do is to pass it over to the technical department and make it their problem. Not only does this allow individuals to free themselves of the responsibility, but it also frees them of accountability when users don t get the information they need, or the report to management is late or incorrect. It s a lot easier to be able to point the finger of blame elsewhere. It is this way of thinking, that BI is an IT issue, that has led industry research to conclude that only 20% of Business Intelligence deployments are deemed successful a shocking statistic given the investment and demand for such a key project.

4 Consider the following statements; if you can answer yes to any of them then you and your business will benefit from BI. Would you benefit from greater insight into your customers behaviour? Would you benefit from your company data becoming actionable information? Would you like to improve business efficiencies across departments? Would you benefit from integrated data from multiple business applications or data sources? Is there a lack of visibility into the company s operations and finances? Would you benefit from pooling data from multiple business areas into one simple view? Would you like to access key information quickly and easily? Do certain users require more in-depth knowledge of business information? Are you experiencing rapid company growth or do you have a recent or pending merger/acquisition?

5 When it comes to delivering a BI platform there are many possible products that are fit for purpose; so which one is right for your organisation? Just because it is in the top of Gartner s magic quadrant doesn t mean it is right for you; every business will have different requirements. A common theme with the selection and implementation of most systems is that the business is led by product functionality and bespoke widgets. But without careful research and a real People, Process THEN Technology If you get this wrong at the beginning, you may as well not bother moving any further forward with the project. understanding of your requirements, and how the BI platform will impact on day to day practices, you could be implementing a system that actually makes life harder. It is essential therefore that you invest time upfront on really understanding what your user s data needs are, and how they are currently carrying out their job. Then you can assess the systems they already have access to, and how beneficial they are to them. With this easily attainable information, you are armed with a clear picture of your current as is environment. It then becomes a very easy task to put together a very simple list of functionality requirements which can be used to benchmark each product and see which is best suited for your needs. Use this requirement list to test the vendors, get them to demonstrate how they are going to deliver against your business demands, and importantly don t be sold by the good looking interface that has no useful functionality behind it.

6 Implementing a BI project completely changes the way you operate as a business. It alters the way users carry out their job, influences decision making processes, changes the way you provide information to customers, and helps you stay ahead of your competitors. Yet it s fair to say that in most instances the business never really appreciates that implementing a BI platform means embarking on a total transformation project. As a result of this oversight it frequently fails to get the proper Executive Sponsor and attention from the business that it deserves. In any BI decision making process there are a number of major steps that must be considered and these form the key stages of the BI User and Data Journey. As highlighted earlier, the choice of technology should never be considered until a full and complete discovery stage has been carried out. This discovery stage can be broken down into a number of key elements as follows: Discovery - Identify your Users The first, and arguably most critical step in your BI User & Data Journey, is to understand who your users are and what data driven goals and tasks they are trying to achieve. This sounds simple and obvious, but it is often overlooked. Learning who all your potential users are is vital if you want to ensure you have considered the entire organisation s data requirements, and to ensure their lasting satisfaction. To gain meaningful insight, Purple recommends creating user profiles, or personas for each type of user within the organisation. Discovery - Categorise your user groups Let s be honest, everyday users require different levels of access from business decision makers or experienced analysts, yet many organisations provide the same generic services and products to all their staff. If you make dashboards and reports designed for each target group, you re likely to see greater take-up. To achieve this, you have to start by categorising user groups. Much of the groundwork to achieve this will have been done in identifying your users and developing your personas. The information you have developed will enable you to identify common themes and requirements between cross-sections of your users, and in turn this will enable you to group them. There is a tendency to group users by their level within the organisation but this can be too generic.

7 Discovery - Identify the desired experience Once you have understood who your users are and you have defined your individual user groups, you should be thinking about the type of experience these users need to have with your data. How will they gain the most value and promote the most effective behaviour? Identify all of the platforms and devices the users will want to use depending on the various data use scenarios. Remember this may not be a constant throughout their working day and the user experience must flow from device to device as well as across variations in the connected environment, governed by different security profiles. Discovery Map your user groups to your data sources Now that you have identified the various users, the groups that define them as well as the desired experience, it s time to match the requirements to the various data sources identified in the exercise above. The process of mapping data to usage will identify how your data needs to be aggregated together to create the most efficient data structure, in terms of the design of your future data warehouse or data mart. The objective of any BI project is to create a solution that can not only deliver a single version of the truth over all data interrogation, but also the most efficient method to do this so that the data can be trusted and remains relevant in a fast moving environment.

8 So, you have your why, you have a strategy, you ve selected your vendor and the whole business has built into the concept of the journey you are about to start, but there s the elephant in the room how clean is your data? Most organisations will have years of data built up over multiple legacy systems, without any data management process in place, or any real understanding of what the data is in the first place. The major selling point of most BI solutions is the ability to consolidate all of the available data about your business. Consolidated data is far easier to analyse and allows the business to make more informed and educated decisions. However, in many cases the immediate failure comes down to the fact that the data you consolidate is full of errors and mistakes. This is often due to its historic nature creating a general distrust in any new system s delivery. This obstacle often leads to users keeping hold of their old manual systems to stay within their existing comfort zones and thus ignoring the new BI platform. The primary objective therefore is to get users over that initial mistrust and convert them into willing and able users of the BI solution, and that goal is only achieved with clean and trustworthy data. Once users start to doubt the accuracy of the information in the system it is near impossible to win back their trust. This is compounded if they have already been through a bad experience in the past with similar implementations. To avoid this scenario, look at the most common errors in systems data and address these first. Common examples are; Missing or incomplete data Typos Duplicates Spelling mistakes Outdated information The cleaner your data, the more useful insights and value your organisation will be able to gain from your systems, thus demonstrating an immediate ROI. A successful implementation and adoption of a BI solution requires a significant time investment in order to understand your data, ensuring its quality, and mapping into the correct format. Without this initial investment to ensure data accuracy, relevance and usability, there will be no benefit to anybody (apart from the software provider who has sold you a multiyear subscription license). And the absolute worst case scenario is that you end up producing an abundance of useless reports that nobody reads, understands or does anything with.

9 Undeniably, we are all part of a fast-paced, instant access world. The phrase, patience is a virtue is defunct in today s society; as consumers and individuals we want everything we can get our hands on and we want it now, in the quickest and easiest way possible. This is one of the reasons why the introduction of self-service tills within supermarkets has been such a success. We don t have to rely on anyone else to get the job done; the only limitation is our competence and efficiency, and maybe the occasional malfunctioning till. Applying this desire for instant access and self-servicing solutions to the Business Intelligence world, users can access key information without even having to speak with the IT department. There s no queue, no backlog of data requests, just instant information at your fingertips. These instant results are exactly what BI should always be about. Empowering users to access information themselves; quickly, easily and without the need to get a data scientist involved. This allows the maximum benefit to be gained from BI. But surprisingly most organisations still keep BI within IT, and fail to deliver the desired selfservice model, which is where the whole concept of this technology often fails.

10 Once you have everything else in place the last piece of the jigsaw is the adoption plan. Let s be very clear, unless you have an adoption plan, then this project will fail. Do not expect users to just pick this up and run with it. The result could be that despite all your hard efforts in getting to the implementation point, users may desist from engaging with the technology. Failing to use it properly would equate to a massive waste of time, resources and money, and importantly it will probably be difficult to convince users to do anything similar again. Adoption always starts with an Exec Sponsor; make sure you have this from the beginning of the project. Your leaders need to be committed to data-based decision making. If they are on board, there is a very real incentive for others to be on board too, particularly those who wish to be acknowledged as a high performer in the business. In addition to the Exec Sponsor, you should also look at how you can build adoption into your HR performance management plans. This will ensure that everybody has the same obligations to be on board with the change. Technology adoption is carried out in a very simple framework;

11 The only way to know how successful your BI delivery has been is to measure it. By this we mean you should take steps to determine whether employees are using the system at the frequency you were anticipating. User adoption is one of the key indicators of a successful BI initiative; and by taking steps to maximise user adoption, you are taking steps to increase the ROI of your new system. Creating a group of proactive super users to be the example to others will help the hearts and minds of the rest of the organisation to get on board with the change. However, remember that these individuals do also have a day job so it s important to allow them to carve out time from this to act as advocates and facilitate the successful adoption of the change.

12 Offering your users training on your BI solutions is perhaps the most obvious way of increasing user adoption, but it s not necessarily the most straightforward. When you plan your training program, there are some important things to keep in mind. When educating users always aim for contextual training making sure that the training is specific to your company and their role. Learning how to use it in the context of your organisation will provide a greater chance of getting users to use and rely on the system for data-driven decisions and business improvements. Introduce drop-in clinics for quick questions, and lunch and learns for people to share their experiences, successes or even frustrations.

13 Here follows some suggested user adoption KPIs you could use to monitor success, especially after users have been fully (and contextually!) trained on your solution: Number of active users System usage numbers (e.g., number of queries, dashboard views, etc.) Number of users receiving reports Number of reports generated Establish your success criteria early on so that you can celebrate success and milestones when you reach them. You ll also know if your initiative is on track or if there are additional actions you need to take to make your project profitable and beneficial to your business, such as further training, cleaner data, etc. Celebrating these successes creates a feedback loop of positive reinforcement around the solution. The more you celebrate insights, the more encouraged others are to find insights that can be celebrated, and so on, around and around. Don t just rely on the numbers to gauge the success of your project, be sure to check in with key users to see if they need any additional training or resources, and ask how satisfied they are with the BI tools. The more insight you have about the human side of your BI initiative, the more control you have over increasing user adoption. As a consultancy that works with clients through transformation, we always remind our clients to look at what they have achieved. It s very easy to focus on the things you need to do without taking a moment to stop and realise what you have actually already done. Give kudos to people when it s due, encourage people when the changes are working, and the rest will come naturally.

14 The most dangerous phrase in the language is We ve always done it this way REAR ADMIRAL GRACE HOPPER

15 1) Know your why 10 STEP GUIDE TO A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS INTELIGENCE DEPLOYMENT Every change must start with a why. Why are you doing this? Why don t you stay with what you have? When you know the reasons why, make sure those reasons are delivered in plain English and shared coherently throughout the business. 2) Strategy Invest in creating a strategy. You know why you need a Business Intelligence solution, but now s the time to put together a strategy on how to deliver it. Without a strategy, you will simply be wasting time, money and effort, not to mention damaging your credibility. 3) Exec Sponsor Change happens with leaders. If your Exec team are 100% on-board with the change then it s 100% more likely to be a successful change. Being on board doesn t just mean that they agree with the change, it means that they change their behaviours and working practices to fully adopt the change. Crack this and the rest of the business is more likely to follow. 4) Accept this is a business transformation you are undertaking This is not an IT project nor is it a project that should sit in isolation. This is a business change and is likely to impact all departments in one way or another. The way you operate as a business will change for the better so don t underestimate the scale of the change. Remember the worst thing that can be said during this project is, That s the way we ve always done it! 5) People, process then technology Invest in understanding how users currently undertake their role, what their ideal way of doing this would be and then what systems they have a touchpoint with. Do not be led by technology functionality or widgets, stay on track with what the business requires. 6) Map out the BI User Journey Nobody is the same, that s what makes the world so different. The same can be said about your users and their requirements. Users on different stages of BI will require access to different functionalities. Map out your user type and accommodate their requirements, training and continual measurements. Encourage new users to work towards becoming more advanced users, by showing how their role can change when they embrace the change the BI platform offers.

16 7) Fit for purpose training Classroom training isn t for everybody. Have a flexible training plan that is right for your organisation. It can include video on demand, drop-in clinics, social lunch and learns, and community training. 8) Technical considerations Whilst this is a business led initiative, you do of course need to involve the IT department. They will have a lot to consider in order to support the success of this project. Items such as: Design the design of your platform is going to be the most important factor to ensure the ease of access to your new simplified repository. The essence of what you are trying to achieve with your BI initiative is to simplify the user experience when accessing corporate data. Frequency the refresh rate of your data is another key factor to consider. It is important that the frequency of updates supports all of the user requirements that were identified in the discovery stage. Frequency can often drive cost in terms of processing power and storage, so it is important that the Platform is only updated as and when required. Snapshots a key feature of all data repositories is the ability to snapshot at key points in time. This will allow users to quickly access summarised data that has been stored at designated points in time such as month or year-end, without the need to re-mine the data. Once again these key points in time should be determined during the discovery stage, but can also be added at a later date without any excessive processing during low utilisation periods. Processing with all database activities the data warehouse or data mart will have a degree of processing overheads. This will depend on the number of users accessing the data as well as the number of data sources that need to be aggregated. This information once again will have been captured during the discovery stage and a calculation can then be carried out to understand if additional processing power or server memory is required to support the platform going forward. This is not a one off calculation and as BI adoption increases, this should always be given consideration for future planning and budget implications Storage as with processing, storage must be considered in any solution. Considerations must be made for the initial data load from all proposed data sources taking into consideration the volume of historic data as well as agreed snapshots in time. It is then important to understand the daily increase in storage and also any business strategy and expansion that will directly affect the volume of data storage required, and plan accordingly. 9) It s all about adoption This is a project that should absolutely not stop when you go live. A change in the way people work is a behavioural change. You must get into the hearts and minds of the users to encourage this project. Consider how you can fit this into your HR performance plans to drive the way of thinking. 10) Continual Improvement Monitor continually. Check you are delivering against your success criteria and take feedback on how you can approve the service.

17 We are an independent business and technology transformation practice. We work with organisations embarking on a change journey; to support the delivery of business objectives with the correct use of technology. Our team is built up of experienced Technical Consultants, Project Managers, Business Analysts, Solutions Architects, and Developers, whose expertise range from delivering complex business systems including: Agile Working, Business Intelligence, Cloud Services, CRM, Security, Unified Communications and Web Enablement.