E-Book

Best practices for business intelligence programs in midmarket organizations

More and more midmarket organizations are deploying business intelligence systems in an effort to get a better handle on their business operations and gain competitive advantages over their rivals. But managing a BI program can be a complicated and challenging process, and missteps can put BIs promised business value at risk. This eBook, designed for IT and business professionals as well as business executives involved in BI decisions, will give readers practical information on how to avoid problems and create successful BI programs in small and medium-sized businesses.

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Book Best practices for business intelligence programs in midmarket organizations

E-Book

Best practices for business intelligence programs in midmarket organizations

Table of Contents
Checklist items: business intelligence best practices for SMBs Midmarket business intelligence problems and pitfalls to avoid Coping with midmarket BI project management challenges: tips for SMBs Sustainable practices for updating SMB business intelligence processes Resources from SAP

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SearchBusinessAnalytics.com E-Book Best practices for business intelligence programs in midmarket organizations

Checklist items: business intelligence best practices for SMBs

By Alan R. Earls, SearchBusinessAnalytics.com Contributor According to Gartner Inc. analyst John Hagerty, there are two "stories" that people tell about midmarket business intelligence (BI). In one, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are too "simple" to need enterprise-class BI capabilities and too resourceconstrained to support them. In the other, midmarket companies have the same business needs as larger organizations and thus should follow the same standards in deploying and managing BI systems. The truth is, said fellow Gartner analyst Kurt Schlegel, that business intelligence best practices in the midmarket aren't that different from those in large enterprises. For example, there are, or should be, cross-functional BI teams that include IT and business representatives as well as workers with analytical skills, plus lots of end-user training and a focus on change management. "There are some differences, but I'd emphasize the similarities," Schlegel said. However, simply getting started is the key step for SMBs. Schlegel said there is one notable difference between them and larger organizations: The latter typically have been investing in BI processes and tools for a long time, but that isn't true of the former. "As a result," he added, "getting the business justification for an initial investment is a current challenge for midmarket organizations, where often there is no budget and no staff for a BI program." According to Schlegel, the best bet for demonstrating the benefits of business intelligence as you start to move forward on a midmarket BI project is to follow the aphorism "Start small, think big." In other words, set substantial goals for the BI program, but be sure you can deliver features and functionality to business users in useful increments. And once a project is off the ground, there are other important decision points and BI project management approaches that can help SMBs avoid BI problems. Here is a checklist of midmarket BI best practices recommended by Gartner and other consulting firms:

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Don't forget to have a plan. Jeanne Johnson, global head of the BI consulting group at KPMG LLP, said that BI projects fare best when the implementation process is well planned and moves ahead in an orchestrated fashion. "Be very staged," Johnson said echoing Schlegel's advice, she recommended that BI teams "do something quickly to get people excited" and then move ahead in a series of achievable steps. For example, you might mock up multiple versions of BI dashboards for prototyping purposes while prioritizing one of them so it can be put into use ahead of the others. "If people learn to trust BI, they'll put more resources into it," Johnson said. Figure out what you need to buy and what you don't. According to James Kobielus, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., one of the first things that midmarket organizations should do is determine whether they need a separate BI platform or whether the BI functionality built into their existing business applications are sufficient. For example, most ERP and CRM systems include reporting interfaces, Kobielus said. If an organization requires only basic reporting and trending capabilities for business intelligence purposes, it may be able to rely on the built-in tools and avoid the need to license, install and manage standalone BI software, he added. Keep it simple. As a general rule, Kobielus said, SMBs should try to start simple and stay simple on their BI strategies and deployments unless they have a compelling reason to build a more complicated BI system. "The vast majority of BI is just focused on delivering basic reports," he said, noting that midmarket organizations in particular might not need "fancy dashboards, predictive models or continuous [data] updates, because you may have just one or two data sources and only a few users." Many BI vendors are now offering "strippeddown" versions of their product suites geared to SMBs, Kobielus said, recommending that midmarket BI teams carefully evaluate those packages if they do plan to purchase BI tools. Empower end users, and save on IT resources, through self service. Both Gartner and Forrester recommend a self-service BI approach that enables business users to build their own views of standard reports instead of having to rely on IT or a BI team to do it for them. "We see that as a front-and-center issue, especially in midmarket companies where people need to be more enabled and self-service-oriented," Hagerty said. With the selfservice approach, users should be able to create new reports faster than if they had to wait for IT's help, and they can personalize reports based on their individual needs. But, Hagerty

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cautioned, "when you look at a BI package, make sure it has features that can actually be used by the users." Assess your data needs and determine whether BI can "do it alone." Kobielus said that if a midmarket organization has multiple applications handling different sets of data, a BI initiative might be a good reason to try to unify reporting and better correlate the data, conceivably in a data warehouse or integrated data marts. However, he warned that building and managing data marts or a data warehouse can be a big undertaking for SMBs, typically requiring a dedicated group within IT. Consolidating, cleansing and integrating data and developing standardized reports also require resources. If all that seems too daunting to take on internally, "consider outsourcing," Kobielus said. The available options include hiring consultants to develop and perhaps manage a data warehousing and BI system for you; deploying your servers at a hosting facility while continuing to manage the BI environment internally; and using Software as a Service BI applications that run in the cloud and are priced on a subscription basis. Don't let costs get out of hand. It's no surprise, of course, that avoiding unnecessary spending would find its way onto a list of midmarket business intelligence best practices. Keeping BI costs under control boils down to doing a good job of identifying the things that an organization really needs as part of the process of gathering requirements and building a BI business case, Kobielus said. Not overbuying on hardware is one good way to achieve the cost-containment goal, he added; adopting an outsourcing approach for at least part of a project might be another.

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Midmarket business intelligence problems and pitfalls to avoid

By Alan R. Earls, SearchBusinessAnalytics.com Contributor If companies of all stripes aren't careful, business intelligence (BI) projects can turn into cases of death by a thousand cuts: There are plenty of ways to go wrong, some large and some small. But midmarket organizations face their own set of business intelligence problems, challenges and pitfalls, according to analysts who follow the BI market. For instance, too many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) try to use BI software as a giant Band-Aid to "fix" disparate systems, said Jeanne Johnson, global head of KPMG LLP's BI consulting group. "Most people assume that you can put something on top of your existing systems and make sense of all the variability in the source systems underneath," Johnson said. She added that some companies try to "ETL through the process" using extract, transform and load tools to translate and reconcile data in order to get the BI output that they want. But such approaches are "a slippery slope" that can end up being nothing more than exercises in building interfaces, Johnson cautioned. Instead, she advised midmarket companies to look holistically at their IT architecture to see if they're doing the right things in terms of capturing, consolidating and distributing data. Sometimes, she said, "IT renovations" are needed before a BI system can be successfully deployed. Possible cause of BI problems: striving for perfection Another common problem, Johnson said, is SMBs trying to "perfect their requirements" to the point where they have a seemingly airtight BI project plan. That sounds like a great idea but in practice, both BI tools and business needs are likely to evolve faster than such plans envision, according to Johnson.

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"There is a huge value in working with a few metrics at a foundational level and then building additional capabilities as you develop," via an iterative process, she said. Doing so can help ensure that business decision makers and other workers actually use a BI system, although Johnson acknowledged that there tends to be "a little bit of an art to that process." John Lucker, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLC who leads the firm's advanced analytics and modeling practice, said one of the common BI problems he sees involves setting expectations as part of a BI business case and then failing to delivering on them. Even the question of whether to pursue a BI implementation needs to be examined honestly, Lucker advised. "People read articles that say they have to have BI, but companies, especially at the midsize range, may not really have the resources," he said. For organizations that do decide to pursue business intelligence strategies, Lucker said it's important to articulate a clear vision and develop a BI roadmap that includes a mix of short, medium- and long-term deliverables; otherwise, the BI effort could lose focus and internal support. Three-year plan could end in business intelligence problems Perhaps just as important, he added, is the need to achieve some initial successes. "Don't tell people that in three years it will all be worthwhile," he said. "You want to be able to show something that will begin to throw off benefits in three months." Such accomplishments can then be used as a down payment of sorts on getting approval for additional BI capabilities, according to Lucker. Not having a good handle on data can also lead to BI problems. Lucker said midmarket companies sometimes fail to put the required effort into developing proper information management and data governance processes to support their BI systems. That doesn't necessarily mean SMBs need to build data warehouses, but they do have to make sure that business users can effectively utilize available data, whether it's from internal or external sources, he noted.

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Yet another misstep stems from companies not understanding that doing BI well isn't just a matter of hiring the right technical people. The development of BI processes should be viewed as a business project with technical components, Lucker said. "What makes for success," he added, "is staying focused on the business and organizational aspects, where you not only deliver information but also change the management, organization, structure and training of people." But the ultimate pitfall, according to Gartner Inc. analyst Kurt Schlegel, may be failing to grasp that BI requirements evolve over time and that internal BI best practices need to be regularly revised and updated. That can be exacerbated by allowing a vendor-customer relationship to develop between IT or a BI team and the business, Schlegel said. A crossfunctional BI project management approach that makes participants equal partners offers a better chance of avoiding problems, he added.

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Coping with midmarket BI project management challenges: tips for SMBs

By Alan R. Earls, SearchBusinessAnalytics.com Contributor While business intelligence analysts differ on many things when it comes to managing BI projects, there is general unanimity about the value of having a centralized BI team such as a business intelligence competency center (BICC), a concept championed by Gartner Inc. and other consulting firms under various names. Gartner analyst John Hagerty views a BICC as an essential component in any BI program, at midmarket organizations as well as larger companies, because it includes representatives from both the business and IT sides and can provide long-term guidance and control on BI processes. "Where exactly the BICC reports to is less important than the range of skills and viewpoints represented that's the key to managing an effective rollout," Hagerty said. Claudia Imhoff, president of consulting firm Intelligent Solutions Inc., also sees value in the BICC concept, but she noted that midmarket companies face some unique BI project management challenges. In general, she said, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are more sensitive to two things than large organizations are: costs and the fact that they typically don't have huge IT teams. "The IT departments at midsize companies are usually fairly small," Imhoff said. "They're often very clever at getting things done more efficiently and with less expense than their larger brethren, but they have their limits." For example, if an SMB's IT department has 10 people and three or more of them would be needed on a BI team, that's a substantial percentage of the total IT head count. As a result, Imhoff recommended that midmarket organizations consider bringing in outside consultants to help staff and manage BI implementations. Consultants have the obvious advantage of not being a permanent overhead expense, as new employees hired for a BI project would be. But SMBs must be careful in how they use consulting help, she said.

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Keeping an inside hand in BI project management As much as midmarket companies may need assistance in creating and implementing a BI project plan, they also need to think strategically, according to Imhoff. "You need to be sure to keep some of your knowledge and capabilities in-house," she said. "You need people who understand your operating system, ETL process and data quality issues, and with a consultant you could easily lose that." In addition, Imhoff stressed the importance of finding consulting firms that are well-versed in BI best practices, ideally from prior experience on midmarket BI projects. That's particularly crucial because in contrast with larger companies, SMBs are likely to have consultants "more deeply embedded in your organization and on board for a longer time," she said. James Kobielus, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., also sees specific BI project management challenges for SMBs. For example, while large companies normally staff a project team with BI, data warehousing and data integration professionals, that combination of skills might be overkill for a midmarket organization, Kobielus said. But, he added, those skills are needed to some degree. "If you have limited IT resources and you aren't attempting anything too complex, it may be that one person can manage the whole thing," Kobielus said. "If one DBA can be crosstrained on BI, that may be enough." Finding a suitable candidate internally might not be easy, though and more than technical skills are needed to avoid BI problems and pitfalls. Business users must be heavily involved in helping to define BI requirements, according to Kobielus, who said BI project managers should seek input from both casual and power users. The former group might just want to view a few reports, while the power users subject-matter experts in finance or human resources, for example are likely to be looking for the ability to do things such as drill down into data and build complex visualizations.

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BI project management action item: team building Especially in a midmarket organization, "you want to get the power users on the team to write the functional specs for your tools," Kobielus said. In addition, he recommended that a BI team include the data "owners" representatives from departments such as finance and marketing. "It's their data that will be getting loaded into the BI reports, so you need to make sure you enlist them early because without access to their data, BI is useless," he said. The data you plan to use for BI purposes also needs to be cleansed, consolidated and, if possible, put into a common data format a process that Kobielus said can evolve into a long-term data stewardship effort to ensure that BI tools and reports present information "in ways that don't garble the meaning of that data downstream." And finally, there is the technology-selection aspect of BI project management. Midmarket companies in particular should make sure that they choose BI software that fits their needs and skill levels, Kobielus advised. "If you have an analytics-savvy organization, give them power tools," he said. "If not, make it simple don't do 'overkill'." Imhoff made a similar point about selecting the right technology, in even more direct terms: "Midmarket firms don't have time to do trial and error," she said.

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Sustainable practices for updating SMB business intelligence processes

By Alan R. Earls, SearchBusinessAnalytics.com Contributor According to analysts, one of the biggest challenges on business intelligence projects is keeping BI systems up to date as business needs change and new requirements emerge. Their message is straightforward: Since organizations are constantly evolving, business intelligence processes and capabilities must do so, too. "You need to have a sustainment model," said Jeanne Johnson, global head of consulting firm KPMG LLP's BI group. BI systems must be aligned and integrated with new businesses and business processes, Johnson said and that's where a key difference between midmarket organizations and larger enterprises can emerge, she added. In Johnson's view, many large organizations have difficulty with the concept of creating a flexible and agile BI architecture, whereas small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), less burdened by bureaucracy, often are better able to get their arms around the need for flexibility and incorporate it into their BI project management procedures. To meet the goal of being able to support business changes within BI processes, though, midmarket companies should strive to compile high-quality master data and relevant metadata components, Johnson advised. Her list of BI best practices also includes avoiding the tendency to overreach on functionality that could be hard to maintain going forward. "In this kind of process, I think 'less is more' is a good design principle," she said. Focusing on key BI capabilities that can be reliably supported and sustained will produce wins and success usually breeds more success, Johnson noted.

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Business intelligence processes: more than just a project Offering a similar kind of watchword, Gartner Inc. analyst John Hagerty said it's crucial to remember that a BI initiative isn't just a single project it's a program. "By definition, that means it goes on for a long period of time," he pointed out. Hagerty said that in talking to clients about BI project management issues and best practices, the importance of having a BI competency center (BICC) or other centralized BI team has been shown time and again. "I've seen the business side pushing for a bigger role and their own BI budget, and I've seen IT fighting back, but the point was that they had to come together and meet in the middle within the BICC," he explained. Keeping BI processes sustainable and up to date can also a matter of "going viral," according to Hagerty. Echoing Johnson's comments, he said that one of the surest ways to garner broad support and ongoing funding for a BI deployment is to have visible successes. "If you start BI in one area, like sales and marketing, before too long other functions will come out of the woodwork looking for help with their own projects and their own requirements," he said. John Lucker, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLC and leader of the firm's advanced analytics and modeling practice, said that to avoid potential business intelligence problems as a midmarket BI project moves forward, there needs to be an understanding that you're on the equivalent of a treadmill and you can't just get off when you feel like it. Staying in the loop on improving BI processes That requires having a requirements-gathering and BI development structure for both short-term and long-term needs, Lucker added. "You're not creating a maintenance process but something more like a continuous improvement process," he said. "You need to keep looping back to see if what you're delivering is fresh and relevant." For Claudia Imhoff, president of consulting firm Intelligent Solutions Inc., the sustainability demands also have implications for the choice of a BI delivery model. "You need to think carefully about what elements to outsource and what elements to keep within your

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organization," Imhoff said, pointing to possible options such as using Software as a Service BI applications that can be easier to deploy and upgrade than traditional BI tools are. It isn't always easy to keep up the effort demanded by BI programs, Lucker acknowledged. "This stuff is hard, and companies can get organizationally exhausted," he said. Preventing that isn't just a matter of technical or business skills a sustainable midmarket BI strategy also calls for some evangelists who can champion enhancements to BI processes on ongoing basis, according to Lucker. "They need to be looking constantly for new ways to leverage insights because if they don't, your competitors will," he said. Alan R. Earls is a Boston-area freelance writer focused on business and technology.

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Resources from SAP

SAP BusinessObjects Edge Business Agility for Midsize Companies Creating Competitive Advantage with Business Intelligence Pervasiveness - IDC White Paper

About SAP
SAP's vision is for companies of all sizes to become best-run businesses. Best-run businesses transform rigid value chains into dynamic business networks of customers, partners, and suppliers. They close the loop between strategy and execution, help individuals work more productively, and leverage technology for sustainable, profitable growth. This vision is in keeping with SAP's mission to accelerate business innovation for companies and industries worldwide - contributing to economic development on a grand scale.

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