Delivery, Delivery, Delivery...

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

Through my years of working on business intelligence projects, I have always wondered why so many projects fail to deliver. Well, after a thorough review of my memory banks, I have come up with the following phrases that are essential to your being able to deliver a successful business intelligence project.

"If you build it, they won't come."
Too many times IT has started business intelligence projects with the thought that if a data warehouse is built and there are tools to access this data, the business users will come flocking. Wrong. The truth is that business users use business intelligence systems for specific business purposes. Go figure. You should keep this in mind while building any business intelligence system. Be sure to find out what your users' requirements are for business intelligence before setting out on any endeavor. Furthermore, make sure that you communicate what it is that you are specifically building and how it will help improve a business user's productivity. A sound business intelligence communication plan should be part of any BI project.

"I've got a great sponsor: His boss' boss' boss is a manager."
Low level sponsorship is almost a sure guarantee of failure on a business intelligence project. These systems are almost always executive level systems that require executive level sponsorship--director level at the minimum. If you find that…

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