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Implementation Process of Business Intelligence in an Organizatio n

User resistance is one big barrier to BI success; others include having to winnow through voluminous amounts of irrelevant data and poor data quality. The key to getting accurate insights from BI systems is standard data. Data is the most fundamental component of anyBI endeavour. It's the building blocks for insight. Companies have to get their data stores and data warehouses in good working order before they can begin extracting and acting on insights. If not, they'll be operating based on flawed information.

Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyse an organisation’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting. Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise systems. CIOs use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering. With today’s BI tools, business folks can jump in and start analysing data themselves, rather than wait for IT to run complex reports. This democratisation of information access helps users back up — with hard numbers — business decisions that would otherwise be based only on gut feelings and anecdotes. Although BI holds great promise, implementations can be dogged by technical and cultural challenges. Executives have t

Corporate culture changes, and with change can come fear, especially if it is tied to performance standards. Much of that can be abated if you are honest with stakeholders and employees. It can also be a time-consuming process, taking up to a year to fully implement, although the original estimate from Kaplan and Norton indicated a time of 26 months to implement everything down to the level of individual employees. It also requires full top-level support over a long period of time, during which other priorities and emergencies almost certainly will take centre stage, at least temporarily. And it's certainly not cheap. Depending on the scope of the project, it can cost from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Costs include team members and time spent, facilitator cost, software licensing costs, installation and testing costs, and annual maintenance and upgrade costs.

A broad range of applications for BI has helped companies rack up impressive ROI figures. Business intelligence has been used to identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover business opportunities, roll ERP data into accessible reports, react quickly to retail demand and optimise prices. Besides making data accessible, BI software can give companies more leverage during negotiations by making it easier to quantify the value of relationships with suppliers and customers.Within the walls of the enterprise, there are plenty of opportunities to save money by optimising business processes and focusing decisions. BI yields significant ROI when it sheds light on business bloopers. For example, employees of the city of Albuquerque used BI software to identify opportunities to cut mobile phone usage, overtime and other operating expenses, saving the city $US2 million during three years. Likewise, with the help of BI tools, Toyota realised it had been double-paying its shippers to the tune of $US812,000

According to the Balanced Scorecard Institute, it consists of multiple steps: 1. Assess the company's organisational structure 2. Identify strategic themes 3. Define perspectives and strategic objectives 4. Develop a strategy map 5. Derive performance metrics 6. Craft and prioritise strategic initiatives 7. Automate and communicate 8. Cascade the balanced scorecard throughout the organisation 9. Collect data, evaluate and revise