Putting together a viable business intelligence program for your company involves establishing a strong base for your reporting capabilities to grow from. By first establishing a strong strategy and implementation program across your organization you can start off on the right foot with your BI program. A strong strategy is extremely important because it will set you in the right direction for your company, while the disorganization of “winging it” will take you far off course. How you implement your strategy will make a huge difference in whether or not your business intelligence program sticks and provides benefit for your company long term.
Your BI Strategy
You’ll want to put a strong data quality program into place before you start anything else for your business intelligence program. You’ll need accurate and reliable information that goes through your core systems. If your organization is a financial institution, then you’re already ahead of the game. Financial institutions require data accuracy to stay in business. Even if you don’t already have a data quality program in place, you can create one. Here are some other things that you might want to include when putting your program in place:
• Set up one person as your data quality go-to and make sure that they have the resources they need to identify errors, conduct audits of the existing data, and establish a metrics program to improve data entry.
• Remember that data is being used across you company in different ways by different teams. You’ll want to make sure that you collect and store your data in a way that is functional for all parties that need access to it. Keep in mind not just what data both people within your company and end users will be looking for, but what they hope to accomplish with the information.
• You won’t necessarily need to customize your entire
business intelligence program, especially if your company is a medium to small business. Once you accomplish the goal of delivering accurate and reliable information effectively, you can worry about customizing reports. You also don’t necessarily need all the bells and whistles. If your company can get the information it needs from a basic program, you’ll have a far greater ROI than if you invest in a complete package that offers a bunch of extras you don’t need.
Implementing Your Strategy
Make sure that your IT team is a part of implementing your strategy from the get go. That way you won’t run the risk of demanding that they learn and implement a great deal in a short period of time. On the same note, you will want to keep everyone on your team apprised of the progress of your business intelligence program. Make sure that senior leadership both understands and sees the benefit of your program, as their understanding and support will help you down the line when you need to revisit your budget.
