Business intelligence can help to create new business opportunities, simplify business decisions, and avoid digital disruption. In this article, we’ll go through the five most important tips for developing a successful business intelligence strategy.
An effective business intelligence strategy begins with an overview of your business, from both a business and technical perspective. For your strategy to work, it must include both aspects and must support both. In addition, your strategy should have both long-term and short-term goals, where short-term goals give you a significant advantage over long-term goals.
Business intelligence strategies – what are they, and how do they work?
By developing an effective business intelligence strategy, you can determine how your company is going to grow and succeed. A business intelligence tool lets you gather data from scattered sources, organize it, and present meaningful insights in real-time. You can organize your data and present meaningful insights in real time by using the right BI tool.
BI is the process of converting your company’s raw data into meaningful insights, and it can determine the path to your company’s growth and success. An adequate BI strategy will enable your company to grow and succeed. Data can be gathered from various sources in real-time by using the right BI tool, organized, and presented in meaningful ways.
BI & BIG DATA
The demand for business intelligence and big data isn’t limited to data scientists. BI, on its own, is forecast to reach USD 40.50 billion by 2026, with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12 %. This exponential growth isn’t theoretical.
There are many perils associated with not analyzing data, including falling behind in competition, being unaware of customer requirements, missing out on strategic growth opportunities, and many more. Business intelligence strategies are often adopted in haste by companies to prevent the above challenges, but that is not the ideal method.
Business intelligence should be planned properly before implementation, no matter if you are starting from scratch or migrating. You will need a robust strategy and roadmap.
What is a business intelligence strategy?
A well-implemented business intelligence strategy can be a path to a company’s growth and success. BI helps turn raw company data into meaningful insights. You may collect and organize real-time data from a variety of sources and provide meaningful insights using appropriate BI tools.
Vision
What do you expect to accomplish by implementing a BI solution?
Who and how?
Who will be responsible for executing the BI strategy? Would it be an internal or external resource?
How do you plan to bring the BI roadmap into action?
Tools and business operations
Which tool will you use, and which department will you begin with?
We have created a simple step-by-step guide for start-ups to use when implementing a BI strategy in their business.
The simple & reliable 5-step BI strategy plan
Step 1: Create the vision with an open mind.
The first step in any BI plan is to create a vision, which is an objective with a purpose. It needs to be done with an open mind.
What are your expectations and why are you interested in implementing BI in your organization? We all know that BI helps us better understand our data, but which data do you want to understand and how do you want to channel your results?
The business intelligence strategy must be embedded within your business operations and be in line with your objectives.
Step 2: Assess your current situation.
The best way to design an accurate roadmap is to know where your business is currently concerning business intelligence.
- Do you currently use data in any of your decision-making processes?
- Are there any dashboards in place?
- Will your IT team develop a data center?
- Are you using any database solutions or tools? If so, what are they?
- Are you using any paid BI tools? How do you manage data now, and is there a data analytics team?
Step 3: Set BI governance in place.
The major components of BI governance include BI teams, tools, support, and KPIs. Once you know where you are, you must focus on the team, tools, support, and KPIs that will help you achieve your vision.
BI team
It is essential to have a pool of resources known as a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC). This includes people from various departments, including end-users as well as BI experts.
They identify data requirements, create data governance structures, and oversee data quality and data integration processes.
BI Tools
You can start with tools like Power BI or Tableau if you are just getting started. You should use these drag-and-drop BI tools because they are easy to use, can collect data from multiple sources, and understand natural language.
Make sure your data sources are authentic and reliable, organize all your data in a data warehouse.
Support
During the implementation, your employees may have mental blocks, so make sure to train them, hold open house discussions, and provide support to develop a data culture. Each department should have a mentor who can assist others in learning data points and using business intelligence tools.
End users also need training otherwise, sometimes they won’t be able to extract meaningful insights.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
You can effectively measure your business’s progress using KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. You can see how the business is progressing toward its goals visually with the Power BI KPIs.
Your representatives from various departments, as well as your CDO (Chief Data Operator), can help to make these decisions. Initially, you may believe that every aspect is necessary. However, optimize with caution while keeping the company’s goal in mind.
KPIs are management tools that companies use to measure the performance of each process in order to manage them more effectively and efficiently.
Why use Power BI KPIs?
By now, it will be clear that KPIs provide answers to two key questions:
- Where is my business right now?
- How far ahead, or behind, am I from my goal?
The dynamic and interactive Power BI KPI graphs will provide instant answers to these two questions and help you enhance your ROI.
Step 4: Create a document for the business intelligence strategic plan.
Business intelligence strategies should be documented as a guide for everyone in the organization. But what should it include?
Align your BI strategy with your business plan.
Describe the value of BI, including how it can help to fix current problems and how it will improve the workforce performing their jobs – be specific.
Scope and requirements
The following steps should be set down here:
- Budget and workforce are required.
- The tools and business model you intend to use.
- Will you recruit someone in-house or outsource a BI consultant?
BICC (Business Intelligence Competency Centre)
Introduce the members of the project management team. A clear structure allows everyone to know who to contact if they have a data-related question, it also eliminates ambiguity.
Other Options
It shows doubts when stakeholders know about the other approaches you considered and why you didn’t. Your decision gains confidence.
State the roles
Stakeholders who are not members of the BI team will also be involved. Others may be your data source, while others may be end-users. In any case, everyone should understand what is expected from them and why.
Point of reference
Create a reference document that includes instructions for using the tool and definitions for various data terms. And whatever other information you didn’t include in the roadmap document.
Step 5: Evaluate your business intelligence strategy.
Assessing your approach and how well it contributes to your ROI can help you stay on track with your goals. As a conclusion, consider the following points:
- Is BI producing the expected results?
- Have you fulfilled all your data access requests?
- Has the productivity of your employees increased?
- Are deadlines being met more effectively than before?
- Is your BI team performing at its best?
- Are the tools adequate for your requirements?
- What is the judgment of your stakeholders?
To conclude – Data matters!
It is good to have digital transformation in today’s business environment. So, develop a comprehensive intelligence strategy to ensure your market edge.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” The business intelligence strategy and plan should not be overlooked. It’s indeed, without a doubt, the first step toward longer-term success. Proceed cautiously, paying close attention to each step.