5 Keys to Awesome Business Intelligence

Awesome Business Intelligence can underpin growth and inform business strategy.  When discussing Business Intelligence many businesses focus on the tools and technology, but like most things truly effective Business Intelligence is driven by people and processes. More than that, effective Business Intelligence functions are empowered to tackle tough business challenges, not just standard monthly reporting.

1. Business Ownership

The Business must own BI, not IT.  IT should 100% aim to provide effective infrastructure and support but senior business leaders must be in charge.  Business leaders who understand the value of effective business intelligence will insist on this (or they’ll do it themselves anyway).

I’ve seen many instances where businesses are overly reliant on IT and/or external consultants (trust me, I am one) to get anything done or to answer key business questions.  This can work, but it’s not effective.

IT can focus on supporting the business by unlocking new data sources and providing the controls to ensure system availability. Consultants can provide specialist expertise, deliver a project, review business-developed solutions and discuss overall strategy. But the business must have ownership, otherwise what is the point.

2. Focus on Trust

Garbage in, garbage out is very true in BI. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve reviewed key Business Reports and immediately seen data issues. If business users don’t trust their data or know there are issues any attempt at effective business intelligence is undermined.

If there are issues, fix them, and fix them permanently. This can be something simple like ensuring Product names are accurate through to more fundamental things like sales commissions reconciling to commission payments.  Trust me, sales staff may seem like they don’t care about business intelligence reporting but if it relates to them and potentially influences reward they’ll identify issues in seconds.

If issues are found, effective business intelligence functions will be capable of rapid fixes and the ability to clearly demonstrate issue resolution and report quality.

Trust in the quality of reporting and related analytics should remain absolutely central to effective business intelligence.

3. Involve the Business

Involving the business is closely related to business ownership. Many staff will not be technical and will not understand the intricacies and complexity of data. But they will know things like the business, competitors, and industry trends.

Effective business intelligence will actively engage and involve people from across the business. Leveraging this knowledge from across the business will mean better questions, a greater sense of business ownership, and perhaps the addition of additional unstructured data that can be of immense value.

I've seen examples of really effective Business Intelligence functions that have members from across the business join them for short periods (several weeks or months). The knowledge transfer and improvements in the quality and relevance of reporting are well worth it.

4. Add Business Value

Effective business intelligence is all about helping businesses overcome critical challenges. It’s not about having masses of data, masses of history, or hundreds of reports… nobody cares.

Business Intelligence professionals should understand the business strategy and key business problems and this should inform what data and metrics get priority.

Once senior leaders know that Business Intelligence analysts truly understand the business and provide insight into key business challenges they will be given a seat at the table.

5. Tactics and Strategy

The following post Data Insight Tactics and Strategy highlights that effective business intelligence functions embrace both longer-term strategic capabilities and short-term tactical skills.

It expects and embraces change.

Effective business intelligence functions can rapidly generate answers (or quickly determine that answers won't be easy), while continually improving infrastructure and capabilities to make answer generation easier.

Finally, an effective Business Intelligence function must be proactive and empowered. Find the hard questions, shed insight on them, and don't get stuck providing boring reports. Measure your effectiveness.