Keys to Successfully Launching a Business Intelligence Project

Launching a business intelligence (BI) project is much like any other project in that its success relies on your ability to accurately identify requirements and provide a means of fulfilling them. In addition to following standard project management protocol, use the tips below to ensure your business intelligence project’s success:

Identify Stakeholders and BI Requirements – Early on, you’ll want to identify all stakeholders and BI requirements. Your stakeholders will have a number of concerns, opinions, and expectations that you need to be aware of. Identifying stakeholders, their concerns, and business intelligence requirements early is crucial in both obtaining stakeholder buy-in and in ultimately selecting the right business intelligence solution.

Align BI with Corporate Strategy – Next, identify how BI can support and align with corporate strategy. If you are unclear about the company’s goals and objectives, your business intelligence project will have trouble supporting them. Make sure that you are crystal clear on the strategy as a whole along with any related strategy-driven requirements.

Determine What Decisions BI Will Help To Facilitate – Before honing in on any potential BI solutions, you’ll also need to know what decisions business intelligence will help to facilitate. For example, if the company’s strategy involves being the “low-cost leader,” the decisions BI will help managers make will likely involve reducing costs and improving efficiencies across the board. On the other hand, if the company’s strategy involves providing “VIP service,” then the decisions BI will help facilitate will likely involve improving the customer experience, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction rates.

Establish KPIs that Support Decision-Making – Once you know what decisions BI will help facilitate, you can then establish the key performance indicators that will be used by managers to monitor performance and make decisions.

Pick Your BI Solution Wisely – Finally, it’s time to make a decision of your own: Which business intelligence strategy is the best for your project? The ideal business intelligence solution will meet all of your requirements as well as provide the flexibility to accommodate the needs of various stakeholders. For example, your inventory manager will need to monitor a different set of KPIs than your marketing manager. The ability to customize individual dashboards provides this flexibility.

Put these tips to use and position your BI project for success!

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