With these 5 success factors, your BI project is a success

Assuming that all important aspects and possible weak points are considered in the BI project. We'll show you which Five success factors Make a significant contribution to making your BI project successful.

• Success factor #1: Convince your management

• Why executives should support your BI project

• Success factor #2: Provide a complete data foundation

• Success factor #3: Define appropriate BI key figures

• Success factor #4: Use the right tool for your BI project

• Success factor #5: Choose a flexible project method

• Conclusion: With the right basics, your BI project will be a success

SUCCESS FACTOR #1

Convince your management

The biggest hurdle on the road to becoming a data-driven company is cultural. Because with business intelligence, strategic and operational action is profoundly changing. This poses challenges in particular for companies whose business model is not primarily based on data and its analysis.

To successfully optimize your business processes with a BI project, you should first know your organization's caveats:

• How do we ensure that the results for which we are responsible can be seen by everyone?

• How much will change as a result of data analysis and how will this affect individual employees, procedures and projects?

• Will my job be lost if tasks are automated?

• Will we be able to implement a BI project or is it too complex?

Take concerns seriously and develop answers. This helps to pick up and convince your management. Because support from management (sponsorship) is crucial for the success of your BI project.

Why executives should support your business intelligence project

In order for data analysis to bring added value to your company, you need a good data basis, the right key figures, tools and project methods (see Success Factors #2 to #5).

If management supports the BI project, it will ensure that the specialist departments receive all the information they need to then achieve meaningful results.

SUCCESS FACTOR #2

Provide a complete data foundation

When you're doing a BI project, you should be aware of one fact: Garbage in!

That means: When you work with incomplete and inconsistent data, you also end up with incomplete and inconsistent results. That leads to wrong decisions.

To achieve your goal — valid, fact-based insights that move your business forward —, you should pay a lot of attention to your data management. Errors can occur in the data sets not only during data entry, but also during storage and administration.

Your data should be “clean.” That means they should have the following characteristics:

• Completely

• Structured

• Up to date

Up to a certain point, data can also be corrected or manipulated retrospectively. However, this is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. In addition, data corrections or data manipulations only ever fix the result, never the cause of your problems. This does not lead to the desired insights.

The following applies Getting to the root of the problem of “dirty” data.

Optimize your operational systems, infrastructure, and data loading processes. In addition to discipline among users, data consistency is the only sensible way to a solid and sustainable data foundation — and thus to a successful BI project.

SUCCESS FACTOR #3

Define appropriate business intelligence metrics

Business intelligence is intended to help you achieve your to optimize business processes and achieve strategic goals. For this to work, it is absolutely necessary to define the correct and appropriate key figures.

The principle of “a lot helps a lot” is not conducive to the implementation of BI projects. It also doesn't help to include KPIs in reports and dashboards just for decorative purposes. The great art is to select a few, meaningful key figures.

Your metrics should:

• Pay into overarching corporate goals

• Be cross-departmental and adequately defined

• Be understood by everyone

• Operationally usable

• Serve as a basis for control

SUCCESS FACTOR #4

Use the right tool for your BI project

A business intelligence project involves a variety of data sets. How many there are differs from company to company. As a result, the required level of data management also varies.

There are now numerous BI solutions that help companies manage and analyze their data sets. The decisive factor for the success of your BI project is: The selected software must match the requirements of your organization. Not only in the first month, but also in all future ones. Everything else costs you unnecessary time and money.

The most important factors when choosing a tool are:

• Number of data sources and data sets and their expected growth

• Required timeliness

• Know-how

Just that Know-how within your own company is crucial. Because no data tool (yet) can do the most important tasks alone. They need support when it comes to:

• Combining heterogeneous data rooms in a meaningful way

• Translating business requirements into “data language”

• Establishing data quality in the pre-systems

• Establishing the data culture in the organization

SUCCESS FACTOR #5

Choose a flexible project method

BI projects are complex and usually take a very long time. Most of your initial requirements will change over time. You need to adapt some requirements quickly, some less quickly. Some will even reject you because the market situation has changed. Or because the insights that business intelligence provides you with awaken further wishes and ideas.

This dynamic requires a flexible approach. Choose a project management method that is based on short cycles, is consistently transparent and can be changed quickly. Possible suitable organizational forms can include agile project management, Kanban or Scrum.

It is important to find out which is right for your BI project individually.

CONCLUSION

With the right basics, your business intelligence project will be a success

Business intelligence helps you achieve your business goals — provided the conditions are right.

Management support, “clean” data sets and clearly defined key figures are more than half the battle. If you also choose the right tool and a suitable project method for your organization, you are well prepared.