Business intelligence is the process of transforming unstructured data into insightful knowledge. You can get data from many sources, arrange it, and then take advantage of the analytics. Would you like it? Most likely, because it offers the most impartial analysis of the industry. However, as you can expect, beginning such a complicated task involves some preparation, which is something we will hopefully assist you with. This post will also assist you in getting organized if your business has previously implemented some BI procedures. Intellicus, a BI software, allows you to integrate your data from many sources and analyze it using sophisticated capabilities (including predictive analytics and artificial intelligence).
Steps for creating a business intelligence strategy
- Evaluation of your present BI environment
You must establish a baseline in order to know where you are going. Consider the following scenario: You are aware that several departments have been using analytics, but the data has been largely siloed. For example, marketing personnel do not have access to sales data, and customer support personnel track user feedback for their own internal purposes. Alternatively, there may not have been any analytics at all. In short, it appears to work, but its efficacy is unknown.
- Develop the vision
A vision combines a goal and a course of action. Without a vision, a strategy is meaningless. It shows up in the form of numerous important choices, such as where we will acquire our data from or who will have access to the insights. A vision also serves the very practical aim of explaining to the members of your organization—who already use their preferred tools and procedures—why they require new ones and how the change will take place.
- Create BI governance procedures
Define the BI governance members, including their obligations, roles, and links to other corporate structures. Engage individuals at all levels, from executives to end users, to ensure that all of their viewpoints are included. Therefore, it’s more like a board of representatives from several company departments than a group of BI experts.
- Building a BI roadmap
A roadmap in this context is a graphic representation of deliverables at various levels of implementation within the timeline. You already have all the information necessary to plan and schedule tasks on the map at this point; all you need to do is set deadlines and deliverables for each activity. Only high-level tasks, such as “Find a BI provider,” or tasks that are more specific, like “Create a list of the top ten best matches,” can be included in the roadmap; however, for strategic mappings, the high-level overview will be sufficient.
- Design a BI strategy
The idea behind a strategy document is that it will serve as a hub for the entire organization and be used to explain the plan. What sections of this document are appropriate?
Clear data sources are necessary for business intelligence to conduct an accurate analysis. BI platforms typically ingest data from a data warehouse. You may evaluate data from several sources using current BI. We distinguish between trusted and untrusted data types. Spreadsheets, customer relationship management (CRM) data, financial data, and other trusted data are all stored in databases or can be quickly imported into databases. You most likely used this information in earlier business analytics. Information such as emails, customer discussions, corporate procedures, photos, news articles, trade magazines, etc. are examples of untrusted data. You can analyze untrusted data in a controlled and secure setting with current BI.
- Every year, review your BI approach
How will you assess whether your BI strategy is effective? You want to know how much better you understand your business or even how solid the relationships with end users have gotten; quantitative indicators alone won’t do. To set metrics and determine whether you’re moving in the right manner, you might review your BI Maturity model. The most important one would be ROI, which explains whether BI truly delivered projected value.
Qualitative measures could include the volume of data access requests from end users, a rise in output, or a higher percentage of deadlines met. The efficiency of the BI governance group should also be evaluated in terms of whether all objectives were achieved and whether any priorities had changed.
Key takeaways
A project within the larger approach will be the implementation of the BI software platform. The deployment of the BI tool will likely be significantly influenced by your IT staff, who may also offer some unique suggestions. The BI team should, however, frequently be informed of their progress utilizing an agile or conventional project management strategy with a built-in feedback loop. Establish the reporting framework for the BI team before deploying. What position do they hold in the larger organizational structure? Establish the reporting structure for the BI team as well as who will receive these reports. Lastly, decide on security permissions for the BI stakeholders in collaboration with IT.