Yesterday I gave a talk at the Mastering Business Intelligence with SAP 2009 conference. The objective was to talk about the core reasons for 'doing' BI/IM/DWH and to identify best practises. I did this by looking at a bunch of projects that I have been involved with over the last several years. The key features of the projects are:
- Lessons from approximately 100 BI projects
- Projects were active in the period 2003 - 2009
- Tools used:
- Analytic Tools:
- 50% in environments with SAP
- 30% SAS
- 20% with Cognos
- 20% Microsoft
- 20% Other
- Underlying databases:
- 60% Oracle DB
- 20% DB2
- 20% SQLServer/MySQL
- 10% Teradata
- 70% Australian, 30% Asian
- Mainly in Banking, Insurance and Leisure industries.
The most common benefits of the projects were the development of the following capabilities:
- Better understand current performance (issues)
- Identify efficiency opportunities (insight)
- Reliably predict future performance
- Make better decisions because they are based on correct data and insight (trusted)
- Reduce risks (less surprises)
- Enhance agility (in handling new requirements)
- Promote a shared understanding (same language)
- Reduce internal conflicts (SSOT)
- Data Quality champions were active in both IT and BI Departments.
- Domain experts were drawn from across the enterprise
- Data owners existed for every data item and measure in the BI platform
- Data Council members are empowered to make decisions: 1. All business data and their definitions - including reference data; 2. Enterprise performance measures and their calculation basis; 3. solutions (business processes and IT); 4. Monthly meetings to solve DQ issues
- BI investments often spread over several years. It is not usual for stakeholders to fund projects for this period without seeing significant returns on their investments in the first 12 months.
- The actual solution(s) is usually only known when well into the BI project (once detailed business data requirements are agreed).
- 30 – 50% of your investment in BI will be spent on meeting additional requirements that were not included in your original business case.
I think that the talk went OK as I had a few questions from the floor but only the audience can give you honest feedback. If you are interested, here is a slideshow of the presentation:
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