By Stephanie Baskerville on January 05, 2017

Measure Your BI Success!

 

Throughout our business intelligence (BI) blog series, we have recommended the 5-step approach to your BI project implementation: Structure, Identity, Choose, Implement, and Measure. This blog post is the final post of the BI blog series. We will finish the blog series with the last tip for your BI project implementation and how to measure your BI project success. Feel free to review our previous blog posts to get the helpful tips for the first four steps:

 

Manage BI Testing

The very final step during your BI project implementation is to manage BI testing. BI testing is different from any other project testing. It involves multiple parties, has multiple entry points, and can be sequenced strategically to optimize testing effectiveness.

  • Multiple Parties: Both IT and the business users are involved. IT focuses on backend testing such as testing around data and architecture whereas the business users evaluate if business needs are satisfied, the look and feel, and acceptance.
  • Multiple Entries: Testing can be done at different levels of the data warehouse value chain. Every entry point will be tested individually as unit tests, while the entire deliverable will be tested in the form of the user acceptance test.
  • Strategic Sequencing: Many BI projects involve ETL and data modelling. Pick your testing starting point strategically to minimize testing effort. E.g. Validate numbers in your datamarts before testing the BI artifacts. If the numbers in the datamarts are not correct, testing BI artifacts may be obsolete.

 

3 Aspects to Consider as You Complete Your BI Project Implementation

Now you have implemented your BI project and need to continuously analyze and measure its success. We recommend you pay attention to the following 3 aspects:

Increase Scope and Impact of the Suite

  • Number of users will continue to grow.
  • More processes will become automated.
  • Additional lines of the business will be explored introducing process automation through your BI suite.
  • Grow how you leverage the tool: Explore and expand how processes and applications can be further supported or created within the suite’s environment.

Continuous Improvement

  • Processes will continue to improve with additional streamlining and insight during further design iterations.

An Evolving Landscape

  • Vendors will continue to push the functional capabilities of BI solutions; update your suite to harvest additional value.

 

3 BI Metrics to Quantify Your BI Project Benefits

The benefits of BI are notoriously difficult to quantify and measure due to the fact that many of them are intangible and materialize downstream in a multitude of business processes. However, it is still essential to quantify the current state of your BI program so you can understand your weakness, as well as be able to compare to your end state and measure success. Below we have identified three high-level BI metrics that we believe best describe the current state of BI in your organization.

Metric 1. Adoption

Adoption is the percent of your organization that is using your BI software solution. High adoption is a goal of every organization to increase the value of the software, with the industry average around 15%-20%.

Metric 2. Time

Time to information is the time it takes to receive a report, dashboard, or other decision-making aid after submitting a query or request.

Metric 3. Quality

The quality of the information being delivered to end users/decision makers, whether it be data, reports, dashboards, etc., is essential in increasing adoption and trust in your BI program.

 

Let’s map your BI journey together!

Business Intelligence is no longer a luxury or niche. Organizations of every size and across all industries are taking advantage of the benefits of BI. Having an appetite for BI does not mean that the initiative will be an automatic success. It is imperative that organizations take the time to select and implement a BI suite that aligns with business goals and fosters end-user adoption. Questions? Our team of BI experts will be happy to answer any of your questions and help you start your BI journey. Drop us a line today!

 

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Published by Stephanie Baskerville January 5, 2017