Description
BI Strategy SAP
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BI
STRATEGY
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04 Executive Summary
08 What is a BI Strategy
10 BI Strategy Overview
24 Getting Started
28 How SAP Can Help
33 More Information
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Business Intelligence (BI) continues to be a top investment priority for
CEOs and CIOs alike. Companies are overwhelmed by ever- increasing
volumes of data accelerated by mobile devices and social media. IT
organizations are under siege to deliver meaningful analytics and enable
business users with self-service tools and access to trusted data.
In the Gartner Group 2013 CIO survey, Analytics & Business Intelligence
was ranked #1. In the CEO survey, business analytics was ranked as the
most important area of investment, with 71 percent of CEOs expressing
interest in increasing spending.
TOP 10 BUSINESS PRIORITIES RANKING
Increasing enterprise growth 1
Delivering operational results 2
Reducing enterprise costs 3
Attracting and retaining new customers 4
Improving IT applications and infrastructure 5
Creating new products and services (innovation) 6
Improving ef?ciency 7
Attracting and retaining the workforce 8
Implementing analytics and big data 9
Improving business processes 10
TOP 10 TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES RANKING
Analytics and business intelligence 1
Mobile technologies 2
Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) 3
Collaboration technologies (work?ow) 4
Legacy modernization 5
IT management 6
CRM 7
Virtualization 8
Security 9
ERP Applications 10
SaaS = software as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service
Source: Gartner Executive Programs (January 2013)
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Organizations can ensure that their data assets, technologies and people
are maximizing these resources for improved business performance
through with a strategic, programmatic approach to BI that includes ?ve
key areas:
SAP can help you understand these key elements so you can de?ne and
deliver a BI Roadmap with milestones to ensure a strategic BI program
that will boost productivity, accelerate key business processes, and
power better, more relevant decisions across your organization through a
BI Strategy Assessment and Workshop.
SAP BI Strategy Building Blocks
A rock-solid BI Strategy covers the ?ve citical areas
shown here (see chart on the left).
Objectives
Background
and Purpose
Current State
and History
BI Objectives
and Scope
Organization
Governance
Structure
Program
Management
Roadmap and
Milestones
Measurement
Education/
Training
Support
Technology
Information
Categories
Business
Bene?t
Information
Categories
Architecture
and Strandars
BI Applications
Business
Needs
Summary of BI
Needs
Envisioned
To-Be State
Priorities and
Alignment
Expected
Bene?ts - Future
State KPI
Business Case
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The BI Strategy consists of a BI architecture slide
IT is asking the business what reports they need
Step one of the strategy is building a data warehouse
There are no metrics de?ned to measure progress
There is confusion over what a BI strategy actually is. When asked about
their BI strategy:
Here are some indicators that your BI strategy isn’t fully formed:
27% 57% 17%
Source: IDC 2012 Vertical IT & Communications Survey. June 2012. N=4177
Have a clearly de?ned
BI and analytics
strategy
Don’t have a strategy
at all
Don’t know if they have
one or not
WHAT IS A BI STRATEGY?
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Major barriers to building a successful BI strategy include lack of
alignment between IT and the business and the tendency to jump to
technology decisions or architecture diagrams without considering what
business problems the organization is trying to solve.
See this blog for more information:
BI Strategy: Creating a Happy Marriage between BI and IT
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A BI and analytics strategy empowers your workforce, giving them
the right information at the right time and enables them to make
good decisions. Your analytics strategy should not only address the
information needs of your entire organization, it should also align IT and
the business. A solid BI strategy is critical to pull together all BI assets
and efforts across any company.
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BI STRATEGY OVERVIEW
Business intelligence (BI) is no longer an initiative just for IT. It’s become the
strategic initiative for the entire organization, for both IT and the business.
Over the years, BI has evolved into different shapes and sizes based on
business needs, expectations, and budgets. However, not all BI programs
are successful.
If you have a BI program in place, how effective is it in supporting your
organizational success? There are a number of reasons why programs are
not effective:
Poor communication between IT and the business
Failure of IT ask the right questions or to think about the real needs
of the business
Absence of executive support
Throwing technology at BI business problems
Political and cultural issues
Poor communication and training
See this video to understand key aspects of a BI strategy:
BI and Your Success
See this blog for more details:
Experience BI Nirvana with an Effective BI Strategy
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Organizations face many challenges in managing their data and their
business needs. Some of these challenges include:
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOL
COMPLEXITY
End user adoption is crucial to
the success of any BI initiative,
but too many different tools
with steep learning curves and
complex data models beyond
the understanding of the
business can hinder adoption.
INFORMATION FRAGMENTATION
When information is locked
away in application silos
and heterogeneous sources,
integrating that information
often requires expert
knowledge. This leads to a
disconnect between analytic
and operational applications.
USER ACCESSIBILITY
A lack of self-serve models
combined with diffculty in
using existing systems can
inhibit reports being used by
the wider community.
FLEXIBILITY TO RESPOND TO
CHANGE
Business needs change rapidly
so, since technology cannot
keep up with the speed of
thought, data models quickly
get out of sync with business
models.
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An effective BI strategy can help reduce or remove these challenges and
can provide signi?cant bene?t to both IT and the business:
Increase User Satisfaction
Control for Predictable and Consistent BI Solutions
Save Money
Save wasteful duplication of costs for every aspect of your BI
projects, also known as “leveraging”, “reusing”, or
“consolidating/rationalizing” (e.g., licensing, maintenance,
training, administration/support and development costs).
Users avoid the frustration and time wasted accessing
information across multiple systems, enabling better business
analytics, insight and collaboration. Self-service reporting is
deployed across the organization.
With a single point of administration, project estimating is easier
and more accurate. Users and administrators know which tools
to use for which job.
“Business intelligence (BI) continues to be the
top investment priority for CIOs. An effective
BI approach can bene?t your IT and line of
business (LOB) teams alike.”
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When starting the process of building or improving a BI strategy, here are
some universal best practices that should be considered:
Find an executive sponsor: The executive sponsor understands
the value of business intelligence and will champion and promote the
project across the organization.
Create a BI Competency Center (BICC) or BI Center of
Excellence (CoE): The BICC/BI CoE ensures the right people and
program management practices are in place (see more below in
following section on BICCs).
Gain alignment between IT and Business: Identify goals and
expectations across the organization and ensure they’re closely
aligned with the business objectives and business strategy
Defne architecture and standards: Develop and maintain
standards regarding methodologies, de?nitions, processes, tools and
technologies required to implement BI
Develop a roadmap and measure your progress: Develop metrics
that will measure both the implementation and ongoing success of BI
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You can ?nd more information on these best practices in this blog:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
The analyst ?rm IDC has published a white paper on BI and analytics strategy best
practices. You can ?nd this white paper here:
IDC Whitepaper
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The role of the executive sponsor cannot be overstated. According to
research by the analyst ?rm Gartner, between 70% and 80% of corporate
business intelligence projects fail. The primary reason for failure is:
lack of sponsorship or engagement outside of IT
lack of vision or strategy
The executive sponsor should:
Own the information culture/BI strategy initiative
De?ne the goals and measures of the initiative
Incorporate the initiative into mission and vision statements
Put the right teams and resources behind the initiative
Evangelize the initiative across the organization
Lack of Sponsorship/Engagement Outside of IT
Lack of Vision/Strategy
Addressing Data Quality Issues
Agreeing on Defnitions/Business Vocabulary
Organizational Culture and Political Issues
Lack of Governance of BI and Information
Creating Awareness and Ensuring Business Adoption
Identifying the Right Metrics
Inadequate Scoping
Over-Reliance on Tools and Technology
Inability to Change Based on Insight from BI
Lack of BI-Related IT Skills
Lack of Data Analysis Skills
Timeliness/Latency of Data Delivery
8 6 4 2 0
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Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 2010
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priorities by analyzing consequences of choices and creating business
cases. They also provide an understanding of the organization’s strategic
business objectives and the role action-oriented information plays in
achieving the corporate objectives
[Source: How to De?ne and Run a Successful Business Intelligence Competency Center, Gartner, August 2007]
ANALYTIC
SKILLS
IT
SKILLS
Governance,
Administration
Tools, Infrastructure,
Applications, Data
BUSINESS
SKILLS
De?ne
BI Vision
Manage
Programs
Develop
User Skills
Organize
Methodology
Leadership
Build
Technology
Blueprint
Establish
Standards
BICC
Control
Funding
Business Needs
Statistical and
Process Skills
Business Needs
Organization and
Processes
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Another essential part of a complete BI Strategy framework is a BI Center
of Excellence (BICC) or BI Center of Excellence (BI CoE). The BICC/BI CoE
incorporates governance, program management, BI strategy roadmap and
milestones, education and training, and support. It comprises a cross-
functional team with speci?c tasks, roles, responsibilities, and processes for
supporting and promoting the effective use of Business Intelligence across
organizations (Gartner 2001). BICCs and BI CoEs are largely engaged in
the organization and implementation areas of a BI Strategy.
Read more about why a BICC/BI CoE is critical to getting the highest level
of competency in your BI strategy here:
Business Intelligence Strategy: BI Competency Centers Take
Center Stage… Again!
This blog details different organizational models for a BICC, visibility and
funding, and how to get started or evolve your existing BICC.
BI Strategy: BICC, a Key Element to Your BI Program
One of the components of a successful BICC is ensuring the members
have the right mix of Business, Analytic, and IT skills.
Business skills are needed to help business managers set and balance
Business, Analytics, and IT Skills
A component of a successful BICC/BI CoE that ensures
the members have the right mix of Business, Analytic,
and IT skills
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denti?cation of overlapping business priorities as well as architectural scope
and data scope.
The BI Center of Excellence is responsible for overseeing the development
of a BI governance structure as well as the implementation of the BI
Competency Center.
Together, these three areas work together to ensure successful execution
of the enterprise-wide BI strategy.
IT skills ensure that the BICC/BI CoE understand the business intelligence
infrastructure implications of business and analytic requirements. Those
skills are also critical in understanding diverse business intelligence
and performance management tools and technologies as well as the
differences in design and access characteristics of diverse data sources.
Analytic skills help with researching business problems and creating
models that help analyze these business problems as well as working with
the IT department to develop insight into how to identify data for a speci?c
analysis or application.
There are three important elements of an effective BICC:
Development of an effective BI Strategy
Alignment with the IT Development Center of Excellence
Creation or maintenance of a BI Center of Excellence
Developing an effective BI strategy requires identifying key stakeholders,
identifying corporate strategy as it aligns with business needs, and
identifying business and business unit priorities.
Aligning with the IT Development Center of Excellence includes identi?cation
of BI Strategic, Program, Analytical and Technical skills. It also includes i
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“A good strategy includes aligning business partners,
formalizing business needs, and delivering a
comprehensive, strategic BI solution that identi?es a
shared set of goals and delivers planned results.”
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Development
of Effective BI
Strategy
Alignment
with IT Center of
Excellence
Development of
BI Governance
Structure
Implementation of
BI Competency
Center
BI Center of
Excellence
Identifed Key Stakeholders
Identifed Corporate Strategy
as it aligns with business
needs
Identifed Business and
Business Unit Priorities
Confrmed Architecture
Identifed Data Sources
Alignment with BI BICC
priorities
Confrmation of internal
capability
Identifed impacted business
processes
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Corporate IT BICC alignment
with BI BICC
Identifcation of BI Strategic,
Program, Analytical and
Technical skills
Identifcation of overlapping
Business priorities
Identifcation of Architectural
scope, overlap, etc
Identifcation of Data scope,
overlap, legacy systems, etc
Confrmation of deployment
capability
Deployment of BI toolset by
project type
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Confrmed Executive Steering
Committee
Buy-in and involvement from
all impacted stakeholders
Identifed and agreed priorities
Defned and agreed
accountability
Defned and agreed roles and
responsibilities
Defned and agreed guidance,
standards and templates
Identifed BI toolsets
Defned toolset capability by
project type
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Defned business priorities
Defned reporting needs
Defned KPIs and supporting
metrics
Defned architecture
Defned data needs
Defned solutions and
methodologies
Confrmed capabilities
Confrmed project priorities
Confrmed project management
process
Confrmed project roll-out process
Confrmed guidance, standards and
templates
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Operationalize
Key Elements of an Effective BICC
This chart shows how everything works together to ensure
successful execution of the enterprise-wide BI Strategy
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The ?rst step to developing a solid BI strategy is determining whether or
not you already have one. In addition to knowing what a BI strategy isn’t
(for more information see the previous section on BI Strategy), there are
several questions you should be able to answer if you have a BI strategy in
place. Here are just a few:
What is our vision for information accessibility and usage?
What should the high-level BI roadmap of initiatives look like?
What metrics should we use to manage the BI implementation and
ful?llment of BI business goals?
What kind of governance model do we need to support BI initiatives?
GETTING STARTED
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It’s important to remember that developing a BI Strategy is not a one-time
occurrence. It is a dynamic, ongoing process that continues to evolve as
business needs change and as your BI maturity evolves.
You can ?nd more questions that are answered by a complete BI strategy
program in this blog:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
Another consideration when evaluating your current BI strategy or creating
a new one is where your organization falls in the BI Maturity Model. This
will give you a sense of how well your company is executing whatever
BI strategy might be in place and how closely you align with current best
practices (See chart on the next page for more information).
Once you have a good understanding of your existing BI strategy and
where you fall within the BI Maturity Model, it’s time to assess your
organization’s pain points and determine which of them are the highest
priority. SAP’s BI Strategy Self-Assessment Tool can help you identify pain
points across lines of business (LOB) and offer guidance on which ones
would have the most impact on the organization if resolved. To gain a
complete overview of the organization, we recommend that multiple LOBs
be involved in ?lling out the self-assessment.
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When the self-assessment is complete, you will receive a customized
set of recommendations for improvement. This will provide guidelines
for immediate action, and you can take the assessment again later to
determine overall improvement.
You can ?nd the BI Strategy Self-Assessment Tool here:
SAP Self-Assessment Tool
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BI and Analytics Maturity Model
Advancing through the BI Maturity stages leads to better
decision-making, better use of available tools and data,
and reduced cost
Information and
Analytics
BI Maturity Stages
(Business & KPI, ad
hoc, measurement)
Requirements driven
from a limited
Executive group
KPIs/Analytics are
identifed, but not
well used
KPIs/Analytics are
identifed and
effectively used
KPIs/Analytics
used to manage the
full Value Chain
(Multiple/disparate
systems,
spreadsheets, delivery)
Application
Architecture
Governance
Standards and
Processes
(BI design/process,
SLA, reuse, data
ownership &
standards)
(Business participation,
self-service, BICC
IT Driven BI
Governance
Business Driven BI
Governance
Evolving
Business
Governance with
Competency Center
Developing
Enterprise-wide BI
Governance with
Business
Leadership
Do no exist or are not
uniform
Evolving effort to
formalize
Exist and are not
uniform
Uniform, followed
and audited
BI “Silos” for each
Business
Some Shared BI
Applications
Consolidating and
Upgrading
Robust and fexible
BI architecture
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
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SAP has developed a four-step approach to developing a solid BI
Strategy foundation. We start by helping you understand the current
business pains and the impact of solving those pains. We also help you
understand the extent of your current BI strategy capabilities, both formal
de?nition and execution, and the impact of current gaps. From these two
areas, we perform a gap analysis to identify the highest priority areas.
The gaps in these areas are then addressed in a BI strategy foundation
recommendation. If you’re interested in having an SAP facilitator conduct
a BI strategy assessment and workshop in your organization, go to our BI
Success website and submit a workshop information questionnaire:
BI Strategy Page
HOW SAP CAN HELP
You can also contact your Account Executive directly for more information.
Visit this blog for more details about the methodology we teach in the
facilitated workshops:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
AP Strategic Advisory Services for Analytics is designed to provide an
agile and adaptive Analytics strategy treated as a living artefact that will be
continuously re?ned to meet enterprise objectives. The service addresses
three key areas:
Vision & Business Value for discovering the business drivers behind
your organization’s need for BI strategy
Technology Alignment focusing on recommendations for improving/
growing the end-to-end solution architecture
Transformation Roadmap describing how you can execute the
people, process and technology recommendations as a set of
projects and milestones
Learn more and access the SAP Services for Analytics e-book which
covers the the full portfolio of analytics services from SAP: business
intelligence (BI), enterprise performance management (EPM), governance,
risk, and compliance (GRC), and analytics services for industries.
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DELIVERY
APPROACH
2-3 days onsite workshop conducted by Analytics
Advisors
Tailored break out sessions on the adoption of Analytics
and what to do from organizational, technical and solution
perspectives
Capability driven discussions based on business priorities.
Feasibility and ranking to pick “Big hits”+“Quick wins”
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YOUR VALUE Get initial guidance about the bene?ts, obstacles and
setup for a successful Analytics Success Map to meet
your business demands
Focused advisory to determine your position and your way
forward in Analytics
Increased con?dence in the value of your analytics
investments to the right solutions
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BUSINESS
NEEDS
Tie business strategy to actionable analytics initiatives to
contribute to company objectives
Avoid risk of a build & burn solutions given lack of insights
on the mid- to long-term direction
De?ne a metrics framework to gauge the current state of
the business and relate it to the enterprise objective
A rock-solid end-to-end architecture and protect your
investments
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SAP Strategic Advisory Services for Analytics
The three key objectives the SAP Strategic Advisory
Services addresses
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SAP has several resources available to anyone interested in learning more
about BI Strategy and BI Competency Centers.
BI Success Website
Our BI Success website will help you:
Learn what’s new in the latest release of BI solutions from SAP,
including the recently released SAP BusinessObjects Business
Intelligence 4.1
Find customer success stories to help develop your own BI strategies
and approaches to evolving BI in your company
Receive our best guidance and recommendations for implementing
and upgrading BI solutions from SAP, including customized upgrade
recommendations
Complete a short questionnaire about your current BI environment
and receive customized recommendations in a handy PDF report
Follow up with additional questions to our upgrade experts
View the best how-to videos for BI best practices in the BI Academy section
Content on this website is updated regularly, so check back often to see
what’s new.
MORE INFORMATION
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Our Value Management team has created a brief BI Best Practices survey
that will let you see how your strategy compares to your peers and gain
insights into improving your strategy and action plan.
BI Best Practices Survey
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BI Best Practices Survey Result
A sample view of the BI Best Preactices survey results
page
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In addition to the ones already mentioned, there are several blogs available
to help you develop your BI strategy.
The BI Strategy Recap from SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 gives an overview of
the top reasons why developing a BI strategy is important:
Business Intelligence (BI) Strategy Recap from SAPPHIRE NOW
This blog provides valuable information on how to drive value from your BI
program and how to de?ne, measure and track success.
Driving Value from your BI Program – Defne, Track and Measure
Success
The June 2013 edition of the BI Newsletter offers a wide variety of articles
around creating an information-driven culture.
BI News: June Edition
Subscribe here to receive the monthly BI Newsletter.
Get the latest on roadmaps, innovations and thought
leadership for SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. Read
about best practices, relevant news, customer stories,
and upcoming events.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
Our YouTube channels for BI Strategy and BI Competency Centers offer
a wide range of short videos to help show the value and impact of a BI
strategy and how BI Competency Centers ?t within the BI strategy.
Playlist: BI Strategy Playlist: BI Competency Centers
Part of our Best-Run Business Intelligence and Analytics Webcast Series,
the Top 5 BI Optimization and Strategy Considerations webcast shows how
BI strategy can transform an organization.
Best-Run Business Intelligence and Analytics Webcast Series
The “How Smart is BI Without a Strategy?” series on VoiceAmerica
presents an in-depth look at how BI strategy sets your roadmap for
success and enables better decision-making across the organization.
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Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 1
How Smart is BI Without a Strategy?
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Contact your Account Executive for more information
on developing and refning your BI Strategy.
doc_419885045.pdf
BI Strategy SAP
1
BI
STRATEGY
3
04 Executive Summary
08 What is a BI Strategy
10 BI Strategy Overview
24 Getting Started
28 How SAP Can Help
33 More Information
5
Business Intelligence (BI) continues to be a top investment priority for
CEOs and CIOs alike. Companies are overwhelmed by ever- increasing
volumes of data accelerated by mobile devices and social media. IT
organizations are under siege to deliver meaningful analytics and enable
business users with self-service tools and access to trusted data.
In the Gartner Group 2013 CIO survey, Analytics & Business Intelligence
was ranked #1. In the CEO survey, business analytics was ranked as the
most important area of investment, with 71 percent of CEOs expressing
interest in increasing spending.
TOP 10 BUSINESS PRIORITIES RANKING
Increasing enterprise growth 1
Delivering operational results 2
Reducing enterprise costs 3
Attracting and retaining new customers 4
Improving IT applications and infrastructure 5
Creating new products and services (innovation) 6
Improving ef?ciency 7
Attracting and retaining the workforce 8
Implementing analytics and big data 9
Improving business processes 10
TOP 10 TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES RANKING
Analytics and business intelligence 1
Mobile technologies 2
Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) 3
Collaboration technologies (work?ow) 4
Legacy modernization 5
IT management 6
CRM 7
Virtualization 8
Security 9
ERP Applications 10
SaaS = software as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service
Source: Gartner Executive Programs (January 2013)
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Organizations can ensure that their data assets, technologies and people
are maximizing these resources for improved business performance
through with a strategic, programmatic approach to BI that includes ?ve
key areas:
SAP can help you understand these key elements so you can de?ne and
deliver a BI Roadmap with milestones to ensure a strategic BI program
that will boost productivity, accelerate key business processes, and
power better, more relevant decisions across your organization through a
BI Strategy Assessment and Workshop.
SAP BI Strategy Building Blocks
A rock-solid BI Strategy covers the ?ve citical areas
shown here (see chart on the left).
Objectives
Background
and Purpose
Current State
and History
BI Objectives
and Scope
Organization
Governance
Structure
Program
Management
Roadmap and
Milestones
Measurement
Education/
Training
Support
Technology
Information
Categories
Business
Bene?t
Information
Categories
Architecture
and Strandars
BI Applications
Business
Needs
Summary of BI
Needs
Envisioned
To-Be State
Priorities and
Alignment
Expected
Bene?ts - Future
State KPI
Business Case
9
The BI Strategy consists of a BI architecture slide
IT is asking the business what reports they need
Step one of the strategy is building a data warehouse
There are no metrics de?ned to measure progress
There is confusion over what a BI strategy actually is. When asked about
their BI strategy:
Here are some indicators that your BI strategy isn’t fully formed:
27% 57% 17%
Source: IDC 2012 Vertical IT & Communications Survey. June 2012. N=4177
Have a clearly de?ned
BI and analytics
strategy
Don’t have a strategy
at all
Don’t know if they have
one or not
WHAT IS A BI STRATEGY?
•
•
•
•
Major barriers to building a successful BI strategy include lack of
alignment between IT and the business and the tendency to jump to
technology decisions or architecture diagrams without considering what
business problems the organization is trying to solve.
See this blog for more information:
BI Strategy: Creating a Happy Marriage between BI and IT
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Y
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A BI and analytics strategy empowers your workforce, giving them
the right information at the right time and enables them to make
good decisions. Your analytics strategy should not only address the
information needs of your entire organization, it should also align IT and
the business. A solid BI strategy is critical to pull together all BI assets
and efforts across any company.
11
BI STRATEGY OVERVIEW
Business intelligence (BI) is no longer an initiative just for IT. It’s become the
strategic initiative for the entire organization, for both IT and the business.
Over the years, BI has evolved into different shapes and sizes based on
business needs, expectations, and budgets. However, not all BI programs
are successful.
If you have a BI program in place, how effective is it in supporting your
organizational success? There are a number of reasons why programs are
not effective:
Poor communication between IT and the business
Failure of IT ask the right questions or to think about the real needs
of the business
Absence of executive support
Throwing technology at BI business problems
Political and cultural issues
Poor communication and training
See this video to understand key aspects of a BI strategy:
BI and Your Success
See this blog for more details:
Experience BI Nirvana with an Effective BI Strategy
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Organizations face many challenges in managing their data and their
business needs. Some of these challenges include:
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOL
COMPLEXITY
End user adoption is crucial to
the success of any BI initiative,
but too many different tools
with steep learning curves and
complex data models beyond
the understanding of the
business can hinder adoption.
INFORMATION FRAGMENTATION
When information is locked
away in application silos
and heterogeneous sources,
integrating that information
often requires expert
knowledge. This leads to a
disconnect between analytic
and operational applications.
USER ACCESSIBILITY
A lack of self-serve models
combined with diffculty in
using existing systems can
inhibit reports being used by
the wider community.
FLEXIBILITY TO RESPOND TO
CHANGE
Business needs change rapidly
so, since technology cannot
keep up with the speed of
thought, data models quickly
get out of sync with business
models.
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An effective BI strategy can help reduce or remove these challenges and
can provide signi?cant bene?t to both IT and the business:
Increase User Satisfaction
Control for Predictable and Consistent BI Solutions
Save Money
Save wasteful duplication of costs for every aspect of your BI
projects, also known as “leveraging”, “reusing”, or
“consolidating/rationalizing” (e.g., licensing, maintenance,
training, administration/support and development costs).
Users avoid the frustration and time wasted accessing
information across multiple systems, enabling better business
analytics, insight and collaboration. Self-service reporting is
deployed across the organization.
With a single point of administration, project estimating is easier
and more accurate. Users and administrators know which tools
to use for which job.
“Business intelligence (BI) continues to be the
top investment priority for CIOs. An effective
BI approach can bene?t your IT and line of
business (LOB) teams alike.”
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When starting the process of building or improving a BI strategy, here are
some universal best practices that should be considered:
Find an executive sponsor: The executive sponsor understands
the value of business intelligence and will champion and promote the
project across the organization.
Create a BI Competency Center (BICC) or BI Center of
Excellence (CoE): The BICC/BI CoE ensures the right people and
program management practices are in place (see more below in
following section on BICCs).
Gain alignment between IT and Business: Identify goals and
expectations across the organization and ensure they’re closely
aligned with the business objectives and business strategy
Defne architecture and standards: Develop and maintain
standards regarding methodologies, de?nitions, processes, tools and
technologies required to implement BI
Develop a roadmap and measure your progress: Develop metrics
that will measure both the implementation and ongoing success of BI
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You can ?nd more information on these best practices in this blog:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
The analyst ?rm IDC has published a white paper on BI and analytics strategy best
practices. You can ?nd this white paper here:
IDC Whitepaper
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The role of the executive sponsor cannot be overstated. According to
research by the analyst ?rm Gartner, between 70% and 80% of corporate
business intelligence projects fail. The primary reason for failure is:
lack of sponsorship or engagement outside of IT
lack of vision or strategy
The executive sponsor should:
Own the information culture/BI strategy initiative
De?ne the goals and measures of the initiative
Incorporate the initiative into mission and vision statements
Put the right teams and resources behind the initiative
Evangelize the initiative across the organization
Lack of Sponsorship/Engagement Outside of IT
Lack of Vision/Strategy
Addressing Data Quality Issues
Agreeing on Defnitions/Business Vocabulary
Organizational Culture and Political Issues
Lack of Governance of BI and Information
Creating Awareness and Ensuring Business Adoption
Identifying the Right Metrics
Inadequate Scoping
Over-Reliance on Tools and Technology
Inability to Change Based on Insight from BI
Lack of BI-Related IT Skills
Lack of Data Analysis Skills
Timeliness/Latency of Data Delivery
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Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 2010
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priorities by analyzing consequences of choices and creating business
cases. They also provide an understanding of the organization’s strategic
business objectives and the role action-oriented information plays in
achieving the corporate objectives
[Source: How to De?ne and Run a Successful Business Intelligence Competency Center, Gartner, August 2007]
ANALYTIC
SKILLS
IT
SKILLS
Governance,
Administration
Tools, Infrastructure,
Applications, Data
BUSINESS
SKILLS
De?ne
BI Vision
Manage
Programs
Develop
User Skills
Organize
Methodology
Leadership
Build
Technology
Blueprint
Establish
Standards
BICC
Control
Funding
Business Needs
Statistical and
Process Skills
Business Needs
Organization and
Processes
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Another essential part of a complete BI Strategy framework is a BI Center
of Excellence (BICC) or BI Center of Excellence (BI CoE). The BICC/BI CoE
incorporates governance, program management, BI strategy roadmap and
milestones, education and training, and support. It comprises a cross-
functional team with speci?c tasks, roles, responsibilities, and processes for
supporting and promoting the effective use of Business Intelligence across
organizations (Gartner 2001). BICCs and BI CoEs are largely engaged in
the organization and implementation areas of a BI Strategy.
Read more about why a BICC/BI CoE is critical to getting the highest level
of competency in your BI strategy here:
Business Intelligence Strategy: BI Competency Centers Take
Center Stage… Again!
This blog details different organizational models for a BICC, visibility and
funding, and how to get started or evolve your existing BICC.
BI Strategy: BICC, a Key Element to Your BI Program
One of the components of a successful BICC is ensuring the members
have the right mix of Business, Analytic, and IT skills.
Business skills are needed to help business managers set and balance
Business, Analytics, and IT Skills
A component of a successful BICC/BI CoE that ensures
the members have the right mix of Business, Analytic,
and IT skills
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denti?cation of overlapping business priorities as well as architectural scope
and data scope.
The BI Center of Excellence is responsible for overseeing the development
of a BI governance structure as well as the implementation of the BI
Competency Center.
Together, these three areas work together to ensure successful execution
of the enterprise-wide BI strategy.
IT skills ensure that the BICC/BI CoE understand the business intelligence
infrastructure implications of business and analytic requirements. Those
skills are also critical in understanding diverse business intelligence
and performance management tools and technologies as well as the
differences in design and access characteristics of diverse data sources.
Analytic skills help with researching business problems and creating
models that help analyze these business problems as well as working with
the IT department to develop insight into how to identify data for a speci?c
analysis or application.
There are three important elements of an effective BICC:
Development of an effective BI Strategy
Alignment with the IT Development Center of Excellence
Creation or maintenance of a BI Center of Excellence
Developing an effective BI strategy requires identifying key stakeholders,
identifying corporate strategy as it aligns with business needs, and
identifying business and business unit priorities.
Aligning with the IT Development Center of Excellence includes identi?cation
of BI Strategic, Program, Analytical and Technical skills. It also includes i
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“A good strategy includes aligning business partners,
formalizing business needs, and delivering a
comprehensive, strategic BI solution that identi?es a
shared set of goals and delivers planned results.”
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Development
of Effective BI
Strategy
Alignment
with IT Center of
Excellence
Development of
BI Governance
Structure
Implementation of
BI Competency
Center
BI Center of
Excellence
Identifed Key Stakeholders
Identifed Corporate Strategy
as it aligns with business
needs
Identifed Business and
Business Unit Priorities
Confrmed Architecture
Identifed Data Sources
Alignment with BI BICC
priorities
Confrmation of internal
capability
Identifed impacted business
processes
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Corporate IT BICC alignment
with BI BICC
Identifcation of BI Strategic,
Program, Analytical and
Technical skills
Identifcation of overlapping
Business priorities
Identifcation of Architectural
scope, overlap, etc
Identifcation of Data scope,
overlap, legacy systems, etc
Confrmation of deployment
capability
Deployment of BI toolset by
project type
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Confrmed Executive Steering
Committee
Buy-in and involvement from
all impacted stakeholders
Identifed and agreed priorities
Defned and agreed
accountability
Defned and agreed roles and
responsibilities
Defned and agreed guidance,
standards and templates
Identifed BI toolsets
Defned toolset capability by
project type
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Defned business priorities
Defned reporting needs
Defned KPIs and supporting
metrics
Defned architecture
Defned data needs
Defned solutions and
methodologies
Confrmed capabilities
Confrmed project priorities
Confrmed project management
process
Confrmed project roll-out process
Confrmed guidance, standards and
templates
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Operationalize
Key Elements of an Effective BICC
This chart shows how everything works together to ensure
successful execution of the enterprise-wide BI Strategy
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The ?rst step to developing a solid BI strategy is determining whether or
not you already have one. In addition to knowing what a BI strategy isn’t
(for more information see the previous section on BI Strategy), there are
several questions you should be able to answer if you have a BI strategy in
place. Here are just a few:
What is our vision for information accessibility and usage?
What should the high-level BI roadmap of initiatives look like?
What metrics should we use to manage the BI implementation and
ful?llment of BI business goals?
What kind of governance model do we need to support BI initiatives?
GETTING STARTED
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It’s important to remember that developing a BI Strategy is not a one-time
occurrence. It is a dynamic, ongoing process that continues to evolve as
business needs change and as your BI maturity evolves.
You can ?nd more questions that are answered by a complete BI strategy
program in this blog:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
Another consideration when evaluating your current BI strategy or creating
a new one is where your organization falls in the BI Maturity Model. This
will give you a sense of how well your company is executing whatever
BI strategy might be in place and how closely you align with current best
practices (See chart on the next page for more information).
Once you have a good understanding of your existing BI strategy and
where you fall within the BI Maturity Model, it’s time to assess your
organization’s pain points and determine which of them are the highest
priority. SAP’s BI Strategy Self-Assessment Tool can help you identify pain
points across lines of business (LOB) and offer guidance on which ones
would have the most impact on the organization if resolved. To gain a
complete overview of the organization, we recommend that multiple LOBs
be involved in ?lling out the self-assessment.
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When the self-assessment is complete, you will receive a customized
set of recommendations for improvement. This will provide guidelines
for immediate action, and you can take the assessment again later to
determine overall improvement.
You can ?nd the BI Strategy Self-Assessment Tool here:
SAP Self-Assessment Tool
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BI and Analytics Maturity Model
Advancing through the BI Maturity stages leads to better
decision-making, better use of available tools and data,
and reduced cost
Information and
Analytics
BI Maturity Stages
(Business & KPI, ad
hoc, measurement)
Requirements driven
from a limited
Executive group
KPIs/Analytics are
identifed, but not
well used
KPIs/Analytics are
identifed and
effectively used
KPIs/Analytics
used to manage the
full Value Chain
(Multiple/disparate
systems,
spreadsheets, delivery)
Application
Architecture
Governance
Standards and
Processes
(BI design/process,
SLA, reuse, data
ownership &
standards)
(Business participation,
self-service, BICC
IT Driven BI
Governance
Business Driven BI
Governance
Evolving
Business
Governance with
Competency Center
Developing
Enterprise-wide BI
Governance with
Business
Leadership
Do no exist or are not
uniform
Evolving effort to
formalize
Exist and are not
uniform
Uniform, followed
and audited
BI “Silos” for each
Business
Some Shared BI
Applications
Consolidating and
Upgrading
Robust and fexible
BI architecture
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
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SAP has developed a four-step approach to developing a solid BI
Strategy foundation. We start by helping you understand the current
business pains and the impact of solving those pains. We also help you
understand the extent of your current BI strategy capabilities, both formal
de?nition and execution, and the impact of current gaps. From these two
areas, we perform a gap analysis to identify the highest priority areas.
The gaps in these areas are then addressed in a BI strategy foundation
recommendation. If you’re interested in having an SAP facilitator conduct
a BI strategy assessment and workshop in your organization, go to our BI
Success website and submit a workshop information questionnaire:
BI Strategy Page
HOW SAP CAN HELP
You can also contact your Account Executive directly for more information.
Visit this blog for more details about the methodology we teach in the
facilitated workshops:
Business Intelligence Best Practices
AP Strategic Advisory Services for Analytics is designed to provide an
agile and adaptive Analytics strategy treated as a living artefact that will be
continuously re?ned to meet enterprise objectives. The service addresses
three key areas:
Vision & Business Value for discovering the business drivers behind
your organization’s need for BI strategy
Technology Alignment focusing on recommendations for improving/
growing the end-to-end solution architecture
Transformation Roadmap describing how you can execute the
people, process and technology recommendations as a set of
projects and milestones
Learn more and access the SAP Services for Analytics e-book which
covers the the full portfolio of analytics services from SAP: business
intelligence (BI), enterprise performance management (EPM), governance,
risk, and compliance (GRC), and analytics services for industries.
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DELIVERY
APPROACH
2-3 days onsite workshop conducted by Analytics
Advisors
Tailored break out sessions on the adoption of Analytics
and what to do from organizational, technical and solution
perspectives
Capability driven discussions based on business priorities.
Feasibility and ranking to pick “Big hits”+“Quick wins”
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YOUR VALUE Get initial guidance about the bene?ts, obstacles and
setup for a successful Analytics Success Map to meet
your business demands
Focused advisory to determine your position and your way
forward in Analytics
Increased con?dence in the value of your analytics
investments to the right solutions
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BUSINESS
NEEDS
Tie business strategy to actionable analytics initiatives to
contribute to company objectives
Avoid risk of a build & burn solutions given lack of insights
on the mid- to long-term direction
De?ne a metrics framework to gauge the current state of
the business and relate it to the enterprise objective
A rock-solid end-to-end architecture and protect your
investments
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SAP Strategic Advisory Services for Analytics
The three key objectives the SAP Strategic Advisory
Services addresses
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SAP has several resources available to anyone interested in learning more
about BI Strategy and BI Competency Centers.
BI Success Website
Our BI Success website will help you:
Learn what’s new in the latest release of BI solutions from SAP,
including the recently released SAP BusinessObjects Business
Intelligence 4.1
Find customer success stories to help develop your own BI strategies
and approaches to evolving BI in your company
Receive our best guidance and recommendations for implementing
and upgrading BI solutions from SAP, including customized upgrade
recommendations
Complete a short questionnaire about your current BI environment
and receive customized recommendations in a handy PDF report
Follow up with additional questions to our upgrade experts
View the best how-to videos for BI best practices in the BI Academy section
Content on this website is updated regularly, so check back often to see
what’s new.
MORE INFORMATION
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Our Value Management team has created a brief BI Best Practices survey
that will let you see how your strategy compares to your peers and gain
insights into improving your strategy and action plan.
BI Best Practices Survey
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BI Best Practices Survey Result
A sample view of the BI Best Preactices survey results
page
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In addition to the ones already mentioned, there are several blogs available
to help you develop your BI strategy.
The BI Strategy Recap from SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 gives an overview of
the top reasons why developing a BI strategy is important:
Business Intelligence (BI) Strategy Recap from SAPPHIRE NOW
This blog provides valuable information on how to drive value from your BI
program and how to de?ne, measure and track success.
Driving Value from your BI Program – Defne, Track and Measure
Success
The June 2013 edition of the BI Newsletter offers a wide variety of articles
around creating an information-driven culture.
BI News: June Edition
Subscribe here to receive the monthly BI Newsletter.
Get the latest on roadmaps, innovations and thought
leadership for SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. Read
about best practices, relevant news, customer stories,
and upcoming events.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
Our YouTube channels for BI Strategy and BI Competency Centers offer
a wide range of short videos to help show the value and impact of a BI
strategy and how BI Competency Centers ?t within the BI strategy.
Playlist: BI Strategy Playlist: BI Competency Centers
Part of our Best-Run Business Intelligence and Analytics Webcast Series,
the Top 5 BI Optimization and Strategy Considerations webcast shows how
BI strategy can transform an organization.
Best-Run Business Intelligence and Analytics Webcast Series
The “How Smart is BI Without a Strategy?” series on VoiceAmerica
presents an in-depth look at how BI strategy sets your roadmap for
success and enables better decision-making across the organization.
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Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 1
How Smart is BI Without a Strategy?
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Contact your Account Executive for more information
on developing and refning your BI Strategy.
doc_419885045.pdf