How to Build a Successful BI Strategy in 5 Steps
Every business – regardless of the industry, product, or service – should have a data analytics tool driving its business. With that being said, it’s not enough to just have a tool. Every business needs a business intelligence strategy to take it forward. The BI strategy, as well as other BI services and solutions, play a major role in the setup, execution, and ongoing implementation of the BI platform. And it can do the same for your business as well.
1. Find out where you are
The Evolution of Analytics graphic is our go-to method for analytics that integrates well with a BI plan. The analytical capabilities required for a comprehensive analytics plan are shown in this graph, along with cognitive analytics, which our AI team views as the forerunner of all analytics.
You need to locate yourself on this chart in order to determine where to proceed. Most businesses may be found in the Diagnostic Analytics and Descriptive Analytics sections in the bottom left corner. You most certainly already have some type of scheduled reports, are digging deeper into your data to find out what is there, and may even be partially visualizing.
2. Set your goals and objectives
You must plan your business aim at this point. With so much information available, your chances of success will increase the more focused you are on creating your company objectives. The information you provide must respond to a business query or certain requirement.
You may use predictive and prescriptive analytics to answer questions such as: Are we going to meet our objectives by the end of the year? What market sector should we concentrate on? Based on our results, is there a package of items we ought to recommend?
Larger businesses have complex tech stacks with numerous touchpoints that are gathering mountains of consumer data that must be analyzed to determine which technologies are pertinent to this particular goal.
3. Find an effective strategy
There are two fundamental methods that your business may manage:
A Decentralized Approach
Some companies employ interactive dashboards to give their customers more authority. At this point, the concept of a citizen data scientist is relevant. Users should be familiar with the data, which starts with giving them access to resources outside dashboards. They are the ones who are defining the department's needs and require the information to make choices. This situation can free up bottlenecks with IT and data teams in large corporate firms, allowing departments to perform the majority of the data analysis on their own.
A Centralized Approach
On the other hand, some organizations have decided to have total control over the data that is delivered, including who may access what and how much of it. To achieve one version of the truth, their BI approach takes into account their sensitive data, vast distribution networks, and the need for enhanced governance. In that case, each client will have a limited number of drill-down capabilities to view more information, but system level, object level, data level, and row level security strictly restrict the data.
4. Provide a solution
The choice of how to communicate data may naturally lead to several BI techniques and solutions. For a centralized strategy, for example, you will need to invest more time and energy in training and paperwork. You could wish to use brief release cycles for a decentralized solution, collecting the feedback after each release and implementing these comments into the following release.
You may organize how you wish to concentrate your efforts by specifying the delivery method in your BI strategy. Do you need to invest more effort into training and documentation or into implementing greater data governance?
5. Find the roadblocks
You need to identify the "gatekeepers" in this scenario now that you are clear on the questions you need to ask and the evidence you need to support those inquiries. In this instance, the gatekeeper is essentially anything or anybody preventing you from accessing the data.
Your data could even be kept by a third-party provider or kept in a database. You must prepare how to access their data and become familiar with its structure if you are outsourcing HR services to a firm that is managing your employment pipeline or if you utilize cloud-based service providers to manage marketing campaigns.
There could be a straightforward API that can be used to import the data into certain third-party programs. For the IT department, all you might need to locate to access the data is the manager's approval and a few signatures. All of this requires time and money, which must be set aside in your BI plan.
Conclusion
We firmly believe in the value of a data and BI strategy. Regardless of your sector, product, or service, your company must undergo a digital transformation. You must create a digital transformation plan that will propel your company ahead.
We've been there for customers when their "Aha!" moment which later altered the course of their business. Moments like these inspire us to work as BI consultants, assisting clients in developing their data strategy and discovering insights from their data.
