Altimus - Higher Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) is much more than simply employing the right technology. BI requires a comprehensive strategic approach. A Business Intelligence Competency Centre’s key role is to provide a permanent formal management structure to support the organisations overall business intelligence strategy.

A BICC is a fixed team with cross-functional responsibilities harnessing the potential of business intelligence to increase corporate performance. Intrinsic to the success of a BICC is the representation of 3 key areas of the organisation: strategic direction; IT Infrastructure and business analysis. This team is often comprised of a mix of employees and external providers.

Business Intelligence Competency Centre:

Through the BI initiative the BICC will address business-alignment; promote the BI technology, define the standards for all BI software; prioritise all stages of the BI initiative; project manage and train end users; all of these are issues associated with substantial BI initiatives.

The majority of organisations embarking on a major BI programme suffer from the same pitfalls; they lack the managerial commitment for organising, implementing and supporting a substantial BI programme as well as the necessary skills.

Usually if the skills are available they are deployed elsewhere within the organisation. There is often a lack of consistent methodologies, definitions, processes, tools and technologies. The BICC brings all these into one area of responsibility increasing levels of ROI by ensuring the success of a truly pervasive BI initiative.

Within the premise of the BICC an enterprise-wide pool of skills and processes will be developed and will be used to sustain effective information delivery, support strategic and operational decision-making throughout the organisation; empowering the business decision makers to make better decisions faster and drive business performance.

Aligning BI initiatives within the organisation is pivotal to achieving the overall strategic goal, however this is only possible if all areas of the organisation have the same BI requirements; establishing a BICC means that the BI strategy can be clearly defined and sustained and monitoring its success is easier.

The culture of an organisation can often be a stumbling block for the success of a BI initiative, each organisation is unique and so is the culture embedded within , a BICC will be able to draw on the cross functional experience the members will collectively have and leverage this culture to the advantage of the organisation.

A BICC provides an ideal solution for satisfying the increasing demands of the business users with less staff and provides a platform for repeatable results, best practices, and collaboration across the organisation.

Altimus has successfully worked with clients who use all of the options described below. It is generally better to implement a model and then refine it, rather than spending a lot of time choosing a model since the benefits from using the approach generally outweigh the incremental gain from a slightly different if marginally better model.

The key options that need to be considered are:

Reporting	Who should the BICC report to? The choice is normally between the CIO and another executive. We have seen them report to the CFO, the Marketing Director and the CIO. The choice is very important and more down to personality than function. Gartner would prefer this not to be the CIO, however if a CIO is business focused then this can be a good choice, however an operationally focused CIO may not push the business alignment as effectively.
Real or Virtual	Some organisations prefer the BICC to be a full time real department on the Org. Chart. Others prefer a virtual organisation, where members are drawn from their departments as required. Both work, and have their own advantages.
In-house or Outsourced	All three functions can be either in any combination. Altimus often share the strategic and analytic burden with our customers, and occasionally take over the whole BI project – including strategic direction in consultation with the CEO. These two functions are most closely linked to the business, so when we do assist here it is generally to augment the internal resources rather than totally outsource. The correct balance is down to assessing internal skills against the need required and sourcing appropriately to make best use of internal and external talent.

To find out more about BICCs and how they can benefit you, call Altimus on 0800 804 6442 and speak to one of our experts, or contact us through Information Request