Business Intelligence Competency Center

How poised are you to exploit business intelligence?

Increasingly, organizations realize the significant value of managing their corporate information and turning it into a competitive and strategic asset to drive their business forward. Organizations are also realizing that there is more to information management and BI than simply employing technology. There is a need for a comprehensive, strategic approach, addressing technology as well as people, processes and organizational culture. A lack of strategy will result in inconsistent BI deployments; difficulties in managing, implementing and supporting BI initiatives that span multiple departments; a lack of standardization of methodologies, definitions, processes, tools and technologies; and inefficient utilization of BI skills. And it is important that this strategy has an owner and support from the executive level.

A Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) is a cross-functional team with a permanent, formal organizational structure. It is owned and staffed by the client and has defined tasks, roles, responsibilities and processes for supporting and promoting the effective use of business intelligence and performance management across the organization. Based on a recent survey performed by BetterManagement.com titled "How do you plan for Business Intelligence?", organizations with a BI Competency Center see the following benefits:

Increased usage of business intelligence (74 percent).
Increased business user satisfaction (48 percent).
Better understanding of the value of BI (45 percent).
Increased decision-making speed (45 percent).
Decreased staff costs (26 percent).
Decreased software costs (24 percent).

A BICC provides a central location for driving and supporting your organization's overall business intelligence strategy. It enables your organization to coordinate and complement existing efforts, while reducing redundancy and increasing effectiveness. The centralization of these efforts ensures that information and best practices are communicated and shared through the entire organization so that everyone can benefit from successes and lessons learned.

The BICC is also instrumental in enabling knowledge transfer and enhancing analytical skills. The BICC can coach and train business users to empower them with new skills that drive innovation and discovery. It is also important for turning analysis into action and ensuring greater information consumption and higher levels of ROI.

Determining the scope and role of a Business Intelligence Competency Center:

The first step in implementing a BICC is to understand your organization's business and information management priorities, user skills and information delivery capabilities. This information will determine the role, scope and functions of a BICC that can support your business objectives. Consequently, no two BICCs may ever be exactly the same.

Your BICC might have some of these functional areas:

BI Program Management Office: : Defines and monitors implementation of the BI strategy. Responsible for consistent BI deployment, standards, technology assessments, knowledge management, best practices and business analytics expertise.
Data Stewardship: Data definition, ownership and quality, metadata management, data standards.
Vendor Management: Vendor evaluation, relationship management, user licenses.
Information Management: Coordination with the data warehouse team to integrate operational data into the BI environment.
Information Delivery: Working with the business community to promote proper use of information, data mart design and utilization, analytical analysis, user training and support.

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