Ongoing Management of a BI Program
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Well, here we are. I have been late twice, one of those completely missing the deadline. Overall I think a blog series is a good idea for topics that require more coverage than a few paragraphs. Perhaps there is another in the future, but for now let’s wrap up this one.
This post is meant to discuss the key areas of management for a BI program that is up and running. Like most things in life it isn’t that easy. I have joked in the past that if you have seen one BI program you have seen one BI program (a statement stolen from the industry I work the most for, if you have seen one health plan you have seen one health plan). But, there are some fundamentals that are important as you consider on-going management, so we will address the things that should be similar among all of us.
Keeping the pipeline open
Or perhaps just as importantly, keeping the pipeline organized and well communicated. If you’re program is up and running you probably realized at some point that the list of requests was a long one, and the challenge with having them all in front of you is that once you put them on a list people will think you are going to do something about it. Incoming requests are the bread and butter work for BI programs. You should have a pretty good system for getting those requests in. I recommend using a process that your users are already familiar with (similar to submitting a request to IT). Communication is the key, though. So, create an internal website with a dashboard like view of all requests, their status and the next few that are in the queue to get worked. Make sure you include a person to contact if they have questions.
New Innovations
So, what if you are the lucky BI practitioner that has a very mature program that is up and running and easily meets all of your operational and service level agreement expectations? You have to remember that a BI program is a living, breathing thing. It exists within your organizations ecosystem which is constantly changing, so you need to find a way to innovate all the time to ensure that the program stays relevant. If you have access to a lot of data and you are just reporting what has happened that’s an easy place to start, by trying to predict what will happen.
If you only have very standard, boring spreadsheet like reports, try creating very visually appealing dashboards. Or, if you are looking for ways to get your user group more involved extend them a challenge to find the most innovative ways to use the data and give a nice prize to the winner.
Program Evaluation
We really need to drink our own kool-aid here. The entire reason that BI programs exist in a lot of organizations is to measure the success of certain efforts (new product launches, customer focused initiatives, etc) yet we often forget to measure our own success in a very objective way. This is also an excellent way to communicate how well the program is supported.
Evaluation doesn’t always have to mean numbers. If someone sends you an email or note about the great job your team is doing that is highly valuable qualitative data. Keep all of those in a binder, and once it’s possible, categorize them and create a report based on those comments.
Two other ways to evaluate success are to create surveys that measure value, satisfaction and data integrity or simple measure the number of users accessing the tools. The latter is the least valuable way to measure success, because it doesn’t put the value of the usage into context. In other words, you have no idea if anything valuable was actually created as a result of those reports being run.
The best way to measure success is to find your biggest BI advocates and find out what they are doing with the data. You may be surprised to learn that they have found a way to isolate customer behaviors that indicate attrition and have created a process to flag those customers and intercede before it’s too late.
Whether you communicate out to users about all the requests in the queue, finding new ways of innovating or evaluating your program make sure you are always delivering value to as many people in your organization as possible.
