There's a reason it's called Business Intelligence

Yesterday, I was part of a presentation to a mid-sized finance company with some big information problems. We (Dynamic Intelligence) had been asked to provide knowledge related to the BusinessObjects platform, while the company we were partnering with was focused on the back-end systems. In the room were various participants from the prospect including a VP and a couple of directors.

Anyway, the presentation began, and we discussed the many challenges and problems the client was currently facing that could be resolved by deploying a Business Intelligence solution - how there could be a vast saving in terms of staff-time looking for information, how having the right information could prevent bad decisions, etc. The prospect seemed to get it, and was understanding the business value.

Then, the coordinator brought up a slide showing the project timeline and phases. This is where (I think) it went off track.

Although our discussions to this point had been about the business value of the project, the slide seemed to reference all the 'neat' technical things that would be done for the project - Documenting data sources, defining mappings, blah, blah, blah...

What happened to the business? For me, looking at it, it seemed to say, 'Yeah, we know you've got some business problems to solve, so we're going to put in some really cool technology to fix it. We'll let your users know when we've got it done.'

So what's the issue?

Business Intelligence is about solving BUSINESS problems! The initiative should start with business users, be championed by business users, and it should be focused on having a thorough understanding of the business requirements before making it a technology project.

If you let technical resources drive a project/product to the user community, you end up with something that resembles Microsoft Bob or Sony Betamax.

As a footnote, I think the prospect understood the business value, and was going to ensure the project had the right team behind it. For my part, I learned not to let someone steer the ship I'm on, unless I really trust them! :)