Business Requirements For Bi Decisionpath
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Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio: How to Get it Right Steve Williams Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio:How to Get it Right Featured in DM Review, July 2008 by Steve Williams President DecisionPath Consulting 301-926-2452 [email protected] ore and more companies are learning the hard way that Figure 1. Business-Driven BI Requirements Development Process BI business requirements for Sub-Process 1.1 – BI Opportunity Analysis business intelligence (BI) are not something to be takenlightly. After paying hundreds of thousands Identify Business Drivers Prepare BI Business Caseof dollars in consulting fees for generic BI The BI Business Case describes inrequirements, or after spending months business terms how BI will be used togenerating traditional report requirements and improve business results. It provides afunctional specifications, major companies in Identify Business Strategies, Goals, high -level description of BI -drivenmany different industries have discovered that Objectives , and Performance Measures improvement opportunities (BIOs) fallingthese approaches suffer from three primary into three broad categories:deficiencies: (1) Management Processes, e.g. planning • They do not provide the basis for a budgeting, performance measurement, Identify Business Design: controlling, risk management , regulatory compelling business case that business (1) How Company Competes compliance , etc
leaders buy into, one that clearly (2) How Value Created for Customers articulates how BI will be used within (3) Core Business Processes (2) Customer Processes, i.e. all of the specific business processes to improve sales, marketing , and customer services business performance. processes aimed at acquiring, retaining and serving profitable customers • They do not provide enough specificity with respect to the kinds of BI applications Identify BI-Driven (3) Operating Processes, including core Business Improvement Opportunities manufacturing and/or service delivery that are needed, whereas BI is a broad (1) To Management Processes processes, back office processes, term that encompasses a wide range of (2) To Customer Processes supplier management processes, etc
applications, from basic reporting and (3) To Operating Processes OLAP to sophisticated analytics
• They do not provide enough specificity to guide development of the BI databases and understand what it means to get BI business The Weakness of Generic applications that deliver the BI or to guide requirements right. You must know how to BI Business Requirements the business process changes that deliver use true BI business requirements to drive the bang for the buck to the business. Consultants often run into situations definition and prioritization of the BI portfolio where major companies ask us to help develop The use of inappropriate and expensive BI as the foundation for a compelling business a BI Strategy, which includes a business case,business requirements methods leads to failed case, and you must be able to use BI business a BI portfolio and opportunity map, and a BIBI investments and discrediting of BI as a profit requirements to drive development of the requirements document. In many cases, theimprovement tool. This happens just at the time BI databases, BI applications, and enhanced BI team has already taken a stab at a businesswhen more sophisticated competitors using business processes that create business value
case and/or a requirements document, whichbusiness-driven requirements methods are Considering examples from my consulting typically contain statements such as:reaping the strategic and financial benefits of BI experience that illustrate incomplete ordone correctly. insufficient BI requirements will set the stage • Produce enhanced organizational for discussing what it means to get BI business capabilities to manage data and To avoid dissatisfied business users and requirements right. information as organizational assets
unhappy senior executives, it is critical toDM Review 2 Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio: How to Get it Right • Provide a single version of the truth
Figure 2. Business-Driven BI Requirements Development Process • Enable consistent and reliable access to Sub-Process 1.2 – BI Portfolio Definition accurate corporate-wide data
• Provide more sophisticated reporting and Define BI-Driven Business Improvement analysis, faster turnaround, improved Opportunities (BIOs) accessibility, and enhanced quality
• A single touchpoint where detailed Specify for Each BIO: financial transaction information can be BI Opportunity • Targeted business process Analysis filtered on user-entered selection criteria, • How BI will improve the process viewed online, downloaded in standard • When BI will be used • What kind of BI is needed Prepare BI Portfolio file formats and used to generate real time Definition and BI • Who will use the BI reports. • What units will use the BI Opportunity Map • How improvement will be measured These examples of generic BI business BI Business Case • Links (if any) to Balanced Scorecardrequirements illustrate a key point: they are fineas far as they go, but the business executivesand managers we deal with in major companies Rank BIOs Using Structureddon’t find these kinds of requirements Evaluation Criteria Weightedstatements and value propositions compelling. Toward Business ImpactIn fact, it is just the opposite – they see noreason to get excited about BI absent a morecompelling business case and more concreteBI requirements that relate to the things from multiple disparate sources. • Customer street address,they do, like conduct marketing campaigns, Unlike the world of custom systems • Customer city,manufacture and ship products, buy raw development, BI functional requirementsmaterials and provide services to customers. • Customer state, like those listed are standard features ofAs a result, they underfund BI, which limits commercially available BI tools. While it is • Customer ZIP code andits business impact, and thereby justifies their important to know what your company needs • Customer phone number
skepticism. BI tools to do, BI functional requirements typically say little about the kinds of business Such data element listings can be helpful, Why BI Functional Requirements (Specifications) are Not Enough information, analytic techniques and decision and it is important to understand what business support that are required or the specific core information is needed as a core expression of In the early days of the computer BI business requirements, but the listing alone business processes that the company seeksindustry, it was critical to generate a functional says nothing about how the information will be to improve via BI. And yet, when teachingrequirements document because much of what used or how it might need to be integrated with BI requirements courses at conferences, I amcomputers did had to be custom-programmed. information about products, manufacturing confronted on a regular basis by companiesIf you wanted the monitor to display a table locations, store locations, organizational units, whose BI requirements approach is centeredfull of business data, you had to capture that and other organizational information. Further, around capturing BI functional requirementsas a functional requirement - often expressed BI capabilities built on top of large stores of like those illustrated previously. While theseas a statement like “the system shall be capable unintegrated subject data elements run the are necessary to a degree, they are far fromof accepting data inputs and displaying the risk of spawning inconsistent BI depending sufficient for creating BI applications that satisfydata in user-defined tabular formats.” In the on how development teams and/or power business users’ needs
modern BI world, we run across functional users choose to integrate data for their specificrequirements such as: Data Element Listings purposes. In other words, simple data element • The system shall provide the ability to drill A third common approach is using the listings don’t provide enough specificity to down, drill across, and slice-and-dice. data element listing as a proxy for BI business guide development of the BI databases and requirements. The predominant logic here applications that deliver BI or to guide the • The system shall provide the ability to is that the company is not sure about how it business process changes that deliver the bang specify organizational hierarchies and wants to use BI, so it seeks to prepare for any for the buck to the business
display performance scorecards for each eventuality by creating a list of all the data Business-Driven BI Requirements organizational unit
elements it might need for all the major subjects • The system shall enable role-based access of the business that it might need to know So far, I have illustrated common to information. something about. A typical data element listing approaches to BI business requirements and might include: discussed how they are somewhat useful but • The system shall provide capabilities to certainly not sufficient. In contrast, a well- route alerts to business users according to • Customer first name, structured set of BI business requirements: user-defined parameters
• Customer last name, • Establishes a clear linkage between • The system shall enable integration of data business strategies, the core business • Customer account number,DM Review 3 Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio: How to Get it Right processes via which the strategies are executed, and BI-driven business Figure 3. Business-Driven BI Requirements Development Process improvement opportunities (BIOs), which Key Inputs are the basis for a BI business case that is Define Requirements for Business compelling to the business stakeholders; Information : Prepare BI BI Opportunity Standard Reports , OLAP, Requirements • Identifies and clearly describes what Analysis Scorecards , Dashboards, KPIs, Document business information, analytical tools Metrics , Alerts, etc
and techniques, and decision support (1) Analytical Needs Glossary is required by the business to realize Define Requirements for Analytical BI-driven improvement opportunities Tools and Applications : (2) Information regarding management processes, BI Business Case Trend Analysis, Statistical Analysis, Requirements Matrix customer processes, and/or operational Optimization , Forecasting, Simulation, Modeling, etc. (3) Representative processes; Business Questions • Provides the essential input to the process (4) High-Level Fact of defining specific BI projects and Define Requirements for Decision Qualifier Matrix prioritizing those projects based on key BI Portfolio Support : Definition (5) High-Level BI User criteria such as business impact and time- Alerts, Decision Processes, Scoring Requirements to-market; Engines , Predictive Analytics, etc
• Provides the means of aligning BI, business process improvement, and balanced scorecard initiatives; the BI Portfolio explicitly links BI and one or document that can drive development of the more targeted business processes. In the center BI databases, BI applications, and enhanced • Drives key data architecture decisions; of Figure 2, we see that when we talk about business processes that create business value
• Provides the basis for end-to-end defining BI-driven BIOs, we get very specific Short of a major faux pas with a key traceability between BI requirements about the BI and how it will be used to improve customer, committing a social gaffe in the approved by business users and the business results. This approach overcomes executive suite, or consistently missing delivered data stores and BI applications; the weaknesses of traditional approaches to BI performance targets, nothing will derail a and requirements and establishes the basis for the promising business or IT career like being last step in the process of developing a well- • Provides a key baseline against which the associated with a high profile initiative that structured set of BI requirements, shown in performance of the BI initiative can be fails. And BI is increasingly high profile Figure 3
measured. because of the costs of doing it right and the The last step in getting BI business strategic and financial consequences of doing Many companies have seen the requirements right is becoming more it wrong. Most professionals I work with wantshortcomings of traditional requirements specific about the requirements for business to be part of successful initiatives because suchapproaches for BI purposes, and they can easily information, analytic tools and applications, initiatives help the company, provide a sense ofrelate to the characteristics of business-driven and decision support – all in relation to professional accomplishment and satisfaction,BI requirements listed previously. Therefore, previously defined BI-driven business and help careers
if creating a well-structured set of BI business improvement opportunities. For example,requirements is the goal, the next challenge In the BI world, the odds of success go a management process such as performanceis how to get it right. While much more is way up if we get BI business requirements management may have a requirement forinvolved than can be addressed in a short right. While there are a host of other issues specific business information in the formarticle, I can provide a high-level overview to that go into BI success, they don’t matter much of metrics and key performance indicators,get you started. The first step is BI opportunity if we build the wrong things or the things we perhaps in a scorecard format. A customeranalysis, as shown in Figure 1. build aren’t used. A well-structured set of process such as cross-selling may have a business-driven BI requirements helps avoid The goal of BI opportunity analysis is requirement for an analytic application those scenarios and sets the stage for deliveringto identify – in business terms for business that uses a data mining technique like successful BI projects
executives, managers, and analysts – the collaborative filtering to identify productmain ways that BI can be used to improve recommendations for customers at a companybusiness results. The outcome of the analysis Web commerce site. An operational processis documented in a qualitative BI business case such as manufacturing may have a requirementthat describes potential BI-driven improvement for decision support in the form of alertsopportunities in three broad areas: to executives when the cycle time for threemanagement processes, customer processes, consecutive orders to a major customer isand operating processes. The BI opportunity outside of established targets. Armed with aanalysis and the resulting business case are key specific understanding of the BI requirements Six Montgomery Village Ave., Suite 622inputs to the next step, as shown in Figure 2. for each specific BIO, we are then in a position Gaithersburg, MD 20879 to develop a comprehensive BI requirements P: 301-926-5838, F: 301-417-0508 The business-driven process of defining www.decisionpath.comDM Review 4
Requirements document. In many cases, the BI team has already taken a stab at a business case and/or a requirements document, which typically contain statements such as: • Produce …
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How to create a bi strategy for your business?
Instead, focus on what your business needs BI to do and the analytics it must be able to support. Don’t use these opportunities to create a long list of requirements; instead, use them to understand the motivations and functional uses; requirements will come naturally after that. 2.
What are the top bi requirements?
Top BI Requirements Checklist. 1 Functional Requirements. Getting down to basics: what are some must-have BI capabilities? What fundamental features would add the most value to your ... 2 Dashboarding and Data Visualization. 3 Data Source Connectivity. 4 Data Management. 5 Data Querying. More items
How to gather business intelligence requirements?
During the process of gathering your Business Intelligence requirements, you should consider the following three methods. 1. Pain Method (Covers the past) Mentality: Users are currently experiencing pains related to information needs. How it works: Vent the pains.
How do i become a bi developer?
Similar to other technical professions, BI developers often get their start with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, or a related field and supplement their studies with courses in programming languages, IT, or data analytics.