Comments on: Developing an international BI strategy

By: “Involving users in business intelligence strategy key for success” – Christina Torode on SearchCio-Midmarket.com « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:44:21 +0000

[...] To me involving business people in a BI project is not enough. It implies that IT is in the driving seat and that the project is essentially a technological one. Instead what I believe is required is a full partnership. I have written about the lengths that I have gone to in trying to achieve this in Scaling-up Performance Management and Developing an international BI strategy. [...]

By: “Why Business Intelligence projects fail” « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:14:55 +0000

[...] in defining BI business requirements in a couple of articles: Scaling-up Performance Management and Developing an international BI strategy. Please take a look at these if you are interested in delving further into this area. For now it [...]

By: Business Intelligence Competency Centres « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Mon, 11 May 2009 17:27:14 +0000

[...] on a larger scale. I spoke about some of the challenges of doing this in an earlier article, Developing an international BI strategy. Another issue that is likely to raise its head is the political dimension, in particular where [...]

By: Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea? « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:21:26 +0000

[...] An in-depth understanding of business requirements, developed by close collaboration with a wide range of business managers. In particular, what is necessary is understanding what questions the business wants to ask and why (see Scaling-up Performance Management and Developing an international BI strategy) [...]

By: Some reasons why IT projects fail « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:15:23 +0000

[...] business and IT strategies (which one fervently hopes are complementary). As I know all too well, the strategy formation step can be tough one and people may sometimes be keen to skip it. The current economic climate may lead to this [...]

By: “Gartner sees a big discrepancy between BI expectations and realities” - Intelligent Enterprise « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:01:40 +0000

[...] No Link to Corporate Strategy – There should not be a link to Corporate Strategy, BI does not exist as a separate entity that requires linkage. Instead BI work should be an expression of Corporate Strategy (as should any IT project), what else is it an expression of? This is not about listening to executives (though that is important) it is about IT being part of the senior management team of an organisation and not some semi-detached entity, focussed only on the beauty of its own navel. I give some indication of how to go about ensuring that this is the case in two articles, one focussed on a European environment and one spanning four continents. [...]

By: Scaling-up Performance Management « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:42:03 +0000

[...] We put a lot of thought into the type of person that we wanted on this Extended Team. We wanted people who were leaders, who were open to doing things in new ways, who were comfortable with technology and who took an analytic approach to their work. This group made a major contribution to the success of the project. It would not have been possible to scale-up our solution without their assistance. Continue reading about this area in: Developing an International BI Strategy. [...]

By: A common-sense approach to BI from Information Management « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:15:20 +0000

[...] Developing an international BI strategy [...]

By: Peter Thomas

Peter Thomas — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:12:03 +0000

I made some follow-up comments on the LinkedIn.com group mentioned at the beginning of the article, these are as follows:

Building on both my blog article and Uday Jyoti's comments above, I think the other key to success is recognising that this is never going to be a pure waterfall process - you absolutely need to go through many iterations, gradually converging on a deliverable. It is important to realise that this feedback loop continues post implementation. Undoubtedly there will be a need to modify what you have done based on actual usage - neither business nor IT will be able to anticipate everything, no matter how diligent their work. Finally, successful BI is not just about diligently gathering business requirements, it is about forming a joint BI team with both business and IT components. If you are successful, the lines between different types of people will begin to blur over time.