Comments on: Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea? http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/ Thoughts on the confluence of business, change and technology. Areas covered include business intelligence, cultural transformation, business and IT alignment, business and IT strategy, project execution and social media. Sun, 20 May 2012 04:05:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Peter Thomas http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-19791 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:17:19 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-19791 Hi Tigor,

Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment.

As I say, what might be termed the programming resource is the only element that I would consider outsourcing. For mid-sized companies, this is likely to be of a size where the economies of scale are outweighed by the risks, lengthened communication lines and lack of flexibility (understandably) inherent in many outsourcing contracts.

Out of interest, what is your own role? It always hels to get disclosure on these matters, lest other readers infer a conflict of interest.

All the best

Peter

]]> By: Tigor http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-19790 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:53:07 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-19790 Peter, Thank you for the great article.

My experience is somewhat different.

There is business and technical aspect of BI. Both aspects are important. Depending on what data sources are used, you can have a business /information analyst which delivers specifications which an external consultant can use to design a data warehouse and ETL. Those activities can en should be outsourced, I believe. There is no way an internal developer can match the skill level and experience of a consultant who have seen a lot of data warehouses in different companies. Learning “hard” technical skills cost time and money. This is an argument which managers understand.

Even iterative development which often comes at a later stadium when reports of OLAP-cubes have to be build, can be done by an external experienced BI-consultant. He has done it many times before, after all.

Tigor

]]> By: Peter Thomas http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-19363 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:30:29 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-19363 Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to comment. If I have it right you are asking about bringing an outsourced BI function back in house – do I have that right?

I guess new projects vs business as usual might be somewhat related to how the outsourced systems are perceived. I’m guessing that if they were great, then keeping them outsourced would make sense as it had delivered, so perhaps the question would not arise. Am I right in assuming that this path has been less than successful?

Peter

]]> By: Fdsilva http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-19361 Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:49:36 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-19361 Hi Peter, Thanks for the article. A lot of good arguments as to why BI is not really suited for outsourcing.
Any thoughts on how to reverse an outsourced BI department when one realises the real value? Are new projects the best way to start rebuilding or operations of the existing BI solutions?

]]> By: Peter Thomas http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-10316 Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:15:35 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-10316 Hi Aniruddha,

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Did you read the article by any chance?

Peter

]]> By: Aniruddha http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-10311 Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:10:12 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-10311 Hi Peter,

I am BI professional and working in the field of MSBI specifically SSAS. I am based in India and looking for some companies for business partnership. I am looking for some companies those can outsource their BI projects.

]]> By: An update of the most read articles on this site « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-2030 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:24:00 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-2030 [...] Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea? [...]

]]> By: “Why Business Intelligence projects fail” « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-1764 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:14:37 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-1764 [...] If the BI system delivered does not live up to expectations then there are two questions to be answered. In what way does it not meet expectations? and Why did it take until implementation to determine this? It could be that the functionality of the BI tool does not meet what is necessary, but most of these have a wide range of functionality and are at least reasonably intuitive to use. More likely the issue is in the information presented in the tool (which is not judged to be useful) or in an inadequate approach to implementation. The way to address both of these potential problems from the very start of the project is to follow the four-pillared approach that I recommend in many places on this blog; notably in one of the middle sections of Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea?. [...]

]]> By: Business Intelligence Competency Centres « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-1342 Mon, 11 May 2009 17:26:57 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-1342 [...] There are many skills that will be necessary in such a group. These match the four main pillars of a BI implementation (I cover these in more depth in several places on the blog, including BI implementations are like icebergs and the middle section of Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea?): [...]

]]> By: The dictatorship of the analysts « Peter Thomas - Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert http://peterjamesthomas.com/2009/03/14/is-outsourcing-business-intelligence-a-good-idea/#comment-924 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:19:25 +0000 http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/?p=1137#comment-924 [...] and although the article is obviously focussed on a specific issue, the first few sections of Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea? pulls together many of these themes and may be a useful place to [...]

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