The importance of Sponsorship for a successful BI integration
As I come originally from the dinosaurs’ world of mainframes and their heavy COBOL programs that produced way back then colorless and graphicless reports, I can easily relate to the need people had to develop user friendly products that would build the equivalent reports in no time, and I can see why a business would invest in today’s BI tools and create its own Business Intelligence group.
BI groups are somewhat awkward though: due to their technical tools and setup (servers, networking, security, etc), they are most often segregated from the business departments and regrouped with other technology groups in the broader umbrella of the Chief Information Officer. That separation from the business indirectly has some repercussions on BI projects that the business would then perceive as “another expensive IT project”.
And then, in order to make up for this organization choice, it feels like we have to catch up and “sell” our BI projects to the business… while it should certainly be the other way around, in other words, having the business come to the IT group with the business needs and have IT providing them with a BI solution.
Business Intelligence cannot be implemented widely at the enterprise level from its inception; BI typically gets introduced as one of the IT projects that will eventually turn into an enterprise-wide application with its own BI strategy. This is where we talk about involving a BI sponsor early on, which will only build a strong BI-savvyness and will boost the integration of BI at the enterprise level.
By sponsorship for a BI project or a BI deployment I mean not only the high level management of the IT group – if BI is part of the Information Technology group – but I would like to highlight the need for the involvement of a business sponsor as well.
I have seen various scenarios of organization structures, and thus a variation of groups that would include the BI one: from the typical Information Management department that regroups Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence and DBAs, reporting to the CIO or head of IT, to the more specialized BI for Finance or for Marketing, reporting to those non-IT groups.
Depending on this organizational chart, sponsorship would naturally come from the group directly above BI. If you are in the case of having a pure IT Business Intelligence group, you should not oversee the need for a business sponsor: keep in mind that Business Intelligence is business-centric, and for it to be successfully implanted, it requires the support of the business.
If you start from scratch and do not have a business sponsor yet, do a quick evaluation of which department would gain the most of using a BI solution (pick only one if possible, or two at the very most). Then do your homework and analyze within that group what manual process of data could be easily done with BI. Above all, estimate what gain the group will have from this. Finally, develop a prototype or organize a demo. You do not need a fancy data base for that; EXCEL spreadsheets or an Access Database will be enough to support your demo. Once you get a business executive excited by your idea, you just have, right there, your BI business sponsor!
If we take a closer look at the specific case of a BI department integrated in a large corporate Information Technology group, we can sometimes find a small BI group buried under layers of IT management. It is important to note that the more diluted into the organization the Business Intelligence group is, the more it needs to claim its impact, and demonstrate what profit other departments would have from using BI. Furthermore, how do you think BI is then perceived at the business level, other than something that is far from being related to them? When you are hunting for the perfect BI business sponsor, you have to be prepared for the long route that will take you there; showing off the profits of Business Intelligence will not be the same when you are such a small fish in a big pond.
In a standard startup company, we rarely see that level of complexity in their org chart. More and more start up executives are even BI-savvy, from their previous work experience. They have seen it implemented and they might even have seen great benefits from BI. Those execs are not necessarily from IT… which means they are your potential fantastic BI business sponsor. You can spot them without difficulty: they are the ones who discuss passionately about what they’ve seen with their own eyes coming out of BI. Don’t miss this opportunity to leverage them!
To summarize this monologue, I want to insist on the two types of sponsorship: the one coming from the technology department, and the one from the business. Do not oversee the importance of the business sponsor, as it will keep the business-focus of BI projects and help broaden the deployment of BI within the company, with a BI strategy that matches the company’s strategy.
This article was submitted by Flo.
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by Guest
Filed under: Business Intelligence
Leave a Reply