Establishing A Business Intelligence Competency Center

By Alexander Gordon

Establishing a successful business intelligence competency center (BICC) depends on right planning and well-managed implementation. Build and empower your BICC as a business or analytical coaching center to support and manage projects from requirements, design and development stages onwards. Assessment of current use of information and how better the information can be used in future should be the BICC’s roadmap. It is an ideal way to leverage your investment in a centralized infrastructure. This will also benefit global or regional players, with decentralized IT landscape, to gain from centralized BI support in training and documentation at new sites.

Implementation:

1. Strategy: Have a strong sponsor to support current and future BI projects. Include buy-in from the business as well as IT and lay out the functional areas of the BICC. How those functions will be staffed and where the BICC reports within the organization should be defined.

2. Setting-Up: Managing the center requires strong business management and communication skills. It operates as support and service center for multiple functional departments. The staff should have required skills profiles, service attitude and orientation towards center’s internal customers. Prioritize the workload, keep transparency in work and continuously evaluate against identified objects.

3. Sustaining The BICC: Ensure that the business is able to benefit from the services delivered from the center. Have a visible communication and performance based incentive system. Share a common understanding of focus and charter of the center. BICC projects should show manageable and incremental benefits.

4. Operation: Criteria to review and evaluate success of BICC should be established in the planning stages itself. Once it proves its benefits and achievements, it becomes an integral part of the company. A highly visible project will ensure that people in the organization learn about its existence and successful working.

5. The Future: Balance the current tactical needs of the company with the strategy and vision for the future. Focus on managing assets, products, processes, performances and people. Understand long-term implications of business and technical decisions taken in present on the future of the company. Evolve and change continuously to stay with changing needs of the organization. New insights, innovative ventures and necessary adjustments will ensure that the company’s meets its goals and objectives.

BICC Services:

Using a mix of practice aids, methodologies, tools and technology, Cognos Consulting guides you to analyze, design, build, deploy and operate a BICC tailored to your specific needs.

1. Readiness Assessment Service: Cognos helps in making a plan to charter and program design that matures with each step.

2. Establishing a culture of Best Practice Service: Build tactical and technical knowledge repository of best practice, and supplement skills and resources with experts advice.

3. Operating BICC with Extended Services: Cognos Consulting helps make transition from departmental BI to an adaptive BICC based organization to meet your unique need. It ensures self-supported and self-managed operating and growth from an infrastructure and administrative perspective.

Operate your BICC successfully to become self sufficient through knowledge. Establish a culture of transparent and best practices.