In 2003, IDC released the results of a study titled The Financial Impact of Business  Analytics that evaluated the ROI of business analytics projects at 43 leading organizations in North America and Western Europe. Each of the resulting case studies was accompanied by in-depth ROI calculations, which showed, for the group as a whole, a median ROI of 112%. Notably, the median ROI for projects that IDC classified as incorporating predictive analytics was 145% versus 89% for those projects that did not.

A Gartner survey of 1500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) published in 2008 shows that Business Intelligence (BI) ranked as the number one technology priority.   I guess it is no surprise that the idea that businesses of all sizes should have real insight into their operations and their customers  in order to be able to enhance their planning, forecasting, modeling and resourcing based on information that is cohesive, current, accurate, secure and accessible - is at the core of today's expanding BI market.

Yet, one can argue that the majority of enterprises large and small have not yet taken full advantage of the masses of data they have accumulated in their operational and ERP systems over the years. Granted, many organizations have deployed some sort of an operational BI environment for departmental business users to run simplistic queries and reports.

BI converts data into information, sales records into sales trends, financial reports into meaningful insights. Isn’t that what decision makers at all levels need? Hasn’t BI been the top priority for CIOs for many years? So what is stopping organizations from leveraging the data they have in order to provide decision makers with the ability to make timely and informed decisions?

Here are some of the reasons:

First assuming you know what you need, it is hard to choose your BI solution; the market is very fragmented, not only in terms of the number of vendors operating in this space, but also the types of technologies that occupy the broad spectrum that we refer to as BI. Some vendors promote pre packaged BI applications others want to sell you a consulting based approach to building your BI environment from scratch, some vendors talk about Enterprise Performance Management, other want to sell you a bunch of query tools. Even within the same vendor you will find competing forces. One SAP sales rep will try to convince you of the benefits of the SAP BW while another will focus on the newly acquired Business Objects solution set. An Oracle technology sales rep will probably want you to adopt the Sun Oracle Database Machine and build your own data warehouse while an Oracle applications sales rep will only talk about the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications. Although in many cases there can be more than one route to achieving your BI objectives, it is not always clear which route will be faster, more economical and more future proof.

Second assuming that you have selected the right technologies and consultants, BI is still very hard to implement not only because the implementation often requires a very high degree of interaction between business users, IT and the consulting firm but also because the project always requires heaving technical work in order to integrate the various data sources into one cohesive environment that acts as the single source of the truth for decision makers.

And third, the loss of project momentum after it goes live. If there is a universal truth in the world of BI, it is that a strong sponsor can make or break a program. Even though many BI projects start delivering incredible business value while they had a strong advocate in the executive ranks. Unfortunately, the majority of these programs see their contribution fall off dramatically if or when the champion moves on to other challenges. Other BI programs simply fail to maintain the levels of investments needed to keep the BI program alive, BI is not a project it is a program that literally has no end.

Scary as it is, you should not panic, many CIOs managed to get it right and are delivering increasingly great value, you know the pitfalls and you know that cutting corners does not work with BI, and finally On-Track Arabia can help you manage the program from start to end!

For more information about our services, please visit ontrackarabia.com or email info@ontrackarabia.com