In part 1 of What’s Holding Back Your BI, we looked at three business factors contributing to BI adoption rates as low as 8% to as high as 20%, depending on whose number you use. Now, we will take a look at how IT contributes to these low adoption rates and what can be done to better deliver on the past promises of BI.

When it comes to the challenges of introducing and executing business intelligence, the one item that is probably discussed more than any other is data, and there are many adjectives that can be used to describe the sad state of data in many organizations:

• Lonely (as in siloed)
• Bad (as in quality)
• Confused (as in lacking consistency)
• Misused (as in not governed)

We often don’t associate these adjectives with data – siloed yes, but lonely? However, I think this casts an interesting light on a situation that is often dismissed because of the buzzwords and the amount of talk over the years. Organizations do face tremendous challenges utilizing their data effectively, and yet there is far greater opportunity locked away inside that data than most people realize. The fact is your data itself is not lonely, bad, confused, or misused; rather, the problems are with us. We allow data to be siloed, we allow quality to diminish, we allow inconsistencies to creep in, and we don’t actively govern the data. But, your data doesn’t need to be silent anymore. It has the potential to be a valued enterprise asset.

After identifying opportunities to “visually drive decision-quality information higher up, further down, more widely across, and outside the enterprise”™ using iBusiness Solutions’ The Information Maximizer™, you need to identify the data necessary to produce that critical, decision-quality information. This data may reside in enterprise-managed application databases or in user-generated data sets. This data may reside both inside and outside your organization. With The Data Transformer™, you can begin managing your data as a strategic asset that will allow your scarce human and financial resources to be applied to value-added, customer-facing activities.

Aside from the condition of data, past project failure is another significant contributing factor. We have often been engaged by clients after they (or another consulting firm) tried to execute on a business intelligence project but were not able to complete it successfully. The reasons for failure are varied, some of which we have already discussed in this series. Whatever the reason, a past attempt at BI either directly limits the usage of the application or indirectly limits adoption by preventing future work to evolve the application and empower more users with business intelligence.

One common reason for project failure we have not yet discussed is the lack of a well-balanced initiative. A successful BI initiative must bridge the gap that often exists between the business and IT and acknowledge the value each party brings to the initiative. The Execution Disciplines™ identifies and empowers your IT department to take responsibility for the back-end disciplines related to data and technology, while making sure your business stakeholders are fully engaged in the leadership and business front-end disciplines. The cooperation, collaboration, and partnership established with this approach will increase your chances of achieving a highly successfully BI initiative.

There is no single, easy answer to the issue of undelivered BI promises but in part 3 we will discuss two aspects of realizing the promises of BI. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment here or email me.