Companies see big operational benefits in implementing
business intelligence software but only after overcoming numerous
technical, cultural and process challenges, according to US users
at the Business Intelligence Perspectives conference in
California.
Speaking at the conference, Bubba Tyler said business
intelligence roll-outs had three dimensions - technology, people
and processes - and that the latter two were the most
challenging.
Tyler is chief information officer at Quaker Chemical, which has
been using applications from SAS over the past 10 years to run
analysis and reporting operations. "It was a nine- to 10-year
process and a heck of a big investment for a company of our size,"
he said.
According to Tyler, Quaker Chemical moved ahead slowly and had
to continually re-examine its business intelligence model. The
process also required the company to collaborate and share
information on a global basis, prompting it to tie employees'
co-operation to changes in salary. Tyler said Quaker also had to go
through the time-consuming process of creating a common language
for use in its business intelligence operations and to speed up the
collection of data.
Andy George, senior vice-president of technology at ProfitLine,
advised users to phase in business intelligence implementations.
Telecom billing processor Profitline runs Business Objects'
WebIntelligence software to analyse and audit customer bills.
During roll-out, data validity was also a challenge, because too
many people were accessing and corrupting data, prompting the
company to appoint a data integrity "czar".
According to Shirley Hughes, chief financial officer and general
manager of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, security is a major
issue. When Falls Church moved from 2,200 separate spreadsheets to
a more consolidated system, it implemented a security policy.
Hughes said all staff had to read and sign a document that
explained proper procedures, such as not sharing passwords, and all
access to the business intelligence systems was kept under tight
control.
Al Brill, senior managing director of technology services at
Kroll OnTrack, said the proper maintenance of data being used in a
business intelligence application was so crucial that a company
should seek legal advice about what could and could not be stored
in the long term.
Kroll OnTrack uses home-grown analytical systems to help collect
and present data to lawyers, who need it for court. Brill warned of
"vampire" data that could linger in the system for years then "come
back to bite you in the neck". He cited old e-mails that could be
seized on in future litigation and presented in a sinister
light.
Brill said user access had to be monitored regularly and kept up
to date - otherwise someone who changed positions at a company
might be accessing the system when they shouldn't.
He also noted that business intelligence was potentially the
biggest and most important technology investment a company might
make. "It deserves the kind of planning and thinking that a project
that potentially means life and death for a company should have. I
don't think there are any recipes for success, but there are a heck
of a lot for failure."
Marc Songini writes for Computerworld