Business Intelligence

Gottfried Egger, Wassermann AG
(The entire White Paper you can find at the download section right.)

The 10 most important success factors for implementing BI projects:

• Early involvement of the users,
• Defining user groups,
• Definition of the technical requirements,
• Coordination of the required coefficients,
• Knowledge of DWH solutions already existing in the enterprise,
• Support from the management,
• Ensuring the data integration and data quality,
• Decision for the correct BI software by means of Proof of Concept,
• Limitation of the project time to max. 6 months,
• Ensuring the further development of the BI applications.

More than 30 percent of the BI projects fail because of the coefficients not being clearly defined. The coefficients must be agreed with those responsible in the organisation in order to counteract in advance a recurring fundamental discussion about the composition of the coefficients. Confidence in the agreed coefficients is a primary precondition for the subsequent acceptance of the results in the corresponding reports. Sometimes, it is advisable to start with the so-called Best-Practice coefficients and iteratively develop your own coefficient from them. The standard coefficients in the financial field would be, for example, the profit margin, equity ratio, cash-flow yield or capital reflux quota.

To exploit the synergies across the different business processes (purchasing, production, sales), apart from the coefficients for the individual business processes, pan-process coefficients must also be defined without fail. In this manner, the commercial and technical perspective of the individual company results, for example, can be made transparent by simple means. The findings thus obtained can then be implemented in the correct decisions.

Another possibility of the meaningful deployment of coefficients can be seen in the area of early indicators. The earlier that trends and developments can be estimated from the data, the more flexibly and accurately can the enterprise strategy and the resultant decisions be shaped...

The entire White Paper you can find at the download section right.