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BI Curs 4 PDF
BI Curs 4 PDF
BICC is a cross-functional team, with specific tasks, roles responsibilities and processes
for supporting and promoting the effective use of BI across the organization.
BICC act as a center of expertise of BI and drive and support it use throughout the
organization.
It has employees from the organization itself, although some roles can be outsourced.
Based on this, makes it available to business users at different levels and providing advice and
support for all BI-related questions, including assistance with the interpretation of information.
A BICC enables the organization to coordinate and complement existing efforts in the area of BI,
while reducing redundancy and increasing effectiveness. The centralization of these efforts
ensures that information and best practices are communicated and shared through the entire
organization so that everyone can benefit from successes.
BICC can be defined as a team of dedicated Business and IT specialists accountable for
defining, owning and managing the execution of the companys BI strategy and agenda.
While many leaders, stakeholders, contributors, managers, analysts, developers and user
communities participate in BI efforts in one way or another, a BICC serves as the catalyst and
glue that creates, promotes ,and holds together the overall BI operating model (Hitachi).
The CC develops the overall strategic plan and priorities for BI, defines the requirements
and helps the organization to interpret and apply the insight to business decisions (Hostmann).
The BICC should be a cross-organizational group that encompasses of people skilled in
Business, IT and Analytics.
Figure 1. Essential BI competencies and skills with a BICC
BI Delivery
The BI delivery function takes care of the applications for delivery and distribution of
information throughout the entire life cycle of the applications, including their design,
development, testing, and maintenance. These applications comprise reporting, business logic,
and portals-that is, all applications that transform the data residing in data warehouses or other BI
storage areas into BI.
Data Acquisition
The data acquisition function handles the back-end-related BI activities. It takes care of data
integration and data store development, testing, and maintenance as well as the overall
warehouse design and integration projects.
Advanced Analytics
The advanced analytics function specializes in statistical analysis, modeling optimization
techniques, forecasting, and data mining. It handles complex analytical requests coming from the
business units.
Training
The training function trains business users in BI concepts and BI applications. It coaches them by
providing answers to their BI questions. It also takes care of any BI product-specific training and
certifications for project teams or business users.
What are the processes and internal service-level agreements for making, working on,
and responding to service requests?
What organizational changes will occur as a result of the answers to the previous
questions, and how should they be addressed?
Sometimes service requests cannot be taken care of by only one specific function in the BICC; in
such cases, several functions must cooperate in order to address the service request. It is also
possible that the same person might take over several roles (e.g., working as an application
developer in projects, but also providing second-level support). Therefore, it is important to
understand that the functions described in the next section do not necessarily correspond to realworld teams or departments. The functions constitute a purely theoretical bundling of tasks and
do not necessarily correspond to how the BICC should be structured organizationally.
Besides, you could choose to outsource one or several of these functions to an external provider.
However, our recommendation is that any function that requires profound business
understanding (e.g., the BI Program function) should not be outsourced. For competitive and
intellectual ownership reasons, it is important that functions critical to realizing a business
strategy be owned and driven from within the organization.
We believe the BI Program, data stewardship, and support functions to be the most
essential, and therefore the minimum, functions necessary in a BICC. Data standards, quality,
and governance are absolute musts for getting value out of Bl. Supporting and enabling the
business users is one of the main motivations for establishing a BICC. However, the BI Program
function is what makes a competency center a true Business Intelligence Competency Center
because
it
is
the
BI
Program
that
maintains
the
business
alignment and carries the BICC's strategic focus and mandate.
One function can be covered by the organization in some form in the BICC itself, in the
IT department, in other business units or outsourced to an eternal provider.
Figure 3. Organizational model for BICC or BI CoE (Business Intelligence Center of Excellence)
Depending on the type of organization, the BICC will report to a high-level business executive,
such as the CFO, COO, CIO or chief strategy officer. Some potential BICC (or Center of
Excellence) organization charts are below. Actual organization charts can vary significantly from
the simplified options presented.
Figure 4. Organizational model for BICC or BI CoE (Business Intelligence Center of Excellence)
Source: How to Define and Run a Successful Business Intelligence Competency Center, Gartner,
August 2007
Insourcing or Outsourcing BICC What is the right structure? (Kalakota 2011)
Insourcing is all about control. It is used for following reasons:
Greater control over resources
Greater ability to control intellectual property
Increased visibility of accountability within the organization
Have confidence in your team to do meticulous planning and flawless execution.
Outsourcing to a vendor or a cloud platform is all about leverage; it is used for the following
reasons:
Access to resources and expertise quickly without a long recruiting cycle
Different cost structure and quicker startup
Vendor brings a broad-based perspective that if leveraged properly can be quite invaluable
The best option is usually a hybrid model a mix of insourced and outsourced. The metrics
you typically want to optimize in any structure are Cost, Quality, Productivity, Innovation and
Speed-to-market.
In a hybrid model think through which resources are in-house and which resources can be
outsourced - Executive Sponsors, BI Leadership, Program and Project managers, Business
Analysts, Architects, Administrators, Developers, Data Stewards, Data Modelers, and Data
warehouse analysts.
Also with data being governed by various Data Privacy laws (ex. International and U.S Data
Privacy Legislation) think about which enterprise-wide data integration initiatives can be inhouse vs. outsourced data warehousing, data migration, data consolidation, data
synchronization, and data quality, as well as the establishment of data hubs, data services, crossenterprise data exchange, and integration competency centers.
Think through different types of data and which laws impact each by geography personal
privacy data, client data, internal process data, and B2B data.
The BI program is not simply the sum of the various projects and independent efforts, but
instead reflects a comprehensive network of people, processes, and technology working as one
integrated operating model supporting and enabling those projects and efforts.
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
BICC in Operation
Figure 12
List and prioritize the business drivers for establishing BICC as a shared services model
List and analyze the benefits expected to be derived out of the BICC set-up
Determine a budget for the setting up BICC
Set a time frame for realizing benefits out of BICC
Assign a person and establish a team to drive the BICC initiative
Assign the designation of the person heading the BICC initiative
Determine if the setting up of BICC operations will require the involvement of an
external consultant
List and prioritize activities that can transferred to BICC
Select activities that logically fit together
Analyze if the activities are strategic or transactional in nature
Analyze the level of customization the activity will require
Analyze and determine if the organization will need to procure technology to deliver
services through BICC
Establish a framework and process for measuring the success of the BICC initiative
Depending on the type of organization, the BICC will report to a high-level business executive,
such as the CFO, COO, CIO or chief strategy officer. Some potential BICC (or Center of
Excellence) organization charts are below. Actual organization charts can vary significantly from
the simplified options presented.
3. Alignment between IT and Business
One of the critical factors for BI success is the alignment between IT and Business. It is
important to identify the intent and expectation from the BI initiative. The BI objectives should
be closely aligned with the business objectives and business strategy. Understanding the
information needs across the organization as well as by stakeholder groups is a key to success.
Ideally, this will include prioritization of needs both within and across stakeholder groups. The
activity of selecting priorities must be transparent and agreed on by Business Intelligence leaders
and its stakeholders and where possible, tied to the impact on corporate objectives.
4. Define Architecture and Standards
Define architecture for different components of BI infrastructure. Develop and maintain
standards regarding methodologies, definitions, processes, tools and technologies required to
implement BI.
5. Develop roadmap, measure progress and success
It is important to develop a roadmap, measure progress and manage key decision points within
the program timeline. Develop metrics that will measure both the implementation and ongoing
success of BI.
CONCLUSIONS
A BICC can address a lot of issues better use of BI across the organization, greater alignment
and collaboration between units; a strategy that supports the corporate strategy; standardized BI
processes and initiatives; consistency of definitions, processes, and methodologies; and higher
ROI from BI.
In order to set up properly a BICC one has to follow some steps:
1. The BICC needs a clear mandate and strategy. It is not enough to say that the BICC is
supposed to drive the BI strategy in the organization if there is no clarity in strategy.
Some time and effort needs to be invested in understanding the BI requirements of the
organization in support of the corporate strategy.
2. The BICC needs support from the executive sponsorship. Otherwise it will not be visible
and influential enough to play the crucial role that it should assume. The aim has to be
the alignment of BI goals across various functional areas, in support of the organizations
strategy.
3. it is important to staff the BICC with representatives from both IT and the business.
This combination ensures that both business understanding and IT know-how work
together for answering the businesss BI requirements.
A BICC is an excellent forum for addressing tactical issues efficiently and effectively, but it is
important to consider also the strategic value of a BICC. The BICC is the initial contact point in
the organization for any questions or problems that relate to BI strategy or software.
References
Hitachi Consulting Corporation, Establishing a Business Intelligence Competency Center
(BICC), A Knowledge-Driven Consulting White Paper, 2009
Hostmann, B., How to organize for success in BI, Gartner business intelligence summit, London,
2005
Kalakota, R., Organizing for BI, Analytics and Big Data: CoE, Federated or Departmental,
available at: https://practicalanalytics.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/organizing-for-bi-analyticsand-big-data/
Kalakota,
R.,
Executing
a
BI
and
Analytics CoE,
available
at:
https://practicalanalytics.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/executing-a-bi-coe-bi-shared-services-or-bicompetency-center/
Miller, G., Brautigam, D., Gerlach, S., Business intelligence competency centers, John Wiley &
Sons, 2006
SAP, Business Intelligence Best Practices 1, 2011, available at: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC18678
www.wikipedia.com
www.sas.com
www.hbsp.harvard.edu Harvard Business School Press
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community of Practice