The Modern BI Organization

ISBN: 978-3-00-025519-9
Authors: Gloria J. Miller, Maxmetrics & Dr. Thomas D. Queisser
Printed by Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, www.bod.de
Published by MaxMetrics GmbH, www.maxmetrics.com
3rd Edition May 2009

A January 2008 research study on "Decision-making Using Systems & Technology" shows that organizations with an internal unit that helps people use software in decision-making a business intelligence competency center contributed to improving the organizations business performance, increased collaboration between business and IT units, increased user satisfaction with business intelligence software and solutions, as well as lowered the cost of ownership for business intelligence software.

The Modern Business Intelligence (BI) organization is the outcome from research of 529 management, business, and academic professionals from 50 countries representing 30 industries and telephone interviews with a subset of 10 survey respondents. The research found that when respondents could identify a decision-making support entity of any name or structure within their organization, the organization was more likely to:

use decision-making software (e.g., business intelligence, analytical, and performance management software) for strategic-decisions in automated ways across a broad spectrum of business areas,
use advanced capabilities to forecast and predict strategic options,
have a more pervasive usage of decision-making software throughout the corporate, business and functional levels of the organization,
have a higher degree of user satisfaction with decision-making software, and
have better collaboration between the IT and business functions in delivering solutions that support the organization’s growth strategy.
In 77% of the organizations, the decision-making support entity was attributed to contributing to improvements in organization-wide financial performance. In addition, those organizations also indicated that the entity helped with reducing the cost, time, or effort related to decision-making software.

The research analyzed 14 characteristics that represented the authorities, responsibilities and structure of any reported decision-making support entities. This analysis yielded some correlations between the 14 characteristics and organizational performance.

By playing a cross-organizational role in the strategic decision-making process, the decision-making support entities could spot emerging trends in the external environment as well as contribute to developing new competitive product offerings. The entities not only provide help, assistance, and competency development to the entire organization but in some cases, they conducted analysis and presented findings to executive management for action. The most significant role that these decision-making support entities played was in changing the mind-set of organizational leaders about using a fact-based approach to decision-making.

The overall findings of the research were that organizations that make an investment in a decision-making support entity, e. g. a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) or equivalent reaped the benefits of more accurate, faster or more economical decision-making. BICCs with specific responsibilities had the highest impact on improving organizational performance.

Based upon these findings, a picture could be drawn for the design of an organization that benefits from business intelligence or “The Modern BI organization.” The Modern BI organization engages the whole organization in the use of BI, has a portfolio of BI software solutions and technologies, and has a virtual BICC.

This book examines the results of a global internet survey and telephone interviews to determine how organizations should design a BICC to improve organizational performance.

Reader Opinions
"The Modern BI Organization gives some very strong indicators of the benefits of a BICC to the performance of the organization. The study reveals the responsibilities and the success factors a BICC needs to consider to improve an organization’s ability to use Business Analytics for operational and strategic decision making. I recommend this study to our customers for argumentation and ideas on how to get the entire organization to use BI and analytical software to drive performance improvements."
- Andreas Gödde, Director Business Intelligence, SAS Institute GmbH, Germany 
“Regarding our benefit from the book, it broadens our scope on BI and contributes to our better understanding BI when we are just preparing teaching material on Analytical Business Intelligence.“
- Dr. Tamás Henk, Associate Professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

“In our work with clients, we have found that one of the major challenges of takeup towards a successful customer centric strategy has been the need for culture change programs – bringing passion and relevance to each of the employees. Those organizations that have an initiative that focuses on creating and distributing business intelligence about the customer are far more successful with their customer centric initiatives than those that don’t. The value of this book is in being able to quantify the benefits of a BICC approach for an organization.“
- Phil Winters, Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group, Germany

“The book was interesting from a methodological point of view. We are a small Russian consulting company. It looks like the Russian business intelligence market is now emerging and it is not mature enough to apply methodologies working in European market. Anyway, it was useful for us because we're looking at European market.”
- Pavel Sorokin, Chief Executive Officer, Irbicon Ltd., Russia

“With hundreds of customers, Netezza has seen the importance of using a purpose-built system to manage very large data volumes and deliver extremely fast query results. This research validates that having corporate data and reports ready and used by all levels of an organization is a priority for strategic decision-making. The valuable research in this book is a must-read for organizations wanting to realize full financial return on their data warehouse and business intelligence investments."
- Bernard Doering, Regional Director, Netezza Corporation, Germany
“We find your book useful, good guideline! In this difficult global economic situation every business has to give a sufficient answer to the challenges. It helped us to think over how we have been working.”
- a Central-European International Bank