The BI Readiness Assessment is a series of tasks that analyzes several key areas across an organization to evaluate how prepared an organization is to begin short term tactical deployment of Business Intelligence solutions and mature it practice over the long term.
The key thing to remember is that BI is a “practice”, not a product. The concept is to feed consistent, reliable information throughout an organization so practically anyone can make strategic decisions, monitor/measure operational performance, and execute tasks more effectively/efficiently. The problem with this simple idea is that it involves a host of complex technologies and methodologies that must be uniquely strung together for each organization. To fully realize what BI can deliver it is of utmost importance that there is a belief that information is a strategic asset that needs to be more effectively utilized.
To do this we review at a number of different areas:
- Backend systems in place that create the raw material (data)
- The tools/technologies and IT best practices currently being used in 3 broad areas (This is what we refer to as the Information Nervous System)
- BI data (ETL, BI Centric data – Date Marts, DataWarehouses, ODS, Real-time data)
- Management and Operational Reporting/Analysis
- Reporting tools (End-User Self Service and IT Development)
- Ad-Hoc tools
- Analysis tools (Multidimensional)
- Data Mining (if a business need)
- Information Delivery (Printing, Portal/Web, Wireless, Real-time, etc)
- Technical and Business Intelligence savvy resources that are already in place.
- Overall position of the organization along the BI Continuum (See diagram on the next page) and long-term objectives of where the organization wants to be on the continuum. This also includes the convergence of BI and Strategic Management (e.g. the Balance Scorecard)