The BI Pentagon of Success: Ensuring BI Implementation Success through tracking "Quality" Factors

If a techno-business solution such as BI is not implemented correctly it can have detrimental impact on business performance, potentially making it worse than when it ran on a manual or semi-automatic basis. It is evident that the standards of project deliverable always take centre stage, especially when considering a business intensive software implementation like Business Intelligence. The quality of deliverable is of the upmost importance for stakeholders when a project is evaluated for success or failure; it is thus vital that these deliverable are understood and tracked throughout a Business Intelligence implementation. The BI Pentagon of Success is can also be referred to as a qualitative approach, which ensures that all project activities pertaining to design, planning and implementation remain as effective and efficient as possible during an entire project life cycle.

It is one thing to have an idealized big picture of how a BI process should be performed but how it actually delivers is an entirely separate and different facet. The BI Pentagon of Success (BIPS) model lays out a framework enabling sustained focus, commitment and ensures optimum delivery regarding purpose and performance. In other words, the aim of a BI implementation under the BIPS framework is to meet and exceed the owner/project sponsor's expectations as well as to deliver on as many as possible 'wow' factors, despite any possible business constraints. While charting the transformation path of a BI concept into a real-time solution, it is vital the BI gives high quality benefits in decision making and in handling exceptional business situations.

In order to deliver the best enterprise solution, the BI Pentagon of Success Model bases BI implementation results on the following quality characteristics:

1.    The BI solution meets the expected performance

2.     The implementation delivers a reliable output, even in extreme testing/unknown conditions

3.     The final result remain relevant and future safe

4.     The BI solution remains practically suitable for most of the owner’s business needs

5.     The project delivers on expected results within timelines defined at the start

6.     The solution comes out as comprehensive in every aspect, no shortcuts are used

7.     A consistent output throughout the project life cycle

8.     Proven business functionalities are attempted for adoption

Dual Success Factors

There are two pivotal cogs to a quality BI implementation: one is getting the right software (with right set of allied end-user tools) and the other is getting on-board the domain experts or implementation consultants who know the BI tool inside out. The more knowledge owner has regarding the two dimensions, the more likely implementation will give optimal results which are conceptualized at the drawing board at the start of a Business Intelligence journey.

As the owner remains the ultimate appraiser for the quality of delivery, they will continuously endeavour to evaluate how close the BI project is coming to the expectations set as well as evaluate what strategies are being put into practice to deliver on those expectations. Under the BI Pentagon of Success, BI output and analysis of BI results are continuously monitored and mapped against the industry benchmarks and best practices.

Delivery Proposition Under BI Pentagon Of Success

BIPS follows strict delivery methods to ensure that best practices are followed throughout BI projects and that a robust product is delivered on all counts. Industry experts define precise quality goals for each project as well as its deliverables. A team of BI project managers constantly monitor and fine-tune project plans, processes and activities so that the end result is of high quality and will exceed the client’s requirements. The model is based on a robust platform, which builds on stable technologies which are both easy-to-maintain and scalable.

It invests in corrective mechanisms that serve to detect and fix issues that may crop up at any stage of the project lifecycle. Accountability on project deliverables is minutely fixed on identifying users who are made in-charge of quality processes.

The Concluding Thoughts

In the end, the success of a BI initiative is measured in terms of the business value created through a number of business transforming qualitative deliveries e.g. making optimal usage of associated tools, bringing in change the management and in the organisation, efficient data handling, managing security aspects, self-serving reporting etc. A BI solution should ideally provide a business with the tools to get as much as value out of their data as possible.

The priceless data/visualisation insights gained through a good BI solution can be used to make better business decisions. Ultimately, the BIPS model endeavours to cover the cost of implementation through helping to make the business a more dynamic organisation in the long-term. Whilst there is no standard or fixed way of evaluating quality deliverables, each organisation has its own differentiating way of measuring BI performance and quantifying success. Under the BI Pentagon of Success, it is highly likely that an organisation is able to quantify BI success with ease due to a combination of best practices mapped against the outputs of an implementation.

Maninder Singh is a leader in Cloud Business Intelligence and Analytics with more than a decade of experience. He is the author of the Flagship Model: The BI Pentagon of Success. Many thanks to Hannah Jones and Harpreet Singh for their contributions to this article.

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