Business Intelligence Competency Centers

Overview

A successful Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) relies on a foundation made up of the right people, the right process, and the right technology. Identifying each of these for your organization requires research and planning before implementation.

IBM uses three important guidelines to help public and private sector organizations achieve lasting success with BICCs:

Choose members that reflect the different roles in your organization

• At a minimum, your BICC should consist of a BICC director or manager, a business analyst, and a technical consultant.
• IT staff must be involved in the BICC to advocate for the technical teams who implement, maintain, and support business intelligence software.
• Business analysts must be included to reflect the needs and skills of your end users.
• Executive sponsorship of your BICC mandate can spell the difference between success and failure.
• Marketing expertise can help you promote the BICC, its benefits, and its successes throughout your organization.

Identify and follow a proven implementation methodology

• Start small and accelerate systematically to allow users time to appreciate and adopt the BI standard.
• Publicize early successes internally to encourage user adoption and drive subsequent success.
• Identify, prevent, or co-opt maverick BI initiatives that threaten a standardized approach to BI throughout the organization.
• Follow a professional implementation process such as the IBM Cognos Solutions Implementation Methodology for analysis, design, construction, deployment, and operation of the BICC.

Select technology that adapts to your people, platforms, and business needs

• Future-proof your BI with a solution that will continue to function as external products evolve and emerge.
• Protect your investments by choosing an architecture that works with your existing infrastructure and considers those that you may need to support through acquisitions, partnerships, or reorganization.
• Implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that offers open data access to all users with a single, consistent architecture and server-based platform.
• Promote user adoption, reduce support issues, and enable user self service by choosing a platform that is invisible to end users and offers a single, intuitive, Web-based interface.

To help you optimize your business intelligence (BI) software, IBM is involved throughout the complete process of planning, implementing, and maintaining your BICC.

More: Benefits and Value of a BICC.

Additional Resources:

Driving BI Across the Enterprise - Winning Conditions through Standardization & BICC

White Paper

Clearly outlines the importance of standardizing on a single BI platform, the roll that a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) plays in making the right decisions toward that goal, the common reasons why BICCs fail, and best practices to use when formalizing one.

Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center: Establishing a Culture of Best Practices

White Paper

Learn how a BICC can strengthen your BI understanding, planning and communication and determine how to establish an initial plan to define your BICC charter.

Choosing a Standard for BI and Reporting: Simplify the IT Environment Reduce Your TCO Increase Your ROI.

White Paper

Read about the factors to consider in standardizing your BI, the importance of TCO, and why IBM Cognos 8 BI is the only choice for BI standardization.

Eneco Energie: Powered by Information-Based Marketing and Decisions

Customer Testimonial

Read how Eneco Energie is achieving profitable revenue growth and linking strategic operational measurements to financial outcomes with IBM Cognos 8 BI.

Fiducia IT AG

Customer Testimonial

Find out how Fudicia IT used IBM Cognos software to create a new revenue stream, expand user self service to BI, communicate with the over 850 banks it serves, and gain more transparency throughout the organization.

The University of Wollongong

Podcast

Find out how this Australian university is using IBM Cognos software to get an accurate and comprehensive view of its operations and share consistent, timely information among departments and faculty.

Information, standardization and the case for Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICC)

White Paper

Companies that take a well managed, pragmatic approach to technology are able to unlock the value of business information for competitive advantage. With this in mind, many organizations are creating working teams of IT and business users to improve the strategic value and roll-out of BI. These teams come together as a BI competency center (or performance management competency center). This document is the proceedings from the IBM Cognos Innovation Center roundtables for professionals at its annual user conference in May 2008.

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