Replies of the 273 study participants drafted the following list of „Value Drivers”:
1. Customized user interface / dashboards for specific roles.
- the CEO, the director of human resources and a call center manager should have different, at-a-glance summaries and graphs of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most relevant to their responsibilities.
2. Integrate data across departments and applications.
- in large organizations, it’s common to have several different BI tools used by different departments.
- in such cases, to expect absolute homogeneity may be unrealistic.
3. Foster a culture of data-driven decision making.
- the CEO and other top executives must be firmly committed to managing according to the KPIs tracked by the BI system
- as a result, anyone who wants to get a raise or a promotion will have every incentive to consult the BI system, too.
4. Implement process for continuous data quality improvement.
- data quality will never be perfect, but it can always be better.
- create a systematic process for identifying and eliminating the majority of errors
- improve validation at the data entry stage or cross-checking reference data such as customer addresses against public databases.
5. Demonstrate improved planning, operations and other outcomes.
- the best way to justify investments and improvements in a BI system is to demonstrate its impact with clear business improvements
- look for areas of inefficiency and show how the company can improve planning, budgets, and boost productivity and profits.
6. Implement a formal KPI methodology
- for better results, adopt a proven methodology for setting and tracking performance metrics
7. Deploy alerts / notifications.
- giving managers the ability to retrieve data is not enough, particularly if they are being tasked to respond quickly to threats and opportunities.
- a notification system, who provide an alert when a threshold is exceeded (e.g. a spike in supplier prices or demand for a given product), can be mapped to existing roles within the company.
8. Implement employee training.
- while BI tools uniformly promise to be easy to use, some employees will require training.
9. Improve analytics capabilities.
- improve the interpretation of the results by developing staff with the requisite knowledge and experience.
I'm curious. What is your list?
