Key Elements of a Solid BI and Data Management Framework

I was struck by a blog post written by Forrester’s Rob Karel (@rbkarel), titled “How Complete are your BI and Data Management Strategies?”

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This is the type of answer that our business intelligence consultants ask our clients every day, and we often come up with a framework as complete and strategic as the ideal one described in the recent report that Karel’s blog post references.

Here are some of the key elements of a solid BI / data management framework that I took away from the report:

1. Predict solid ROI via a business case that will demonstrate one or more of these:
• reduce costs
• increase revenue
• differentiate the company
• reduce risk
• drive efficiency
2. Deliver scalability, flexibility and agility
3. Gain adoption across the organization, by executives and key stakeholders who will be leveraging the system/data
4. Anticipate governance, legal, compliance, and/or architectural challenges
5. Include a change management plan
6. Carefully evaluate and select software, hardware and service providers, and don’t forget to negotiate with them
7. Measure and monitor progress and ROI along the way, after release
8. Plan for updates, optimizations, and tweaks to the program
9. Research best practices from your peers as well as case studies in line with the approach you want to take

“..Align your initiative with the business value those strategies deliver. To produce a streamlined and effective program, maintain a focus on the business processes and decisions it’s enabling — not just the data.”