Information system and knowledge engineering

 
Title: Business Intelligence strategy
Imen FARAH
Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Gabès, Tunisia.
[email protected]

Nihed REJEB Alia MAALOUL

Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Gabès, Tunisia. Higher Institute of Technological Studies of Gabès, Tunisia.
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract:
A Business Intelligence Strategy is a roadmap that enables businesses to measure their
performance and seek out competitive advantages. The implementation of a strategy that
aligns BI with organizational goals, business strategy and investments has become a priority
and essential concern. In this chapter, we present the BI concepts, tools, and Applications, the
BI transformation road map to try discover the crucial questions to answer when aligning a BI
strategy to an organization’s overall direction. Finally we identify essential components of the
BI strategy.

Key words: Business Intelligence, Strategy, BI transformation road map, components of the
BI strategy

Content:

- Business Intelligence concepts and applications

- BI strategy
- BI transformation plan
- Essential components of the BI strategy
Introduction
The business atmosphere around the globe is persistently changing, and is more unpredictable
consistently. Organization both out in the public and private, ought to react rapidly to those
changing conditions on the off chance that they require enduring. They need to be more agile,
more innovative, and most significantly for this course, they need to form complex decisions,
frequently, and quickly. To form those decisions however, managers must have wear on
demand access to business intelligence tools and applications. But our wide selection of
applications and processes for visualizing trend within the data.

A definitive objective of this chapter is to address the ensuing two inquiries:

- How does Business Intelligence influence the decision-making process of managers?

- From the user's perspective, in a very post-adoption phase regarding BI
implementation, what are the success factors of a BI strategy?

1. Business Intelligence concepts and applications

1.1 What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that mixes architectures, databases, analytical
tools, applications, and methodologies.

There is no uniform and accepted definition of BI, leading to each author mostly defining the
term individually; however the final understanding of the term and what it consists of remains
quite similar between the various definitions. Here are some examples:

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI 2002) working definition of business intelligence:

“The processes, technologies, and tools needed to turn data into information, information
into knowledge, and knowledge into plans that drive profitable business action. Business
intelligence encompasses data warehousing, business analytic tools and content/knowledge
management”

The term BI was coined by the Gartner Group within the mid-1990s. However, the concept is
way older; it’s its roots witin the MIS reporting systems of the 1970s. During that period,
reporting systems were static, two dimensional, and had no analytical capabilities. This
definition is broad. BI encompasses not only applications, but also technologies and
processes. It includes not only “getting data out” (through tools and applications), but also
getting “data in” (to a data mart or warehouse).

Another definition: “Business Intelligence is the science of analyzing business data wherever
it exists within your organization or elsewhere in order to understand what has happened in
the past, why it happened in the first place and what can be expected to happen in the future
and why that might happen differently given different behavior.”

“BI is neither a product nor a system. It is a generic concept that blends infrastructure
databases and applications. It lets business users access, analyze and manipulate data,
whether it’s financial, sales, marketing, operational/ production, HR-related” (Hart 2005).
Its major objective is to enable interactive access (sometimes in real time) to data, enable
manipulation of these data, and to produce business managers and analysts the ability to
conduct appropriate analysis.

It is, like Decision Support Systems (DSS), a content-free expression, so it means different
things to different people.

1.2 Differences between BI and DSS:

• BI uses a data warehouse, whereas DSS can use any data source (including a data
warehouse).
• Most DSS are built to support decision making directly, whereas most BI systems are
built to supply information that it’s is believed will result in improved decision
making.
• BI contains strategy/executive orientation whereas DSS are usually oriented toward
analysts.
• BI systems tend to be developed with commercially available tools, whereas DSS tend
to use more custom programming to handle problems which will be unstructured.
• DSS methodologies and tools originated largely in academia, whereas BI arose largely
from the software industry. Many BI tools, like data mining and predictive analysis,
have come to be considered DSS tools yet.

1.3 BI Applications

To stay competitive, businesses need accurate and actionable information on key business
metrics. An effective BI application dynamically combines information to measure
performance and enable rapid and appropriate action by decision makers. In addition, they
must offer significant value to manage progress towards goals.
Business intelligence applications used for decision making can be broken into three main
types of applications each differing in the level of detail they offer and the analytics they
provide.

1.3.1 Strategic BI Applications:

such applications help executives as well as business and financial analysts assess progress in
achieving long-term, enterprise-wide goals like increased revenue or market share, reduced
costs, better customer retention and improved profitability.
Example:
- Strategic dashboards can reflect enterprise-wide strategic goals, also as corresponding
KPIs.
- Features on this type of dashboard include global, external, trends and growth
measures, all of which are related to or based on the Balanced Scorecard Methodology

1.3.2 Tactical BI Applications:

These focus on analyzing short-term initiatives within specific line-of-business domains, such
as marketing, sales, purchasing or customer service. Helping sales managers optimize their
region-wide campaigns is an example of this type of BI application.
Example:
 - Tactical (also called analytical) dashboards measure the business’s progress according
to related trends, in accordance with each strategic initiative. Progress is measured
against a preset goal, such as a budget or a certain target.
- Drilldowns reveal details and break down data for analysis. For example, they help
determine why certain targets were not met and where a potential problem might be.

1.3.3 Operational BI Applications:

The most common type of BI applications is operational BI applications. For manufacturers,
these applications are generally deployed at the departmental level to monitor the
performance of processes related to manufacturing. Operational applications are designed to
help organizations manage their intra-day and daily business operations.
Typically, operational BI applications need to provide a lot of detailed data without requiring
users to find the information they need through “drill down” capabilities. This is because
frontline workers typically don't have the time or expertise to analyze and determine what
additional information they might need to resolve a problem.
Operational applications are designed to help organizations manage their intra-day and day-
to-day business operations. They are mainly used at departmental level, where operations take
place. Updates are tracked daily or weekly using real-time graphs and reports, and detailed
data is presented with powerful analytics functionality to perform root cause analysis.
Example : Track the number of complaints, defects or returns related to each product
manufactured by an organization.

2. BI Strategy
A strategy of Business Intelligence refers to all stages to be undertaken to implement Business
Intelligence in a firm. It goes to the point of diving into the process of BI, defining the
essential parties and the main actors, assessing situation, defining objectives and finding the
indicators of performance which will help to measure efforts to reach these targets. Strategy is
defined in terms of vision, organization, process, architecture and resolutions, then draw a
movement order based on valuation, preference and practicability.
Business intelligence implementation is not an easy task, as it requires a lot of preparation
work beforehand, gathers many different actors and will involve expenses. But the rewards
outperform by far its costs. The costs of not implementing it are more damaging especially in
the long-term.

The following are important considerations for developing an effective BI strategy

• Why do you need BI strategy?
– It is a challenge to design a successful BI enterprise by selecting the right
combination of people, processes, and technology.
– Effective BI strategy ensures that enterprise objectives, business strategy,
investments, and BI are aligned.
• A broad set of processes, technologies, and stakeholders
– for collecting, integrating, accessing, and analyzing information for the
purpose of helping enterprise make better business decisions.
– for documenting the needs as identified by the stakeholders, highlighting how
BI fits into the broader enterprise vision.
• BI strategy should take into consideration appropriate framework, methodology,
processes, governance, systems, and technology to deliver value that aligns with the
business objectives and priorities.
2.1 Why do you need BI strategy?
– It is a challenge to design a successful BI enterprise by selecting the right
combination of people, processes, and technology.
– Effective BI strategy ensures that enterprise objectives, business strategy,
investments, and BI are aligned.

It's a challenge to design a successful BI business by selecting the right mix of people,
process, and technology. To overcome this challenge, we need to build an effective BI
strategy, which is guided by business goals, empowers stakeholders to have better decision-
making capabilities, and helps the business achieve desired goals. A good BI strategy should
ensure that company goals, business strategy, investments and BI are aligned. Businesses that
can link BI to overall business goals become smart businesses.
It requires a mindful approach, a mix of enterprise resources to provide a comprehensive,
consistent, and reliable source of information to fulfill the promise of BI. A BI initiative is of
no use if it is not driven by business goals. Implementing a BI solution should help the
business achieve its goal of moving the business forward with the best use of information. It
sounds easy, but in very few places this goal is achieved. Make sure that business
requirements and company goals drive the iterations. You need to strategize before
incorporating technology or techniques into the conversation.

2.2 Scope of BI Strategy

A wide range of processes, technologies and stakeholders designed:
- For collecting, integrating, accessing, and analyzing information for the purpose of
helping enterprise make better business decisions.
- For documenting the needs as identified by the stakeholders, highlighting how BI fits
into the broader enterprise vision.

The scope of BI should include the optimal use of information for strategic, tactical and
operational needs. The goal in developing the BI strategy is to help companies plan for the
long term, help middle management with tactical reporting, and help operations make day-to-
day decisions. to run the business effectively. BI is about giving people the information they
need to do their jobs more efficiently. A wide range of BI services must be provided to meet a
wide range of requirements. The scope of the BI strategy should be determined by the drivers
and business goals. Scope should always consider changing business requirements to keep BI
strategy aligned with the business.
The BI strategy should include a set of processes, technologies for collecting, integrating,
accessing and analyzing information in order to help the company make better business
decisions. BI solutions must allow users to quickly adapt to new business requirements and
changing information sources. Overall, BI visions should be planned out before implementing
any iteration. Establishing a BI vision is vital to ensure that the implementation of specific
components fits into the overall BI strategy. The BI strategy should articulate and document
the needs identified by stakeholders, highlighting how BI fits into the larger business vision.
The BI strategy must consider the right framework, methodology, processes, governance,
systems and technology to deliver value that aligns with business goals and priorities.

3. BI Transformation plan
Babies don't become grownups overnight. Enterprises won't move from to transformative
overnight either. This is strategy driven process.
A full assessment of processes, technology, and people in the current state should be done, as
they will be critical to the success of any changes to the current environment.
current information systems, technology, governance processes and procedures should be
documented. We detail how the organization currently uses BI, which should include a full
inventory of all platforms, technologies, and tools used to develop and deliver BI content.
The current state must include current users, user profiles and how users use information. It
should document current processes, information management structures.
These elements will help determine the viability of the options based on the overall business
objectives.

3.1 Current state analysis

As part of the current state analysis, one needs to assess the current state of BI capabilities. it
is essential: - to determine to what extent the different technologies and governance
procedures are implemented (the way in which people use BI solutions after having analyzed
how BI capabilities are exploited)
- view whether users are currently receiving information in a format that allows them to get
the most out of BI resources.
- determine how users consume information.
- review existing governance procedures and processes for data management to ensure
appropriate data quality.
Analyzing the current condition helps you highlight issues, making them easier to deal with.
It becomes easier to fill in the gaps once the problems and overall goals are identified to
achieve the future state.

3.2 Future state analysis

After analyzing the current state, the current BI environment is well defined and we can
decide what the future environment should be in order to achieve the BI vision. In the current
state analysis, we have identified how stakeholders currently access and use information. Now
we need to determine the best approach for users to access and consume the information. we
need to define how users will share information and knowledge in the target state and what
kind of collaborative environment will be available to them for better use of BI solutions.

BI plans should be reviewed and evaluated to verify their consistency with predefined
objectives.
After the evaluation, a long-term program should be established by following the following
steps:
- The target state should reflect the vision to combine BI with the areas of business process
management, performance improvement, customer service, knowledge management, cross-
functional information exchange, etc. .
- Long-term business needs should allow the work of BI strategy to be broken down into
several phased projects.
- Prioritization of BI objectives to better understand how the BI environment will take shape
as you progress.
- Projects should be evaluated for their overall contribution to the BI strategy by determining
how a particular project helps move towards the BI strategy.

The biggest challenges in BI development are data issues. Analyzing the current and future
state of data helps build a transformation plan to bridge the gap between the current and future
state. The transformation plan establishes the guidelines necessary for the construction of the
proposed BI structures and associated technologies.
According to Pant (2009) a transformation plan needs to include actionable steps to move
from current state to a future state:

Current state Future state

Technology-driven BI initiatives Business-driven BI
Multiple BI systems One version of truth
No enterprise-wide
No enterprise-wide BI standards The Collaborative BI environment

Transformation
Limited or no-data governance Effective data governance
Data in silos resulting in multiple BI initiatives align with the overall
unsynchronized reporting solutions enterprise goals
Each BI system has own set of BI adoption empowers all in the
governance and standards enterprise with better decision-making
abilities
Business collects data from multiple Standardized enterprise-wide BI/DW
systems and spends a lot of time in methodologies and tools
data processing
Lack of collaborative BI Data quality issues addressed in
environment holistic manner
transformation plan can start with a high-level
perspective, with details added to the plan as you progress. To move from the current state to
the desired future state, plans must include achievable steps, that is, it must define a set of
projects to be undertaken, establish governance and processes, define the 'conceptual, logical
and physical architecture, establish the main lines of the infrastructure, develop information
provision projects and integrate needs. When designing the transformation roadmap, you must
take into account the information needs of the users, how the users want to receive and
consume the information.
The transformation plan must take into account capacity, performance, data quality, data
security, metadata control, data retention policies, etc. The transformation plan should also
take into account the BI implementation schedule, the prioritization of individual BI projects,
and the availability of resources for BI-centric projects. A general policy describes the
transformation roadmap which helps define the details. For example, high-level decisions
made on data retention will impact data architecture such as data partitioning, as well as
technical architecture such as disk storage.
the transformation plan describe also high-level process issues, such as refresh rates, capacity
plan, backup, recovery, archive, workflow, and security. Topics should include criteria for
enterprise adherence and approval, criteria and plan for test data selection, capacity planning,
scalability of the BI solutions, high-level testing plans and overview of unit, integration,
performance, and user testing

4. Essential components of the BI strategy

There are often disagreements about the building blocks of BI strategy, but there are some
topics that are widely accepted as essential components of BI strategy. What to consider will
largely depend on the goals, scope, and general business objectives of your BI initiatives. We
describe the basic components when developing the BI strategy to make it succeed.
4.1 Business context
The BI strategy should address how it will help the business achieve business goals, how it
will enable better decision making to enable better business performance, and how this will
lead to better process management in the business. 'company. Keep in mind that a successful
BI strategy aligns with business goals,
improves knowledge management, drives business forward by making the best use of
information, enables the penetration of BI into business processes, and helps the company
make strategic, tactical and operational decisions.

BI strategy and everything related to it depends entirely on business requirements. It is

essential that the BI strategy is aligned with the strategy and objectives of the company.
Business goals, business drivers, and business processes should guide BI strategy to ensure
successful adoption of BI solutions. Driving BI strategy based on data from the business
context ensures the successful alignment of business objectives, goals and processes with BI
initiatives.
one has to determine what business values are provided and what business needs are
addressed. The strategy includes how to increase customer loyalty, increase customer base,
increase market share, plan product promotions, decide on product and service offerings,
analyze customer demographics to align business goals, determine customer profitability
models, etc. The technologies implemented. Keeping the business context in the driver's seat
ensures that we won't start to confuse the tool with the solution when we are building the BI
strategy.

4.2 Key performance indicators (KPIs)

In BI, KPIs are widely used to assess the state of affairs. KPIs provide insight into critical
business success factors and help the business measure progress. KPIs should be included in
the BI strategy because they are high level, well-defined quantifiable measures based on pre-
established criteria. Key performance indicators should be designed to measure performance
against goals. KPIs are not performance goals but are a mechanism to help you move the
business to the desired state KPIs are used as a tool to measure and improve performance,
they communicate to everyone what is important and where the focus needs to be and thus
indirectly help motivate people to achieve goals. Key performance indicators differ for
business units and companies depending on the nature of the business and business strategies,
but in all companies they correspond to the overall objectives of the company. KPIs include
vital statistical information, such as sales trends, pro fi t values, customer satisfaction metrics,
relative department performance, real-time inventory statistics, or whatever is deemed critical.
for the success of the business. KPIs are an integral part of a BI solution as they contribute to
the successful execution of BI and the overall business strategy. The use of KPIs provides
business users with key performance information in very little time. Without the use of KPIs,
it will take a lot of time and effort to collect and process the data to get the overall
performance information, which will further delay the resolution of business issues. At the BI
strategy level, it makes sense to highlight critical KPIs, as these help to achieve key business
goals. BI is increasingly used to ensure the management of business performance. BI uses
KPIs to assess the current state of the business and relate it to the business goal and help the
business find an action plan to achieve the target business state.

4.3 Typical BI architecture

BI architecture varies in each organization, but there are some common components of BI
architecture, which are found in one form or form in all BI solutions. What is included in the
BI architecture will be guided by the objectives, goals and requirements of business.
Following diagram depicts a comprehensive representation of the typical BI architecture.
Multiple disparate Data sources, data integration services, data management services,
reporting, analytical services, information delivery, and consumption services form the broad
spectrum of the BI architecture.

Solid business intelligence architecture consists of different layers and components:

Figure 1. The different components of BI architecture

These components should run in sync with the processes of the intelligent
organization:

1. Registering data in internal systems, databases, or with sensors.

2. Collecting data, cleansing it, combining it, and aggregating it in a data
warehouse or a data lake.
3. Analyzing using Business Intelligence tools and analytical models.
4. Distribution of insights, reports, dashboards, and analyses using portals and
mobile BI.
5. Reaction by the organization’s directors: the decision-making process.
Metadata supports and guides the overall BI process, so that the transition from one
step in the process to the next takes place seamlessly.

The advantages of a Business Intelligence architecture

✓ Cohesion between the various components for a better overview.

✓ High scalability in terms of data volume and user growth.
✓ Flexible reporting and analyzing, using BI to its full potential.
✓ Easier to manage thanks to its clear structure: satisfied users.
✓ Higher data quality and guaranteed response times.

4.4 BI platforms and tools selection

The process of selecting BI tools requires considerable effort as it can be difficult to
select the tools to best serve business needs. A BI tool selection process based on
industry best practices should be defined as using these practices streamlines the
selection process Adopting best practices helps mitigate business risks and manage
efforts. Considering the importance of BI initiatives to the business, executives spend
larger portions of IT budgets on BI. The increase in expenses is due to the urgent
requirement to provide consistent, accurate and reliable information to all
stakeholders to achieve business goals. Often the selection process is started
without methodology or guidance only to realize later that the selection process is in
a state of chaos. Industry best practices keep on time and on budget. Here are some
of the best practices for selecting BI platforms and tools:
- Define and classify business, functional and technical requirements
- Categorize the requirements as essential, important and desired
- Evaluate functionality, features and fit
- Evaluate supplier capabilities, framework, stability and support
- Evaluate professional services, including counseling and education
- Evaluate licensing and support cost models
- Go through the supplier selection process to make an informed business
decision
Processes and methodologies based on a proven approach help the company to
manage risk, schedule, cost and effort. BI tool selection has less to do with
functionality and more to do with whether the selected tools can deliver the specific
BI requirements of the business. BI generally refers to the concepts and technologies
used to analyze information in a business. The existence of multiple disparate
sources and systems complicates the BI environment. The selection process should
also take into account the company's existing infrastructure to allow the best use of
existing capacities.

4.5 Data governance

Data governance as part of the BI strategy guarantees the achievement of objectives,
increased confidence in decision-making, universal visibility of data throughout the
company. Data governance provides for an enterprise-wide data governance body,
policy, set of processes, standards, controls and execution plan for data
management. It promotes data quality, data integrity, data consistency, data
timeliness, data security, information confidentiality and thus increases the usability
and reliability of information. It provides a framework for creating a consistent and
methodical approach to data management across the enterprise.

Whenever data crosses an organizational boundary, it must be governed, whether

that data is shared between business units internally or that data is released to
customers, partners, auditors and regulators externally.
Data governance should include identifying data stakeholders, such as data owners,
data stewards and their roles in managing enterprise data assets. These people on
the data governance board determine how data is created, collected, processed,
manipulated, stored, made available for use, or retired. Data governance comes into
play as these activities require stakeholders from different functional areas to make
decisions according to a defined set of processes. The Data Governance program
promotes understanding and management of data from both a business and
technical perspective, in addition to promoting the importance of data as a valuable
resource, enabling the business to use data in a meaningful way. confidence to meet
business needs

4.6 Data architecture

BI strategy should incorporate data architecture as ittransforms abstract data
models to logical business entitiesand subsequently leads to implementation of
physicaldata models. Data architecture provides for detailing thesubjects into atomic
level data and then composing thedesired form using atomic level data during
definition phase.Data models for the subject areas of the core functionsof the
enterprise should be defined. Conceptual, logical,and physical data models should be
drawn to providethe foundation for overall data architecture goals.Conceptual data
model lays out business entities and theirrelationships. Logical data model defines
detailed attributesof business entities. Physical data model provides for theactual
implementation of logical model.Understanding and laying out a comprehensive
enterprisedata architecture map is an essential prerequisite tobuilding an effective BI
strategy. Enterprises mostly havecomplicated data, which is commonly held in large
legacyor packaged systems, custom databases, and spreadsheets.Data may reside
in external systems maintained byservice providers or business partners. Across a
numberof systems, data will have significant variations in quality,format, and
meaning. It is important to create powerful,simple, and effective models of the data
structure fromthe enterprise view-point, a set of models known asthe enterprise data
architecture. we should define and document the data architecture goals,
assumptions,and constraints surrounding it. Document the guidelinesdetailing usage
of the data modeling techniques,establishment of atomic level of the data,
significantcomponents of the data architecture, and appropriatesecurity measures as
part of the BI strategy.Addressing the data architecture issues is critical for all BI
initiatives. It is nearly impossible to have the completedata architecture for the whole
enterprise defined at anypoint in time. The idea is to have enough informationto
enable a context for modeling activities.

4.7 Data integration

Data integration is a major component of the BI strategyas it refers to data assets,
processes, methodologies, tools,and philosophies of the enterprise by which
fragmenteddata in multiple disparate systems is integrated to supportbusiness
goals. we can optimize the data integrationprocess by documenting it, making it
repeatable, easyto define, and easy to use. Data is integrated to deliveruseful
information to enable better business decisions. we can adopt several strategies to
achieve data integrationfor a given business purpose. Broadly, the strategies can
bedetermined as using virtual data federation, virtual datamarts, virtual operational
data stores, web data services,relational views, physical data warehouses, physical
datamarts, and physical operational data stores. Most common of the data
integration approaches use ETL, EAI and EII. ETL solutions read the data from a setof
data sources, transform the data to the target form, and subsequently move that data
to a target data store. EAI is sharing the data and processes among the
variousapplications in the enterprise while keeping the changesto the existing
applications at a minimum. EII uses dataabstraction to present a single integrated
view of thebusiness. EII makes the data from multiple disparate datasources to
appear as coming from a single datasource. Keep in mind that many enterprises are
also using MDM along with these approaches to deliver consistent dataenabling 'one
version of the truth'. Data integration primarily uses middleware, whichintegrates the
data through connectors and adaptors. When addressing the component ofthe data
integration in overall BI strategy, we should keep in mind the current data integration
trends and also the coming wave of forward-looking approaches
4.8 Metadata
Metadata roadmap is an essential part of the BI strategy as metadata explains how,
why, and where the data can be found, retrieved, stored, and used in an information
management system. An effective metadata strategy enables productivity
improvements by helping with the data lineage, reduction in data redundancy, better
understanding of how the information is used in the enterprise, impact analysis,
better use of the data in the enterprise, information sharing, knowledge transfer,
navigation of the corporate data assets, inventory of corporate data assets, and
identification of data discrepancies and overlap. Technical metadata provides for the
data lineage and impact analysis. It should include the data for all data integration,
data modeling, data profiling, data quality, database, reporting, analysis, usage, and
monitoring processes. It should include source system information, entity and
attribute definitions, system usage information, and an understanding of what
information is fed from BI to other systems. Business metadata provides context to
the data and thus it makes the meaning of the data explicit and provides definitions
of data elements in business terms from the business point of view. Metadata
repository is where all the metadata information about source, target,
transformations, mappings, workflows, sessions, and business terms is stored.
Metadata can be manipulated, queried, and retrieved from the repository. In any
enterprise, metadata stored in the repository can be a useful knowledge resource.
Architecture of a metadata repository could be centralized, distributed, or hybrid. In
centralized architecture, metadata from all sources is stored in a central repository
and all users access it from here. In distributed architecture, users access metadata
from all metadata repositories in real time. Federated or hybrid architecture
leverages the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of both centralized and
distributed architectures.
4.9 Data quality
The quality of data often dictates the success of a BI project. The impact of poor
data quality is considerable and the effects are both tangible and intangible. Poor
data quality leads users to abandon the system and leads to significant rework when
deploying BI solution. The ideal BI strategy makes data quality the cornerstone of its
success. The BI strategy should focus on data quality. In order to solve data quality
problems, one must first define them correctly. It is a common mistake that dealing
with bad data solves the data quality problem. A data quality initiative including the
establishment of a data governance council, the de fi nition of roles of people in the
company to manage the data, the building of a consensus on the de fi nition of the
data, the establishing a framework for dealing with and resolving data issues. Data
quality is defined as providing complete, consistent and accurate data. The approach
to data quality must be holistic and have a business perspective, otherwise the data
delivered against different data stores will provide different insights leading to
inconsistent BI solutions. Data needs to be managed from inception to consumption,
and data quality issues need to be addressed holistically. Data quality initiatives
should not be abandoned just to stay on schedule or on budget.
4.10 End-user information delivery — A collaborative approach
Using knowledge management, content management and portals is the key to
sharing information in a collaborative environment. The goal should be to bring
everyone together to work on common business principles. The BI strategy should
emphasize the integration of BI into the overall knowledge management environment
of the enterprise. All components of providing information to the end user should be
addressed in this section of BI strategy. To name a few, this could include the use of
standard reports, ad hoc analytics, OLAP cubes, dashboards, dashboards, noti fi
cations, and more. '' use of the semantic layer, budgeting, planning, forecasting
technologies, etc. The aim is to provide users with action-oriented information and
analytical skills in a collaborative environment. BI must be integrated with business
operations to link BI results with business activities. In this sense, BI must try to be
both process-centric and data-centric. This involves the integration of performance
improvement and process management technologies. Traditionally, the operational
data store, the enterprise data warehouse, and the data stores that provide the
integrated and consistent data are at the heart of the BI system. As BI is integrated
into the business environment to achieve broader business goals, the traditional
architecture must evolve to provide a collaborative environment of user-friendly
technologies to enable better decision making while improving processes and
performance.

Conclusion
BI is not a system that can be implemented quickly; difficulties may be encountered when
implementing BI. To meet the specific needs of each organization
and for the implementation to be successful, it is important to align BI
with internal business processes and organizational culture
It must be personalized.

According to Pant (2009), the following are critical in developing a successful a BI strategy:
• Create a business case and outline the expected benefits
• Have an enterprise-wide perspective and obtain buy in from stakeholders, especially
the senior executives
• Establish criteria for success
• Set up change management procedures and Adopt best practices and standards
• Treat information as an asset and align BI strategy with the overall IT strategy and
enterprise goals
• Do a current state, future state, and gap analysis
• Think actionable and baby steps, and Use iterative implementation approach with
parallel tracks
• Establish governance body and Assess BI readiness of the organization and identify
related gaps and issues
• Work with frameworks, adopt proven methodologies, and consider all BI components
• Document and analyze the constraints and assumptions

BI strategy should be designed to be agile and adaptive which can be continuously refined to
meet business goals. The BI strategy should focus on communicating what you plan to build,
how you plan to build it, and when users can expect their requirements to be met. It should
start with general policy statements, general guidelines and high level diagrams. As the BI
environment matures, the formal documentation and depth of detail identi fi ed in the BI
strategy will evolve. Plan to continually evaluate and reinvent BI based on changing business
needs. Consider current trends in BI as well as the emerging wave of forward-looking
approaches to build the successful BI strategy.