Stepping into Decision Maker's Shoes

For the BI implementation partner, the first and the foremost thing is to get into the decision maker’s shoes and understand his pain points. The focus of the BI solution should be more about the user and less about the technology. Realization of true potential of the BI is all about transforming the data into information, passing it to the right hands and the right time.

There has been disconnects within the perspective of the IT side and the business decision maker. The IT side of it will have more focus on the tools, data transformation, etc. On the other side for business top questions will be: (a) Who are my most profitable customers? What factors make them so? What can we do to raise the profitability of other customer below this level? (b) Which are the top 5 efficient sales channel? Why? (c) etc

At core of it the decision makers needs the answers to What is the problem area, Why it is a problem & How can be solve / prevent it? This can be a big challenge for the implimentation vendor to map these requirements into tangible solutions. Enough care should be taken who will be user of the given report. This fact was well summarized by Gartner:

“The selection of BI tools and applications must be based on a segmentation of the BI user community. Different user segments will require different modes of delivery of BI, ranging from basic static reporting to sophisticated analytic applications. Deploying the proper mix of tools and applications is critical to achieving optimal benefits from BI.” — Gartner