The Ultimate Guide to Delivering BI Solutions

The Ultimate Guide to Delivering BI Solutions

Imagine that you’re at the very end of a long development process of a BI solution for internal users within your organization. You might have the feeling that once you release your solution to its consumers your job will be easier and less demanding.
Well, that might not be the case.

The development stage is usually very demanding and can require a huge amount of time and effort before you finally release the first version of your solution. However, it is only after the release that users actually start using the solution and experience their theoretical requirements as an actual analytical tool in their day-to-day work — which is when a host of new complications appear.
There are few scenarios that can occur over time.

The worst case: Your users do not adopt your solution for some reason (bad implementation, not aligned to the core needs of your users, natural adoption pains, etc.). In this case, you’ll need to apply a lot of changes or even start over.
The best case: Your users find your solution extremely useful. It is extremely beneficial to your company and it is in focus with senior management discussions. Naturally, it will open up the appetite of your users and stakeholders and new feature requests and change requests will start flowing in your direction.

Anywhere in between.

Either way, you’ll need to be ready to implement changes and upgrades to your solution on an ongoing basis.
Your Customers and You
You can think of it as managing a product or service, such as the one your company provides to your customers. While you’re at it, you can think of your end users and stakeholders as your (internal) customers who have to be satisfied with the product you are “selling” them.

As long as you live by this approach and keep in mind that your product lives, breathes, and has to be managed to keep it beneficial to your organization, your life as a BI Product Owner will be easier.
In this guide, I will describe some aspects of the delivery of the BI solution throughout various stages in its lifecycle: change management, successful rollout, data reliability, and more. I will mainly focus on internal BI solutions for medium-large organizations, although most parts will be relevant for other scenarios, as well. We will focus on the business aspects of this process rather than the technical ones.

3 Keys to Success
Before you begin, it's important to keep in mind three keys to success.

1. Plan and Govern
In order to be ready for the next requirement, release, or fix, you need to be prepared. Here are a few areas you should consider while dealing with changes before you go live.
Ensure Data Reliability and Gain Customer Confidence

We need to keep in mind that the main purpose of having a BI solution is for the organization to make informed decisions based on the information displayed in the dashboards (KPIs and charts). If the data isn’t accurate, you’ve failed right out of the gate.
Centralizing your data in a data mart or data warehouse that serves as your single source of truth (SSOT) and consolidates the data from all relevant sources definitely helps. However, in some cases, this won’t be enough to ensure that the data is always reliable and consistent.
If calculations are made on the front-end, there might be several models with different metrics with the same KPI terminology. For example, in one dashboard, revenue is calculated according to the currency rate at the beginning of the month, and on another, it is calculated based on the rate at the end of the month.

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