The Big Trends in Business Intelligence Competency Centers

The Big Trends in
BI Competency Centers
Timo Elliott
SAP

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 1
Agenda
• Business Intelligence Competency Centers
• Top Trends
• Learning from Others
• Wrap-Up

2
Business Intelligence Competency Centers

What Is a BICC?
A Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC)
is a cross-functional organizational team that has
defined tasks, responsibilities, roles, and skills
for supporting and promoting the effective use of
Business Intelligence across an organization
Note that Gartner says that “Competency Centers” have a bad reputation,
and now recommends “Business Analytics Team” …

Basic Goal: Make BI More Strategic and Cost Effective

BICCs Bring Big Benefits
Every winner of a BI Best Practice Award has a BICC
• (but beware of correlation and causation)
Survey conducted by BetterManagement.com, 2010
24%
26%
45%
45%
48%
74%
Decreased software costs
Decreased staff costs
Better understanding of the value of BI
Increased decision-making speed
Increased business user satisfaction
Increased usage of Business Intelligence
Organizations with a BICC see the following benefits:

BICC Key Skills
Source: Gartner

The Main Functions and Responsibilities of a BICC
Source: Capgemini BICC Study 2012

Text
Functional Areas of the BICC
Business
Intelligence
Program
BI Delivery
Data
Stewardship
Training
Advanced
Analytics
Support
Vendor
Management
Data
Acquisition
Business Intelligence Competency Center
Executive
Sponsor

BICC Recommendations
Creating a BICC
• Assess the current state, needs, and
opportunities
• Define the business value of a BICC to the
enterprise — specific business objectives and
the business case
• Figure out the top priorities for skills,
technologies, initiatives, and governance
• Identify business sponsors to steer the BICC
and charter governance bodies

10
Top Trends
10© 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Analytics Took Over the World
Analytics is now the hottest trend in business, not just in IT. Business people
now want to have more access, and more control.

User Empowerment Leads to New Organizational Stress
Consumerization of IT
Employee-driven technology
Business-led budgets
Customer-facing needs
More external data Speed of change
Increased business frustration
Increased IT frustration

New Technology Means New Approaches
Predictive/NoSQL/Hadoop/Machine Learning/Data Lakes, etc. have enabled new
relationships between different groups: IT, data scientists, business users …

BICCs Are Not Driving BI

The Large Portion of Data Users Need Isn’t in the System
“We found, on average, that 45% of the
data business people use resides outside
of the enterprise BI environments.
An astonishingly miniscule 2% of
business decision-makers reported
using solely enterprise BI applications.
This is undoubtedly connected to 76% of
business respondents indicating they
continue to resort to spreadsheets and
other homegrown BI applications to
analyze BI data.”
Source: Forrester
55%
45%
In enterprise systems
Not in enterprise system

Enterprise Systems Are Too Slow
31% wait days or
weeks for an average BI request

Enterprise BI: Too Little Data and Too Hard to Use

Business Users Do Not Fully Trust Enterprise Data

So Users Turn to Their Own Systems
40% are using an equal
amount or more of
homegrown applications

The Basic BICC Setup (May Not Be Enough)
Business Intelligence that is:
• Standardized
• Repeatable
• Clearly understood across the company
Regular, well-communicated releases
• Jointly agreed between Business and IT
• Facilitates the business areas planning and
scheduling of report requests
A steering group of senior management
• Majority business leaders with strong
representation from IT
Clear measurements to follow up performance
• Usage and user feedback

A Typical Deployment
Scandinavian manufacturing company deployed a first Global BI solution around 2000 together with
the first SAP implementations
2000-2005 2005-2010 2011
No BI strategy
• No real BI strategy
• IT left to prioritize
• Multiple versions of
the truth
One truth
• Company
Performance model
• Standard reporting
• One truth
• Anchored in finance
Future vision
• Extend reporting to
more users
• Redefine role
• More end-user flexibility

A Change in User Profiles and Patterns
Over a period of 7 years a company saw several shifts in its BI user group — and the shifts
seem to be happening with shorter and shorter intervals
• System Expert
• Favored Excel as front end
• Could live with poor
performance
• Primarily used data from
SAP
• General analyst
• Wanted to use web reports
as well
• Interested in data from
several sources
• Demanded better
performance
• Expecting BI self-service
• Wants information on
mobile devices
• Not scared of technology,
uses the right tool for the
job

New Conflicts
Internally-oriented
Costs
Governance
Efficient reuse
Customer-facing
Opportunities
Flexibility and speed
Experimentation
IT Business

IT Seeing Same Disruption as Other “Digital Businesses”
“Through 2020
spending on self-
service visual
discovery and
data preparation
market will grow
2.5x faster than
traditional IT-
controlled tools
for similar
functionality”
– IDC
“Are you Uber? Or the taxi company?”

Best Practice: External Audit
Determine current vs. desired
• Did the team really understand the users and their needs?
• Was the reporting in the central system a true picture of overall reporting activity?
• Did management have an accurate overview of reporting activities?
• How should the team involve management in prioritizing and setting strategic
directions?
• Was the team perceived as a help or a bottleneck?
• Where could the team really make a difference?
• What were the new requirements in terms of speed, flexibility, and simulation?
“I can recommend this exercise. I know a lot of departments who work with BI
think they know their users, what they’re doing, and what their needs are – but
unless you’ve done a real investigation of this, I would challenge you that you will
find stuff you didn’t know existed.”
– BI Manager, Scandinavian Manufacturing Company

Getting the Facts Straight
The project was an eye-opener for the management team. The main findings were:
Tools
More user-
friendly tools
Need a wider
variety of tools
Data
Data is too
hard to
understand
Need access to
non-ERP data
in reporting
Flexibility
Need to be
able to create
own reports
Standard
reports have
limited value
Ownership
Some had
invested in own
systems
All preferred to
be in a global
system

Shadow BI Revealed
Time to information
Business case required to get new reports,
and could take six months. Business movers
ended up buying their own tools.
Multiple iterations
Multiple iterations required, communications
degrading. Local BI teams able to be more
consultative and collaborative.
Lack of accountability
Some things that should have been done
locally were being delegated to central IT.
Gut-based decision making was taking over.
Good: Agility, happier
business users
Bad: Higher costs, no
holistic view, no economy
of scale, fragmented BI
tool landscape, lost
business opportunities
from not having a global
view

Best Practice: Launch a New Approach
Large Retailer:
Big kick-off meeting
Analysts, IT, execs, outside experts
All areas of the business
Tool independent
Launched new “service bureau” approach
Strong executive support
Analytics driven locally, best-practice shared centrally
“Own the problem, not the solution” (“Can we access this tool, please?”)
Collection of “agile services”
Community-driven, using internal social networking

Best Practice: Refocus
Development close to the business
Knows Business/Analytics/IT
Report Developer
Prototyping
Business-driven
Secure, strong BI governance
Intuitive
Fast development
Cover all analytic needs
BI Expert
Agile BI
Up-to-date suite of
tools + pragmatic
exceptions
Role
Process
Tools
Need Solution
“Agency” philosophy: Be the best available option for the business — leverage
unique knowledge of cross-functional opportunities

Best Practice: Invest in Appropriate Tools and Skills
• Broad, not deep — build competence in “turning business information into
insight” rather than technology, i.e., less reporting, more exploration
• Stay current! Be two years ahead of the business instead of two years behind. It
will take time to build BI experts — start now.
“Doing visualization is really cool … but if you
apply the wrong graphs to the data you will not
get a very good result … Some of my
employees have had to actually take a course in
visualization, just to be able to challenge the
business.”
– BI Manager, Scandinavian Manufacturing
Company

Best Practice: Federated BICC Approach
• From “gatekeeper” to “air traffic controller”
• Bring “shadow BI” under umbrella of BICC — but retaining local links
• Co-locate “central” staff in business units whenever possible

Best Practice: Build and Nurture a Council/Community
UK Retailer:
Regular face-to-face meetings
• Bring people together across silos: IT, Analysts, Business Leaders, Execs
• Presentations of successes and best practices
• Invite external speakers
Virtual communities
• Leverage internal social tools for people to share information
• Community-driven BI content
Community self-policing
• Act as BICC eyes and ears to discover projects,
opportunities
• Social mechanisms to ensure the “right behaviors”
Ensure support at all levels
• Not just executives — middle and users

Best Practice: Adopt a Clear Methodology
National Electricity Grid
Decide
Define
Develop
Deploy
Declare

Best Practice: Agile BI
“Agile BI is an approach that combines processes, methodologies, organizational
structure, tools, and technologies that enable strategic, tactical, and operational
decision makers to be more flexible and more responsive to the fast pace of
customer, business, and regulatory requirements changes.”
– Forrester, 2014

Inspiration from the “Agile Manifesto”
The highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery of
analytics.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change
for competitive advantage.
Deliver working projects frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and analytics staff must work
together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they
need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face conversation.
Delivered, used analytics is the primary measure
of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable
development. The sponsors, developers, and
users should be able to maintain a constant pace
indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and
good design enhances agility.
Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of
work not done — is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and
designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
Adapted from: http://agilemanifesto.org/

Agile in Practice
Scandinavian Manufacturing:
Multi-level, agile approach:
Three levels, self-serve, agile BI, IT/cross-platform
Initiate, mock up, finalize, industrialize — two-week cycles
Corporate “Wikipedia” for documentation
Finding experts:
Look for best fit and relationships with business, then train
“Hypercare” handholding on first reports
First report more expensive, but now just a few days instead of four to five weeks —
after six months, saving of 40% in the development time
Guide towards solutions rather than “tools”

Best Practice: Make the Work Visible

Best Practice: Team Management
Performance measurement based on
the user experience: Data quality,
engagement, delivery
Continuous Improvement: What can be
improved in the processes, tracking learning
Social! Visual Mgt
of priorities
by team
member
People focus on the health of the team

Best Practice: Offer “Agency Services”
Data Bureau
One-stop shopping for data, internal, external, or “wrangled”
Tools Bureau
Expert recommendations of best technologies to use, when
Sandbox Environments
Environments that let businesses experiment on their own
Innovation Opportunities
Workshops (e.g., Design Thinking) to uncover new opportunities
Analysis Validation
Trust, but verify …

Best Practice: Introduce Data Driving Licenses
Source: Gartner

Best Practice: Support the BI Lifecycle
Source: Gartner

Best Practice: Invest in Communications!
Effective communication is the bedrock of a successful BICC
Involves skills that aren’t always part of the staff hiring process
Sell the sizzle
Use dashboards, scorecards, maps, and other visual applications/tools
“Paint the walls with data”
Celebrate success
Pick a first initiative and make it a business success
Identify evangelists from the initiative and have them sell the success

Best Practice: Integrate BI into Executive Decision Cycle
US Retailer
Fully interactive,
data-based screens
Questions answered
there and then, no
leaving the meeting
until a decision is
made

Best Practice: Support the Business
Scandinavian Manufacturer
Beyond Budgeting
A new vision for performance
measurement
Daily Resource Allocation

Best Practice: Support the Business (cont.)
Massive increase in demand for analytics and better-presented data initially
overwhelmed available resources

Best Practice: It’s All About the Relationship
Instead of a scenario in which Business
and IT play separate, traditional provider-
versus-user roles everybody has to
combine efforts to jointly explore and learn
— and everybody has to compromise!
Learn from the business — there is a lot of
good practice that should be adopted

Where to Find More Information
SAP BICC Playlist on YouTube: Link
SAP BI Self Assessment : www.sap.com/bistrategy
SAP BI Strategy Playlist on YouTube: Link
BI News: www.sap.com/BINews
Blogs on BI Strategy
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-30479
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-30480
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence/blog/2012/12/07/bi-
strategy-bicc-a-key-element-to-your-bi-program
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence/blog/2012/11/07/bi-
strategy-bi-competency-centers-take-center-stage-again
http://blogs.sap.com/analytics/2013/03/27/driving-value-from-your-business-
intelligence-program-define-track-and-measure-success/

7 Key Points to Take Home
1. Old approaches are no longer enough
2. Self-service BI is a wonderful business opportunity
If done right, can dramatically improve business agility and IT/Business alignment
3. But it requires new cultures and ways of working
You’re no longer in charge — and everybody has to compromise
4. Provide what the business needs, not necessarily what they want
Service-oriented approach, but the “customer is not always right”
5. Community is the essential pillar
No one person or team can do this alone — build momentum and listen to feedback
6. Look for opportunities to simplify
It’s not about technology, but the right technology can help agility
7. Keep up momentum and success
Look out for teaching opportunities, and market success widely and often

51
Thank you!
Timo Elliott, SAP
timo.elliott@sap.com
Twitter: @timoelliott
Blog: timoelliott.com

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