BI as a priority and the biggest challenges in 2009

Across the world, from Hong Kong to Australia to the US, the CIO priorities remains Business Intelligence (and the related technology). Information gathering, dissemination and analysis remains the main issue in this economy where decisions will be a major issue.

Here is a list of priorities from some state CIOs as discussed in the attached documents. I feel they are also the worries/challenges that most corporate CIOs face today.

  1. Consolidation: centralizing, consolidating services, operations, resources, infrastructure
  2. Shared Services: business models, sharing resources, services, infrastructure
  3. Budget and Cost Control: managing budget reduction, strategies for savings, reducing or
  4. avoiding costs, activity based costing
  5. Security: security safeguards, enterprise policies, data protection, insider threat
  6. Electronic Records Management/Digital Preservation/E-discovery: strategies, policies, legal
  7. issues, opportunities for shared services, emergency preparedness
  8. ERP Strategy: acquisition, implementation, expansion, upgrade
  9. Green IT: policies, energy efficiency, power management, green procurement, e-waste
  10. Transparency: open government, performance measures and data, accountability
  11. Health Information Technology: assessment, partnering, implementation
  12. Governance: improving IT governance, data governance

Talking of BI and related processes, I have seen that most companies go into some kind of paralysis from analysis. There are many tools and most of the providers are going through shake-ups (Oracle and SAP are adding new tools). This doesn’t present a very lucid or strong picture to many and when they decide on a direction they need to be able to present and defend that in front of their Boards. But that is a million dollar question. Here are some of the reasons why BI projects don’t become successful. We will talk about these areas more as we go on.

1 Complexity of BI tools and interfaces
2 Cost of BI software and per-user licenses
3 Difficulty accessing relevant, timely, or reliable data
4 Insufficient IT staffing or excessive software requirements for IT support
5 Difficulty identifying applications .or decisions that can be supported by BI
6 Lack of appropriate BI technical .expertise within IT
7 Lack of support from executives .or business management
8 Poor planning or management of BI programs
9 Lack of BI technology standards and best practices
10 Lack of training for end users

Reference Links:

1. BI top of Aussie CIOs’ priority lists
2. BI solutions will remain top priority: Hong Kong survey
3. Smart Stuff: The State Of Business Intelligence 2008