Balanced Business Intelligence: Each Level Of Bi Is A Stepping Stone That Adds Capability To Meet Growing User Needs

BI capability at any stage is significant to operational, tactical or strategic perspective. For example, an organization setting a goal to produce a product for a single vendor may view BI operationally and ask, "What is the most cost-effective way to manage our people and process to produce a product for our customer?" This goal may be in accordance with the organization's intelligence capability for operational reporting to control production and may meet today's needs. The figure above represents the relationship between BI capability and scope of delivery that is needed for an organization's BI program. It shows the level of BI on a predictable curve for an organization as scope of delivery and capabilities increase. The curve represents the growth in availability (scope of delivery) across and external to a typical organization. As intelligence needs increase across a greater audience, it is essential that the BI capability rises to meet the requirements of that audience. The most basic requirement of BI is for accurate and timely data available from an operational perspective. "How many products did we sell?" or "What is our inventory?" are examples. In most circumstances, individual or project-based need represents the initial conception of BI within an organization - basic operational-centric intelligence. This by no means limits an organization's advance in capability. It simply suggests the scope of delivery for the stakeholders of information at that time. Often there is a level of efficiency that outweighs effectiveness at this level. Individual "siloed" systems are sometimes managed with little or no common infrastructure. This places a constraint on effectiveness because the common enterprise architecture for delivery, master data and data governance often does not exist at this stage.