alok thanvi dell bi deployment challenges_information excellence

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Challenge in

deploying BI Solutions

Alok Thanvi, IT Manager, BI Support, Dell India

Thank You

for hosting us today

Information Excellence2012 July/August Session

Challenges in Deploying BI Solution

Alok Thanvi | Dell International Services August 4th 2012

Agenda

1. Setting the context – Define BI Solution and its Scope

2. Why Challenge – What makes BI deployment so unique

3. Operational Challenges

4. Recommendations

5. Q & A

Setting the context – Define BI Solution

• BI solution is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization's raw data.

• Loosely defined, BI systems take vast quantities of data and put it into visually useful forms (such as graphs and charts) for sophisticated analysis of business trends.

1st Qtr58%2nd Qtr

23%

3rd Qtr10%

4th Qtr9%

FY Split

0

2

4

6

Yearly DataSeries 1 Series 2 Series 3

Setting the context – Scope of BI Solution• Functional Scope

• Measure – Pre Canned Standard Reports

• Validation – Ad hoc reports

• Understanding - Advance Ad hoc reports

• Insight - Analytics

• Change – Act on Insights

• Organizational /Implementation Scope

• Adoptability ( Degree of adoption of BI tools by org)

• Usage ( Degree of usage of existing BI tool by Business users)

Why Challenge – What Makes BI Solution so unique

Typical BI Deployment Model

Why Challenge – What Makes BI Solution so unique

• Time and Complexity – The current incarnation of BI Solutions are sophisticated query, reporting, and analytic engines which need to be integrate with security and other corporate systems. This integration make them time consuming and complex affair from the deployment perspective.

• Total Cost of Ownership – High cost of overall ownership due to • Cost of Licenses – Packaged BI Tools • Ongoing cost to managing BI tool Environment • User Training and Support

• Evolution of Capabilities – Historically BI tools were designed to serve theneeds of power users but very recently Most BI vendors have made significant strides in simplifying their toolsets to better address the needs of casual users (executives, field staff etc.) These set of users generally want to monitor KPIs and navigate through the data to identify the root cause of problems. Hence in order to make their products more attractive to casual users: end user reporting modules, thin client authoring, dashboards and scorecards, AJAX- and Flash-powered graphical interfaces; keyword search; advanced visualization; and software-as-a-service offerings are included in product suit.

Adoptability rate of BI Solution Refers to the degree to which an organization has purchased BI tools for its employees. Most of the cases many organization face below given challenges to adopt BI Solutions.

Why Challenge – What Makes it so unique

• Data quality – is as much a change management issue as a technical one, because users often reject new reports that present data in a

different format with different metrics or results—even though the data is accurate.

• Query performance – Increasingly, users have littletolerance for long-running queries. Expectations among casual users accustomed to the speed and flexibility of consumer-based Web applications are tough to satisfy. People won’t use a toolthat doesn’t perform. Users expect to run a query and get results back within seconds, which may not always be achieved in BI solution which operate on big volume of data even with some of the exciting tools in the market.

• Complexity – Most of the BI solution work across departmental boundaries and demand cross functional skills marrying IT and business skill set which may prove too complex for some of the business users.

Usage rate of BI Solution Refers to the degree to which users are using the BI tools. There may be multiple reason for lower usage of BI tools in any org.

Operational Challenges• Architecture - To ensure data quality, timely delivery and

appropriate layers of abstraction and dimension as per the BI Solution requirement

• End User Training – One of difficult aspect to train end user with Numeracy, select appropriate power user from the business teams and educate the business users to value quantities decision over business assumption.

• Infrastructure Sizing – In order to provide the right infrastructure capability for growing or diminishing BI demands appropriate measure to capture pattern of usage is very critical piece in BI Deployment strategy. This aspect is also directly related to Performance of BI Solutions.

• Support/ Help Desk Team – Most organization felt the need of dedicated support help desk to address end user immediate issues with BI solution. This is a important feedback mechanism to expedite the bug fixing in the product and to ensure high adoptability of tool by end user.

• Monitoring – Another important aspect is to monitor the usage pattern of BI tool post deployment to arrest

• Change Management - The hard part about BI is not managing the technology, it’s managing change. BI forces people to change the way they absorb information and make decisions.

RecommendationsTo Increase Adoptability

Manage BI tool integration cost effectively. Expand Departmentally to get buy in for specific BI

Solution and expend exponentially for enterprise wide deployment

Build inventory for the user of BI Solution and purchase appropriate needed license only. Avoid full client licenses where ever feasible

Partnered with all the power users from different department in BI roadmap creation.

To Increase Usage

For power users go for BI tools which provides tight integration and features for deep analytics , visualization capabilities and planning capabilities.

For casual users provide clean interface with appropriate (controlled) level of data access. Ensure they have appropriate filter and interactive graph capability to interact with data.

In all the case ensure no compromise on Quality and reliability of data along with performance of BI tools.

Emphasize on communication channels to highlight the importance of existing BI solution and keep a track on changing BI requirement through support helpdesk and other monitoring channels.


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