Lori Smith Vice President Business IntelligenceUniversal Technical InstituteChosen by Industry. Ready to Work.™

Business Intelligence Success

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. . . a set of methodologies,

processes, architectures, and

technologies that transform raw

data into meaningful and useful

information used to enable more

effective strategic, tactical, and

operational insights and

decision-making

Business Intelligence defined (Wikipedia):

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Lack of fundingBusiness requirements

not clearly defined

60% - 80% Failure Rate

➞ Lack of user

involvement/owners

hip

➞ No executive

sponsorship➞ Lack of planning

➞ Culture doesn’t value quantitative data

➞ Lack of data understanding

➞ Tackling too much

➞ Benefits not understood

➞ Too complicated

➞ Poor communication

➞ No definition of success

➞ “Forgetting the business”

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What business problem(s) are you solving?

Why BI?

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Define the Vision (Success)• KPIs are clearly defined and consistent across all functional areas

(i.e. the definition of a start is the same for marketing, admissions, operations, finance, etc.)

• All sources of critical data are documented, and there is a process to collect, transform and normalize the data from various sources, retaining historical data, in order to accommodate reporting and analytics.

• UTI’s “master data” is defined and managed so that there is only “one version of the truth”.

• Data marts exist to provide reporting and analytical capabilities for specific business processes and functional areas. These data marts are unioned together to create a comprehensive data warehouse.

• Users have access to, and are trained to use, various tools to access and analyze data.

• Business leaders can quickly identify and respond to business changes and opportunities and resources can be leveraged and allocated based on proactive, data driven decisions.

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Maturity Model

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Strategy

• Exec Support• Leadership• Technical

Expertise• Business

Champions

People

• Align• Deliver• Architect• Collaborate

Process

• Roadmap• Data

Warehouse• BI Applications• Optimization

Technology

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Initiative leader from the “business”, with strong business and data knowledge• Sole focus

Champions - worth their weight in gold!• BI Readiness – focus on data driven decisions

• Business/Data Analysts WERE the existing single version of the truth – get them on board early

• No “analysis” – dumping, scrubbing, compiling data

• They would validate (or refute) the “success” of the BI initiative.

Strong technical expertise to architect for the future• Continual progress

People “Keys to Success”

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Align and Deliver!

• Understand and ensure alignment with organizational strategic priorities

• Stay connected to your champions and senior leaders

Deliver often• Don’t wait for someone to ask – offer solutions• Deliver what they need, not necessarily what they ask for• Progress, not perfection

Process “Keys to Success”

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Collaboration vs RequirementsFocus on understanding . . . . •Discovery process• Troubleshooting process•Decision making process• Business process

Deliver solutions to support those processes, rather than building a list of requirements and delivering against those.

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Foundation

Architecture• Avoid more chaos – long term vision• Performance considerations

• Data• Accuracy/Completeness• Sanity – business rules

Information (not just data)• Dashboards• Ad hoc analysis• Information delivery

Technology “Keys to Success”

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BI ApplicationsAdoption is key

Keep it simple• Number of different applications/tools• Design• Understand what tools best suited to what purpose

Keep close to your business partners• What are they buying and implementing on their own?

Training, training and more training• Follow up; new features; power users (create own

visualizations)

Get creative

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Qlikview Dashboard as workflow tool

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Qlikview Dashboard as workflow tool

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Results• Employment outcomes • Focus in FY2012 resulted in improved workflows,

visibility, standardized metrics and employment rates• Marketing• Completely redefined how we measure marketing

effectiveness – improved accuracy/visibility• Predictive Model• In Feb 2013, cancelled contract with external vendor to

move to internal model (annual savings approx $200k)

• Other departments funded BI positions within IT• Growth from 2 to 7 team members since 2009• With the right information, can do more with less

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