Delivering on the Promise of BI

Chris Loechel, September 4, 2020

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Delivering on the Promise of BI

“It will be easy.”

“This BI tool will meet all the needs of your user base.” 

“They’re going to love it!”

Promises about positive end-user experience, such as these, are very common to hear from vendors in the pre-sales stage of an enterprise analytics software sale. However, when the rubber meets the road, many implementations fall short of that expectation or, worse yet, fail.

Having advised clients in this industry for a decade now, there have been countless times that we’ve been engaged to re-implement a solution that fell short of expectations or to rip and replace one with something new. 

Why is that?

I believe this boils to many significant changes seen in recent years in both technology acquisition and a changing definition of success. 

The Old Way

In the early 2010s, tool evaluation was all about features and functions. Typically, IT organizations would be tasked with selecting the right application to support a single-tool BI implementation to serve the entirety of the organization’s reporting needs. In those times, feature comparisons and flashy demos reigned supreme. Whomever was able to check off the most boxes from the carefully IT-crafted needs matrix and give an impressive demo typically won the business.

The New Way

As barriers to entry to procuring tools have been eliminated by end-user focused, low-cost tools that can be purchased with a company credit card, the landscape and power dynamic has significantly shifted. Users no longer are stuck living with the tool that IT picked for them. If users are unhappy or if their needs are unmet, they’re a 10-minute purchase process from having a desktop application that can deliver an intuitive user experience to start interacting with data. 

In this new world, it’s no longer primarily about features or functions. It’s not about a checklist developed internally. It’s about a tool being able to quickly and intuitively allow users to get to the data and insights they are seeking. 

As opposed to tools being purchased and disseminated by IT, oftentimes these are tools that originally came into the organization via a single user, such as a financial analyst that couldn’t wait 4-6 weeks for IT to prepare requested data. That user experienced success, shared their story and content with their peers, and additional people opted to give it a try. From there, it grows like wildfire.    

Succeeding in the Modern Era

The definition of success for enterprise reporting has fundamentally changed too. We have moved from a world of “do they use the reports I made for them?” into a much more nuanced venture predicated on data availability, data blending, and insights on the fly. This evolving success criterion is only amplified by a BI marketplace with easy access to replacement analytics tools. Simply put, if you don’t put your users in a position to be successful, they will find another way.

The answer to this new normal is simple: Persona-Based Business Intelligence.

Persona-Based Business Intelligence

We believe that clients should treat their analytics implementations like a product manager of a software application would. Assess your potential “clients” (aka your various internal or external user personas) from the following perspectives:

• Comprehensive analysis of what their specific needs are
• Honest assessment of how well those needs are met via the currently provided solutions
• Prescription of what solution, in a vacuum, would be the ideal fit
• Grade how well-positioned your organization is to adequately support this user persona

Via this approach, the intel you gather drastically changes and molds your approach to BI. Perhaps, there’s a user community that has been thriving on a tool other than the company standard? Or maybe there’s a user group failing with one technology that truly best fits their needs and really is only lacking for enablement? The next best step for each disparate persona surfaces via the exercise, which can easily be plotted onto future project plans for execution.

A more nuanced approach to analytics rollout and support is needed to appropriately adapt to the rapidly changing analytics user of today. 

Next Steps

To learn more about how you can implement Persona-Based Business Intelligence, contact us. 

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