The following checklists should be considered guidelines for your BI implementation. Hopefully, they will provide a nucleus to work with and a basis for you to develop checklists of your own that are more tailored to your environment.
The book you have just completed has several checklists and thoughts or suggestions within it. Some have been carried forward here and some have not. The lists that follow are more germane to building an enterprise-wide approach to BI; not to give you micro-detailed information.
One approach to creating and filling out such checklists would be to think of having to present your BI strategy to someone or some entity you report to. What if you were asked to go into an executive meeting and justify why you had been involved in BI expenditures in excess of $50M?
These expenditures included massive data restructuring and overhauls that had been in progress for the past 2 years and you realized the project would require an additional $5-10M to complete and the company had just lain off 15% of the work force. Now you need to outline and justify the incremental expenses.
If you answer “no” to any of these segments, please take a moment to ponder the ramifications and impact on the enterprise for not having the ability to say “yes”.
We have a corporate BI mission statement (y/n)
We embrace a centralized, managed approach to BI (y/n)
If yes, it is owned by an executive sponsor who is dedicated to and measured upon BI initiatives: Name _______________________________ Title: _____________
If no, what is our approach to BI?
We have an executive committee comprised of end user and IT representatives that meet on a regular basis (y/n)
We justify our BI acquisitions using the following processes:
RFI/RFP
Application specific use
End-user surveys and requests
IT decisions with use input
Other (describe): _____________________________________________
We track and measure our BI efforts (y/n)
If yes, what are the measurement processes and evaluation criteria?
If no, what are the expectations regarding unmanaged and unmeasured BI activities?
We have a formal BI support structure in place (y/n)
If yes, it is owned by: __________________________
If no, what is the model for support?
Individual departments and functional areas are allowed to select and maintain their own BI strategies, tools, databases, etc. (y/n)
If yes, why?
If no, what is the process for end-user input and requirements?
We have a published and approved a BI strategy document describing all the sections listed above (y/n)
If yes, this document has been agreed to and is periodically reviewed (y/n)
We have a thorough end-user segmentation and evaluation methodology
If yes, who is responsible for this effort and where is it documented?
If no, how are end users deemed appropriate for involvement in BI tools, etc.?
We maintain a standard for BI tools education and support (y/n)
If yes, identify the owner(s) and the processes.
If no, what is the view of the education, training and support requirement?
We match the end user's requirements to the current tools and rapidly enable them to use BI to complete the tasks (y/n)
End users are not allowed to begin work on tools without having completed designated training (y/n)
We provide a central point of end-user support (y/n)
We provide a corporate infrastructure (user group, newsletter, etc.) for BI (y/n)
If yes, describe the processes and structure.
If no, how are users supposed to remain current, learn best practices, etc.?
We have settled on an enterprise-wide database to provide BI (y/n)
If yes, it is: ______________________________
If no, our databases for BI include: _________________________
We support the following BI database architectures:
Data warehouse
Data marts
Federated (multi-source) data access
OLAP
Other
The percentages in time and expense for BI data-related activities are estimated to be:
Data extraction and combining _______
Data transformation _______
Data cleansing _______
Data loading _______
Data distribution _______
Applying changes from BI analysis back to source data _______
We use the following tools for data warehouse/data mart processes:
Data extraction and combining _______
Data transformation _______
Data cleansing _______
Data loading _______
Data distribution _______
Applying changes from BI analysis back to source data _______
Our BI database decisions are based upon:
Technology (features, functions, etc.)
Platform regardless of the vendor's solutions
Vendor applications and packages
BI-specific functionality (specific analytic functions)
IT preferences and standards
Cost alone
Other
We have a standard contract with our database vendor(s) of choice to ensure the lowest cost acquisition and this is a known standard throughout the company (y/n)
If yes, our users understand the decision and know how to acquire new databases or sources (y/n)
We have an approved budget for BI Analytics tools and it is allocated:
Software costs
Hardware upgrades (if applicable)
User Training & Education
Outside consulting services (if applicable)
We have the following BI Analytics tools in use and used by:
Query & Reporting (list):
OLAP and multi-dimensional (list):
Data Mining (list):
Spreadsheet (list):
ERP (list):
CRM (list):
SCM (list):
Other (list):
We have set a standard and goal to establish one tool for each major category above (y/n)
We have decided to reduce or limit the number of BI analysis tools (y/n)
If yes, the tools of choice are:
If yes, the reasons for this are:
Tools are selected based upon their enterprise impact (y/n)
If yes, what are the documented procedures and processes to follow?
If no, what is the selection based upon?
We have a documented and approved BI strategy for:
Internal users—. Intranet (y/n)
External Customers—. Extranet (y/n)
Our database strategy for BI has corporate standards for thin client access (y/n)
We have corporate standards for BI Analytics tools and their thin client architecture requirements
We have a requirement to support the following file formats via thin client and web technologies (list):
This checklist or some version thereof incorporates the majority of the topics I try to discuss with a potential BI customer. Part of the process is the interjection of questions and probing for indications that there is a coherent plan behind the many facets of the customer's BI strategy.