Making Business Intelligence

Work for Your Organisation

Robin Smith and Dion Lindsay

Published by

In association with

Contents
Executive summary.............................................................................................................VII
About the author................................................................................................................IX
About the executive editor...................................................................................................XI
Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................XIII
Foreword...........................................................................................................................XV
Chapter 1: From information to intelligence management................................................... 1
New frontiers in information and knowledge strategy................................................................ 1
The new information and knowledge workers......................................................................... 2
Information risk and threat assessment.................................................................................... 3
Introducing BI........................................................................................................................ 4
Intelligent technologies to accelerate performance.................................................................... 5
Vision for integrating IIM........................................................................................................ 6
Building an IIM framework...................................................................................................... 7
Information and intelligence integration................................................................................... 8
From information to intelligence management.......................................................................... 9
Case study 1: Lessons from the UK retail banking industrys response the worlds greatest
intelligence failure................................................................................................................ 11
Chapter 2: Mapping and leveraging value from the corporate information estate . ........... 17
Googlisation of IIM............................................................................................................ 17
The internal intelligence requirement..................................................................................... 18
The greatest BI source People ........................................................................................... 19
Mapping the information estate to improve BI . ..................................................................... 20
Information mapping methodology....................................................................................... 20
Defining the value of intelligence.......................................................................................... 23
BI valuation method............................................................................................................. 24
Case study 2: The UK Metropolitan Police Services national intelligence model....................... 27
Chapter 3: The BI accelerators.......................................................................................... 31
Trends in technology selection............................................................................................... 31
The essential IIM technology accelerators.............................................................................. 32

III

Contents

Evolution of BI and its management...................................................................................... 33

What BI technology delivers.................................................................................................. 33
Basic BI tools....................................................................................................................... 34
Components of BI technology accelerators............................................................................ 34
Linking BI to enterprise architecture....................................................................................... 38
Case study 3: Using BI technologies for information risk management..................................... 41
Case study 4: 21st century visual analytics.............................................................................. 43
Case study 5: Spatial BI via mapping.................................................................................... 45
Case study 6: Lucid performance management via dashboards............................................... 47
Chapter 4: The BI process................................................................................................. 49
Improving BI process integration .......................................................................................... 51
Current BI issues and risks.................................................................................................... 51
BI technology procurement strategies.................................................................................... 52
Reviewing BI vendors............................................................................................................ 52
BI service delivery and maintenance...................................................................................... 53
Chapter 5: Assessing IIM maturity .................................................................................... 55
Introducing IIM assessment................................................................................................... 55
Key IIM maturity assessment process outputs.......................................................................... 56
Elements of IIM assessment................................................................................................... 57
IIM maturity levels................................................................................................................ 58
Undertaking the IIM maturity assessment............................................................................... 59
Towards initial IIM improvement............................................................................................ 60
Case study 8: Assessing BI maturity within a UK acute health service organisation.................... 63
Chapter 6: Integrating BI into the IIM programme . .......................................................... 67
The value of project management......................................................................................... 67
Key definitions..................................................................................................................... 68
Programme management methodologies............................................................................... 68
Projects as a part of programmes.......................................................................................... 68
Project management methodologies...................................................................................... 69
Project governance.............................................................................................................. 71
Project methods................................................................................................................... 72
Continuous success in BI and IIM project management ......................................................... 77
Case study 9: Why projects fail Lessons from Nick Felton, BI director of Advanced Business
Solutions Ltd . ..................................................................................................................... 79
Chapter 7: The importance of compliance, governance and oversight .............................. 83
When governance fails......................................................................................................... 83
Foundations of good governance Key concepts................................................................... 84
Securing compliance within the IIM organisation ................................................................... 85
Technical IIM standards ....................................................................................................... 86
The challenge of implementation.......................................................................................... 86

IV

Making Business Intelligence Work for Your Organisation

Case study 10: Why governance? Lessons in improvement from governance expert
Mike Popham...................................................................................................................... 89
Chapter 8: Developing IIM standards portfolio ................................................................. 91
The role of policy and standards........................................................................................... 91
Key policy definitions............................................................................................................ 91
The policy process............................................................................................................... 92
Elements of a policy............................................................................................................. 92
Vision for IIM standards........................................................................................................ 93
IIM policy framework............................................................................................................ 94
Chapter 9: Establishing IIM change strategies................................................................... 99
The demand for change....................................................................................................... 99
Change strategies and methods............................................................................................ 99
Top challenges for IIM change strategies............................................................................. 100
Recognising resistance to change . ..................................................................................... 101
Six change management commandments............................................................................ 102
Final recommendations...................................................................................................... 103
Case study 11: Customer data integration in Birmingham City Councils excellence in
information programme..................................................................................................... 105
Chapter 10: Setting the BI roadmap................................................................................ 109
Developing the BI roadmap . ............................................................................................. 109
The road ahead................................................................................................................. 111
Case study 12: Reviewing technology trends with IBM information architect Chris Young......... 113
Chapter 11: Considering information and intelligence futures......................................... 115
Risk and threat horizon assessment...................................................................................... 115
Enhanced technologies and tools........................................................................................ 116
Going forward................................................................................................................... 117
Afterword........................................................................................................................ 119
Appendix 1: IIM glossary ................................................................................................ 121
Appendix 2: IIM implementation checklist........................................................................ 125
Appendix 3: IIM strategic vision statement....................................................................... 127
Appendix 4: IIM policy statement..................................................................................... 129
Index.............................................................................................................................. 131

Executive summary
Intelligence matters more than ever in a competitive environment that is enduring the greatest
economic contraction since the 1930s. The last ten years has witnessed a series of corporate
intelligence failures that has led to multi-trillion dollar meltdowns across the global economy from
Lehman Brothers to AIG.
Business intelligence (BI) has been around for a number of years but has too often been sidelined
as an overly technical discipline, interesting only a limited band of performance and IT officers within
organisations. Many will think of it in conjunction with information systems, but there is a plethora
of human, organisational, leadership and process elements that must also be taken into account to
realise the true benefits of BI.
BI at its core is about providing decision-makers with the intelligence in a format that can aid
decision-making and raise performance. From its earliest incarnations BI has required an array of
technology tools to develop data and information from a raw form into intelligence that can be
utilised for improvement. This has created a false impression that BI is simply about technology and
this fallacy continues today in many organisations.
The improvements in information and knowledge management forged in the last decade has
seen the role of BI evolving to include not just an organisations IT department but
a broader range of key decision-makers. The final step is to integrate BI into organisational
information strategy to ensure the benefits and improvements possible link to related actions
to raise information standards, increase information literacy and leverage value from
knowledge technologies.
There is little debate that BI has always delivered value to organisations that have positioned it to
support corporate planning and performance management. The benefits of improved BI include:
Turn data into actionable intelligence Raw data always requires processing to transform it
into usable intelligence. The sheer volume of data within organisations poses both risks and
opportunities for intelligence management;
Serve staff, customers and stakeholders more effectively Decision-making must be based on
quality information and intelligence in order to ensure effective operations; and
Identify new innovation opportunities The insights from improved information and intelligence
management (IIM) can allow for innovation via the identification of new business opportunities.
The problem for many organisations is to align BI strategy with information and knowledge
programmes that are increasingly focused on business transformation and cost reduction. This
need to harmonise is creating a new frontier in information and knowledge management where BI
becomes a focus area of senior information and knowledge officers. The overall objective is to build
an information and intelligence strategy that underpins continuous improvement.

VII

Executive summary

One of the driving forces for improved IIM are new and onerous compliance and governance
requirements emerging from the wreckage of the global financial crisis of 2008. New regulations
making demands on organisations to deliver transparency in decision-making processes are
being enforced across the US and Europe to ensure that corporate malfeasance on the scale of
Enron is avoided.
Organisations must consider the journey from the current silo-based approach to BI. The fact is
that many organisations have already begun to raise BI standards by thinking clearly about IIM as a
new way of implementing corporate information and knowledge standards. The BI roadmap can be
clearly outlined from identifying new strategic information aims to leveraging the current standards,
processes and technologies.
Finally, breaking down barriers and communicating to staff about the absolute importance of
new information and intelligence strategies is a priority. Gaining executive sponsorship and forming a
taskforce that represents both business and IT sides, to ensure the project remains business driven can
provide the framework for raising IIM up the corporate agenda.
This report is intended to help organisations understand BI and its benefits and will provide a
roadmap for organisations to follow, to implement and maximise the impact of a new information
and intelligence strategy.
This report also demonstrates how building a customised BI strategy for your business can
drive productivity, decision-making and innovation. Crucial aspects such as achieving executive
sponsorship, nurturing the necessary conversations between business leaders and IT managers, and
ensuring the project remains business-driven, are all covered in a series of chapters that build a
framework for strategic IIM.
Through a series of in-depth case studies, information and knowledge professionals will learn
how to reassure the value of BI and prove the return of investment of BI by building the business case
for improvement strategies.

VIII

About the author

Robin Smith is currently head of information governance for Northampton General Hospital.
He has worked extensively in the UK police service as a senior information management change
manager. He is an established writer, master class leader and lecturer in the development of the
open information society and creator of the information risk and intelligence model (IRIM). He is
currently completing his PhD in Information Risk Management following his innovative studies of the
global banking crisis.
Robin was formerly marketing director of the Information & Records Management Society UK and
will shortly publish his new book, Blackout; The Coming Collapse of the Digital Society. He can be
contacted at: robinsmith64@hotmail.com.

IX

About the executive editor

Dion Lindsay is an experienced knowledge management consultant, writer and trainer. His UK-based
consultancy has worked with large charities, membership organisations; and public and private
sectors on knowledge sharing and collaboration strategies. Dion has 23 years experience working in
information management in the public and third sectors.
He writes the well known Intranets Column in Elucidate, the e-journal for emerging and popular
topics in electronic information. He is an experienced and trained workshop facilitator and has
run more than 25 workshops and courses over the last six years, for clients both in the private and
public sectors. His most recent courses are on intranets, collaboration and social media, run in
collaboration with Martin White of Intranet Focus.
He is a trustee of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, a member of its
ICT and web design programme board and framework for qualifications and accreditation
steering group. Dion can be contacted at: dion@dionlindsayconsulting.com.

XI

Making Business Intelligence Work for Your Organisation

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