Establishing Business Drivers and Value Proposition for BI Programs

Define roadmap before committing investment with a cross-functional opportunity inventory and analysis

Baseline’s Business Discovery service helps you establish that a valid business need exists for a business intelligence or data warehouse (BI/DW) initiative, before you invest dollars and resources.

Business Discovery provides a structured means to inventory BI opportunities across business functions and illustrates a proven way to engage end users in articulating their business requirements and goals.

It is designed to cement an understanding across the enterprise of the business drivers, justification, and intended use of your business intelligence, data warehouse, or advanced analytics capabilities. It compares your situation with key best-practices across industries.

The service delivers a recommended BI/DW delivery approach and specific tactical steps. You receive a comprehensive set of high-level business requirements for creating project plans, forecasting budget needs, allocating staff and resources, and embracing a roadmap for analytical capabilities across the enterprise.

» Your Challenges
» The Problem
» The Baseline Approach
» Your Value
» Why Baseline

Your Challenges

• Developing a “top down” needs analysis and business case
• Understanding the potential strategic business uses of BI
• Gathering business requirements
• Agreeing on priorities
• Low user adoption of an existing data warehouse
• Fulfilling the demand and supply curve for data and BI applications across multiple business functions

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The Problem

Breaking through the “noise” to clarify business needs and outline steps to achieve BI goals

Are you new to business intelligence and data warehousing (BI/DW)? Are you searching for a clear view of how BI/DW fits into your business strategy – and what the value proposition is?

Or maybe you have a few BI applications under your belt, but need to resell the data warehouse program and “get the ear” of the business in order to move forward.

Many managers intuitively understand the efficiencies and potential value business intelligence and data warehouse programs can bring to their company. But they have difficulty articulating the business need and the discrete steps to move forward. Sometimes organizational politics gets in the way. Sometimes it’s ownership issues, lack of structured techniques, or inability to identify stakeholders. And sometimes IT and business just can’t seem to engage in meaningful dialog about strategic and operational requirements for BI.

Any of the following challenges could be signals that you need Business Discovery:

• Management wants a “top down” needs analysis and “business case”, but IT has neither an understanding of the potential business uses nor the costs of a solution.
• Management has funded an enterprise data warehouse but no one can agree on requirements or priorities.
• There’s a perception that business users have “given up on” BI. An existing data warehouse is barely used and management questions its value.
• Different lines of business express similar needs for data. For example, both Finance and Marketing want to understand customer profitability by segment.
• Different lines of business are undertaking suspiciously similar BI projects.
• The company lacks a structured method for gathering business requirements.

Critical Success Factors
of an Enterprise Information Strategy

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The Baseline Approach

Structured methods to engage end-users and gather business requirements

Baseline believes the success of business intelligence and data warehousing is directly proportional to the business requirements addressed. We don’t believe that companies who use their data warehouses as large data provisioning platforms are maximizing the value of the technology. Furthermore, a requirements-driven approach to BI can help a company further its mission to more closely align the business with IT.

Baseline’s Business Discovery service includes the following activities:

• Stakeholder interviews using structured interview techniques.
• Analysis of findings using metrics-based prioritization and scoring grids.
• Listing and categorization of key business questions.
• Identification of candidate BI applications and individual project objectives.
• Identification of core data subject areas.
• Establishment of business success metrics and organizational success criteria.

Baseline avoids the “requirements gathering by consensus” and “interactive JAD sessions” that many vendors and systems integrators use. Business Discovery shuns this “boil the ocean” approach to development – which often leads to further alienation of stakeholders and can jeopardize an existing or pending project.

The final Business Discovery deliverable presents high-level business requirements, describes the core business issues addressable through business intelligence, and recommends an implementation priority that leverages existing development skills, tools, and business relationships.

For many of our clients, Business Discovery often precedes the creation of an Application Portfolio and Business Case.

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Your Value

A business-oriented, tactical roadmap – where to start and how to proceed

Baseline’s Business Discovery service establishes the short- and long-term roadmap of your BI/DW initiative and defines scope in small, controlled projects. Business Discovery helps you launch a new BI/DW initiative or propel a moribund one forward by following acknowledged best practices:

• Approach data warehouse development incrementally.
• Make the data warehouse a business-driven program.
• Ensure that BI/DW is embraced as a business solution, not just a new technology.

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Why Baseline

Our proven approach ensures your BI initiatives begin with business objectives and end with business value

Baseline’s 15-year focus on data-enabled solutions – namely business intelligence, data warehousing, and business analytics – means that no one outshines us at understanding how business uses data or helping IT deliver information solutions. Baseline brings hands-on experience in a variety of industries and functional applications to each Business Discovery engagement.

Baseline’s professional consultants bring context to Business Discovery engagements – insight and know-how relevant to the interconnections of business needs, processes, data, and technology. This insight enables them to ask the right questions and paint the big picture of where you need to go.

Our proven, structured approach helps you define your business intelligence and data warehouse roadmap based upon valid business drivers and solid value proposition.

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