The rising popularity and importance of data analytics has forced companies to adapt and embrace this discipline or fall behind. Business intelligence (BI) tools have become essential for organizations to comprehend everything from their internal operations to their wider industry trends and everything in between – including sales pipelines, supply chain efficiency and multi-channel marketing presences.
In the rush to keep up with the times and drive ongoing growth, companies will invest thousands and, in some cases, even millions on state-of-the-art BI tools that offer sophisticated and comprehensive capabilities.
Unfortunately, most of these efforts will likely not amount to much in the long run. Implementing a new BI system doesn’t guarantee that you’ll improve, or even that it will give you any return on your investment. Instead, succeeding with BI means learning and instilling best practices that help you and your teams get the most out of the platforms you’re using.
Here are six best practices – three do’s and three don’ts – that you can implement to get the most out of your BI tools and data analytics initiative.
1. Do Promote BI Adoption and Use from the Top Down
One of the biggest roadblocks to BI success in deployments is a lack of buy-in. This problem, however, stems from an even worse issue: a lack of engagement and communication from the top. Executives are often the ones who decide on a new product or platform, but they view their work as done once the deal closes.
However, the C-level is vital for BI success, since they are the ones best positioned to encourage adoption. Employees might see a new system as adding stress to their work, and without clear communication from their superiors about the value and importance of BI tools, they’ll likely stay with their legacy systems.
Executives must be open about adoption of new BI tools, and they must be the ones leading the charge in demonstrating their value and benefits to employees.
2. Don’t Give Everyone Full Access to Everything
Creating permission hierarchies is one of the most important elements of IT management, and this extends to business intelligence. When deploying a system, there is a delicate balance to walk between giving your teams full access to the data and interaction capacity they need and ensuring that your company’s most sensitive data and settings remain safely cordoned off.
The ideal is always to give your users full freedom to interact with data and tools, but not everyone requires full access, or even any access.
Before opening the system, prioritize the users and teams that require access, and ensure they can interact with it and familiarize themselves first. This will help you to assure that your BI tools are working properly and also to create a group in your organization that can help you drive adoption by educating others.
3. Do Have an Implementation Plan
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model has made adopting new tools much easier than ever before. Instead of complex installs and month-long transitions, online tools let you simply log in and start working.
However, opening the gates on day one without any clear structure to your implementation strategy is a sure way to fall behind the eight-ball. If your users are given access with no support or context, they are more likely to stop using the new system rather quickly.
On the other hand, if you have a plan in place, you can start off with partial usage to start integrating functions and utilities into your everyday workflow. For instance, you could start with pre-generated reports and simple dashboards, and slowly add functionalities that give users more freedom. Parallel to this, have a clear plan for educating your team on how to best use the BI platform you chose to ensure adoption.
4. Don’t Assume Your First Build Is Your Last Build
Corporate tech deployments tend to view new products as standalone installs with minor updates down the line. This may have been true ten years ago, but SaaS models and rapidly changing technology render that model moot.
Today’s BI tools are not monolithic applications that are simply installed on day one and forgotten about. Indeed, the very idea of BI would tell you that being static is bad for business. Instead, build a system that provides the tools you need right now, but also gives you room to grow and evolve as your needs change.
Constantly use data from KPIs and other success metrics to see what is working and what isn’t and use those insights to streamline your BI initiative. By keeping your development dynamic, you can better adapt to changing needs and business requirements.
5. Do Create a Culture around Data and BI
A major roadblock to implementation and BI success is pushback from the very teams that are meant to benefit the most from these tools.
The problem is understandable – adopting new systems requires time, training and efforts that often add to teams’ workloads for no discernible value. Simply implementing a new system and handing out passwords is not a recipe for success.
Start by building employee training and educational programs that help your employees understand how the new system makes their lives easier and continue by preaching (and practicing) the value of data to the workplace and organizational success. By prioritizing buy-in, you can ultimately ensure a higher likelihood of success.
6. Don’t Ignore Security
The ease of access that most SaaS products offer makes it easy to forget that while on-premise systems are costly and outdated, they did generally provide stronger security out of the box.
Cloud computing offers significant advantages, but it is still more vulnerable to being breached and has more attack vectors than physical servers. Even smaller things such as a lost phone or tablet could result in a massive data breach.
Make sure the SaaS tools you use offer robust security including two-factor authentication, strong firewalls, and user permission controls which let you regulate access to your most sensitive data. This way, you can give people the access they need while still minimizing the potential damage a security breach poses.
Build BI the Right Way
BI tools offer innumerable benefits to any organization, but it’s important to make sure they’re running smoothly. By embracing best practices, you can reduce the friction of adoption and implementation, and ensure your organization can succeed with BI in the long run.
