Business Intelligence Strategy - Assignment Example

Student Name Lecturer’s Name Course Name and Number Date Submitted Business Intelligence Strategy First Case In this case, the organization wanted to add controls and reduce the risk of offsite storage records yet they had various challenges ranging from poor methods of storing and retrieving methods, limited controls for adding new users, inconsistent data requirements for the records, lack of clear ownership for records and finally the organization had multiple offsite storage vendors. This meant that the organization had not well defined the offsite vendors. The objectives for the Business intelligence strategy team was to help establish technological software and devices that would help develop requirements for consistent approach on record ownership, record quality and labeling. An effective business intelligence strategy for such an organization should cover on the following: First, it should verify the pressure to change. Considering the fact that the need to reduce the risk of offsite storage exceeds the collective effort of the organizations cash outlay it is important to ensure that no resistance will arise from any part of management team (Biere 34). Secondly, the strategy should quantify the stakeholder objectives by seeking what the executive expectations about the deployment of improved software that will enable in reducing the offsite risks. The other thing that should be considered when creating a business intelligence plan is the dedication of resources. Here, both the IT and business experts should work together in determining the best equipments that shall aid in not only curbing the risks of offsite storages, but also necessitate consistency in the records, indicate the ownership of records and the equipments that will aid in increasing the number of the record users. During the selection of Business Intelligence (BI) software and equipments, the BI team should determine those with salient metrics; that is equipments, which will perform effectively and will not allow for easy data retrieval or traditional forms of data reporting (Biere 35). Identification of data source is also a key factor in an effective BI. However this is only determined after, identifying what type of data is required. As for this case, the type of data needed is that of the offsite vendors’ sales records. Data from various sources such as the websites and other social sites should also be stored on additional data stores as they helps in understanding customers view over a commodity. In order to achieve consistent records from offsite storages, proper tools for data analysis should be acquired. Another factor that should also be incorporated in the business intelligence strategy is the inclusions of tools that will help in cleaning of data (Biere 35) thus avoiding mistakes, which might result in the inconsistency of the record storages as experienced before. Proper pursuing of phased approach is also important as it enable reduction of further risks. For instance, in this case the approach of deploying the BI software and equipments should begin from small departments, which have fewer backlogs of data. This way, risks will be reduced compared to if the strategy is deployed in a big bang waterfall deployment. After pursuing the phase, the strategy should be measured and refined by adopting the corrective measures. Here the BI project return on investments (ROI) is also calculated (Biere 30). After completing the evaluation, the final stage of implementing the BI in this case should be raising the bar. Raising the bar here will involve increasing the number of people who can access the offsite storage records, improving on the speed of disseminating the records and ensuring that each record is assigned to each owner and labeled. Second Case Business Problem. The management of a financial service firm needed to develop a disposition process of the offsite storage records. There was also lack of consistency in the labeling and categorizing the offsite records. This factor also implied that there was a problem of determining the owners of records and data. Therefore, in order to support legal and regulatory matters, there was a need to identify the records before the disposition process could take off. Business Objectives. The major objective of the BI team in this case was to develop a decision tree that would later be used in developing a disposition approach that which could fit each area of business. Business Intelligence Strategy. Just as it was in the first case above the initial factor that the firm should consider is to verify the need for change in order to avoid any obstacle from management. Here the management of the firm should ensure that all the members of the executive are okay with the implementation of the disposition process that is to be implemented in the organization. With the executive consent to implement the disposition process, the accessibility of the needed resources for the process is made easier. After the management has dedicated the resources needed for disposition, then the step that follows in the business strategy is the identifying of the data sources. Here the data that is meant for disposition is identified and more focus channeled to the customer relationship management since the department holds the bulk of the data. A tool for selecting the data meant for disposition is then selected at this stage. The selected tool should also be capable of cleaning the data especially those that can perform this task automatically (Biere 33). For example the selected tools should be able to auto merge the data accounts if need be, they should also be capable of verifying the address and check the spelling and repetition of the same data to avoid inconsistency of the data records. Since the developed tree was being used for the development of the disposition approach, it is advisable for the management team of the financial firm to roll out the disposition of data beginning with the departments with less and finish with those having more data backlogs. This way, the management team of the financial firm in this case will have help in ensuring that further risk of data record loss is avoided (Biere 33). Finally, since the disposition of data was being done in various departments of the firm, the management should ensure that successful actions are adopted and that corrective measures are applied on areas that are not successfully implemented within through the BI strategy. Works Cited Biere, Mike. Business Intelligence for the Enterprise. New York: IBM Press, 2003. Print. Read More