Overview
Main description
Praise for Successful Business Intelligence
"If you want to be an analytical competitor, you've got to go well beyond business intelligence technology. Cindi Howson has wrapped up the needed advice on technology, organization, strategy, and even culture in a neat package. It's required reading for quantitatively oriented strategists and the technologists who support them." --Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor, Babson College and co-author, Competing on Analytics
"When used strategically, business intelligence can help companies transform their organization to be more agile, more competitive, and more profitable. Successful Business Intelligence offers valuable guidance for companies looking to embark upon their first BI project as well as those hoping to maximize their current deployments." --John Schwarz, CEO, Business Objects
"A thoughtful, clearly written, and carefully researched examination of all facets of business intelligence that your organization needs to know to run its business more intelligently and exploit information to its fullest extent." --Wayne Eckerson, Director, TDWI Research
"Using real-world examples, Cindi Howson shows you how to use business intelligence to improve the performance, and the quality, of your company." --Bill Baker, Distinguished Engineer & GM, Business Intelligence Applications, Microsoft Corporation
"This book outlines the key steps to make BI an integral part of your company's culture and demonstrates how your company can use BI as a competitive differentiator." --Robert VanHees, CFO, Corporate Express
"Given the trend to expand the business analytics user base, organizations are faced with a number of challenges that affect the success rate of these projects. This insightful book provides practical advice on improving that success rate." --Dan Vesset, Vice President, Business Analytics Solution Research, IDC
Table of contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Business Intelligence from the Business Side
Chapter 2. Techno Babble: Components of a Business Intelligence Architecture
Chapter 3. The Business Intelligence Front-End
Chapter 4. Measures of Success
Chapter 5. The LOFT Effect
Chapter 6. Executive Support
Chapter 7. D Is for Data
Chapter 8. The Business-IT Partnership
Chapter 9. Relevance
Chapter 10. Agile Development
Chapter 11. Organizing for Success
Chapter 12. The Right BI Tool for the Right User
Chapter 13. Other Secrets to Success
Chapter 14. The Future of Business Intelligence
Appendix A: This Successful BI Survey
Appendix B: Recommended Resources
Notes
Index
Author comments
Cindi Howson is the founder of BIScorecard, a website for in-depth BI product reviews, and has 15 years of BI and management reporting experience. She writes and blogs for Intelligent Enterprise, and is an instructor for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). Prior to founding BIScorecard, Cindi was a manager at Deloitte & Touche and a BI standards leader for a Fortune 500 company. She has an MBA from Rice University
Back cover copy
In today's highly competitive global economy, actionable business intelligence (BI) is crucial to success. Yet while many companies have made substantial investments in BI infrastructure, few employees are taking advantage of the powerful BI tools they have at their fingertips. This is because technology is only part of a truly successful, company-wide BI strategy. Executive support, an analytic culture, and strong business-IT partnerships and collaboration are among the many other facets that make up a winning end-to-end BI initiative.
Written by industry analyst and BI consultant Cindi Howson, Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App reveals how to get the most value out of your BI investments. The book draws on exclusive survey data and real-world case studies of BI success stories at Continental Airlines, The Dow Chemical Company, Corporate Express, 1-800 CONTACTS, and other companies to identify proven BI best practices you can put to use in your organization, including:
- Gaining executive support and aligning your BI strategy with business goals
- Organizing BI teams and experts for success
- Choosing the best BI tools to meet user and business needs
- Improving data quality so decision-makers trust the BI solution
- Finding the relevance of BI to all employees, including front-line workers
- Using agile development processes to deliver BI capabilities and improvements at the speed of business
- Measuring success in multiple ways
Business intelligence has the power to change people's way of working, to enable businesses to compete more effectively and efficiently, and to help non-profits stretch their dollars further. Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App holds the key to bringing technological innovations together with the people, processes, and culture of any organization in order to achieve a competitive and profitable BI strategy.
