CIOIN

A quick check for the technology priorities of CIOs over the last half decade—from structured surveys to strategic meetings—shows one perpetual resident on these lists: Business intelligence.

Despite getting off the hype cycles of many consultants a long time ago, business intelligence, or BI, continues to captivate IT and enthrall business alike. For years, CIOs have been contemplating their move to BI, whether just to test the waters or adopt it full-scale. So, it isn’t a surprise when business intelligence pops up as the second most popular technology priority for Indian CIOs in 2011. CIOs, yet again, plan to consider business intelligence this year as, albeit with one key difference: Instead of either rushing in (and play into tech hype) or restricting themselves to MIS reports, they plan to rely more on a realistic, practical and comprehensive BI adoption strategy.

“I don’t see business intelligence being left out of an IT roadmap anytime soon,” says Veneeth Purushothaman, head of technology at HyperCITY Retail. “The only question is whether it appears in a short-term plan or not. In 2011, it’s high on CIOs’ priority lists and they will strive to make it more of a ‘real deal’ from this
year onwards.”

Purushothaman sees two factors that have prohibited BI from making it big in Indian enterprises. First, CIOs rush in to adopt BI without tempering business expectations. “Usually, user expectations get unwieldy because some vendor promises that reports with very high granularities can be built in a snap. In real environments, this never happens, leading to unmet user expectations and a lot of heartburn,” says Purushothaman. “Hence, this year, CIOs should start by bringing user expectations closer to reality when it comes to BI.”

Pradeep Yadav, VP-IT, Videocon Telecommunications, adds, “While managing and mapping user expectations, CIOs also need to get top management buy-in for BI projects, and introduce change management with a top-down approach.”

The second problem area, says Purushothaman, is a misconception among CIOs: They tend to associate business intelligence with reports. “BI is not about reports. MIS is,” he points out. “BI goes far beyond MIS. This year, CIOs need to bring about a massive change in mindset by looking at BI as a solution that helps stakeholders put intelligence to data—not as a tool that helps generate reports.”

CIOs need to formulate a clear-cut, robust strategy if they want to successfully adopt BI in their enterprises. They need to build a dynamic and realistic roadmap that enables CIOs to strategically tread into BI with three distinct layers: Data warehousing, reporting and analytical levels, with apt tempering of user expectations, maintaining single version of truth armed with best-in-class extract, transform and load (ETL) tools and the ability to showcase quick wins while moving onto to continual improvements.

“As a starting point, ensuring a single version of truth with adequate data cleansing and validation is paramount. Data from multiple sources and a lack of integrity poses a great challenge to the success of BI. In 2011, CIOs need to ensure a single instance of information for BI to capitalize on,” says Parna Ghosh, head-strategic information system, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India.

“The other big barrier to BI is the lack of experts to deal with the intricacies of the technology. One of the best ways to deal with this is to hire specialists as consultants or outsource the function,” says Shailesh Joshi, AVP and head-IT, Godrej Properties.

It’s also a good idea to show quick results during the early part of a deployment to strengthen management buy-in and gather enough patience to see through a full-scale project, adds N. Rajagopalan, manager-IT, Kone Elevators.