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November 4, 2009
Getting Business and IT on the Same Page
The Business Intelligence blogosphere is abuzz with questions about how IT and BI personnel can become more effective in serving their internal customers. In fact, a recent study by the Society for Information Management shows that even in today's tough economic times "IT/Business Alignment" is right near the top of CIOs' business concerns.
In the process of providing tools that help CIOs do their jobs and playing a consultative role in helping to bridge the gap between IT and business, PBBI often faces the issue of alignment as well. Over and over, we've found that the key lies in asking the right questions upfront.
Too often IT asks (or is told the answer to) the question: "What information do you need?" Armed with the answer, IT then goes off to ensure that they find a way to get that information back to the business as quickly and efficiently as possible.
However, if IT is to be truly business-aligned, the question that really needs to be understood before "What information do you need," is this one:
What problems are you trying to solve?
This is the place we always try to start with our clients, for three key reasons:
Reason #1: The information the business needs is invariably an outgrowth of the problems it is trying to solve. Questions - and the answers to them - evolve and beget more questions. The CIO and IT team that is actively participating in the process of defining and solving problems and questions rather than just taking orders for information is in the best position to provide true insight - and that has the greatest long-term value.
Reason #2: Information provided in a vacuum often has severe limitations. I'll give you a good example: quite a number of factors, if not addressed up front, can limit the accuracy of any predictive analytics. This point is illustrated in this recent PBBI white paper developed by our crime-mapping expert, which provides an insightful listing of the types of limitations that need to be considered.
You'll see that there are quite a variety of factors, ranging from underreporting of certain crimes to seasonality to data compatibility issues and more. Crime maps provided without acknowledgement of these limitations is just order-filling. And an IT team that fills these orders runs risks of running afoul of any or all of these issues. However, crime maps produced with an understanding the problem(s) the business is trying to solve, and the nature of the impact these limitations could have, can be adjusted for a more accurate reflection of circumstances.
Reason #3: Working collaboratively with the business also provides IT with a much greater opportunity to make its case for investing in necessary improvements in data quality. I blogged a bit about this back in August, citing a Information Difference Research Study, The State of Data Quality Today that reported that a full 63% of organizations had no idea what poor data quality may be costing them. By taking on a collaborative role, IT is likely to have better access to both the business' ear, and its purse strings. When you’re just taking orders, you're less likely to be able to sell the importance of data-quality investments across the business.
The bottom line: Information can be valuable. But Insight can be priceless.
In our experience, the best road to insight is collaboration between the business and IT, starting all the way back at the point of problem definition - do you agree?
Cross-posted at http://ebs.pbbiblogs.com/
Posted by PBBI at November 4, 2009 12:45 PM
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