Always we know what best we can do with technology which is a good thing. We can assume and start our journey towards the best. In reality, when we go to customer some of them are not even having the basic infrastructure / platform to start the MIS.
In the above scenario, as companies / IT folks we have to lead them into analytics by providing 3 year road map. Give consolidated view to begin with which helps the business to validate and verify what they think is what is happening, as the next step find the stories which will have an impact on their savings or growth potential and then lead them to predictive analytics.
In theory, every business wants analytics. But based on the type of organization, their goals and aspirations the usage of analytics varies. As technology folks, we have to know where to draw line. Feeding a child who is not hungry is a battle. So, understand the customer’s current ability to adopt analytics, create a road map which gives them the quick wins and lead them into analytical world.
So, in our process must include activities which helps both customer and implementation team to understand where to stop BI implementation. We have to include the cooling period once the roll out happens. BI enables the knowledge workers to gain more insights, this typically takes a bit longer than what we think.
Stage1: Show the integrated data in visual form (Dashboards) — this helps to verify and validate their knowledge about their business and ask the right questions when the expected number or indicator is not inline with their view. Take the industry standard KPI’s and show how the organization performs against the industry standard.
Stage2: Provide insights on why the business did not perform according to expectation or why few set of customers we lost or why our service to customers are rated low compared to market average. In this stage either success or failure have to be relate with events, place, person, time dimensions to business stakeholders.
Stage3: Predict what to expect tomorrow in your business based on standard statistical algorithms which is based on various dash boarding tools. Here both Data experts, business experts, statisticians work as a team to identify and address the variables which are very important to monitor.
Make sure in every step we are adding value to client by enabling them with more facts to link the dots in their business. Use the right tools to achieve the objectives which cuts down lot of implementation time. Educating business on what to expect from the analytics project should be part of Pre Sales activities in my view. This sets the stage where all the involved parties are on the same page.
