KPMG Advisory publish white paper on “How Australian companies can extract more value from business intelligence”

KPMG’s key findings

• BI projects are different to other IT projects; they are highly bespoke, they never end and they require multiple layers of expertise to achieve success. As a result, BI projects expose organisations to higher risk and more complexity than most other technical solutions.

• Projects can be heavily constrained by upfront assumptions and a limited understanding of what BI is, or what it truly means for the organisation. Common mistakes made by organisations are to approach their BI initiatives with narrow briefs and budgets, oversimplify project processes and set unrealistic timeframes.

• Organisations can underestimate the work involved in extracting the ‘right’ data from source systems. Projects often reveal issues that were not previously apparent and that require additional work to resolve, such as the inaccuracy or lack of data in back-end source systems and how data is often manipulated or altered before it is shared with others.
• It can be easy to lose sight of how BI projects fit into the bigger picture across the wider needs of the business. BI initiatives are typically driven in a bottom up fashion.

Respondents suggested the following strategies to achieve more value with BI projects

• Spend time on strategy, not tool selection.
• Start small and build momentum.
• Build and retain internal expertise.
• Assign people with hands on experience to key roles.
• Manage politics and expectations.

Visit the KPMG website to obtain a copy of this report.