Business Analytics for Managers: Taking Business Intelligence beyond Reporting

Chapter 1. The Business Analytics Model

The most important thing in a large and complex project with a large number of people and competencies involved is to create an overview of the project from a helicopter perspective as quickly as possible.

This chapter focuses on the business analytics (BA) model, which will help you get that overview. The model provides an outline for understanding—and creating—successful business analytics in any type of organization. The purpose of the model is to give the organization a single common frame of reference for an overall structure in the creation of successful BA, and it clarifies the roles of the individual contributors and the interaction in the information generation and information consumption process, which is what BA is, too. The model is the pivot of the rest of the book, and the five layers of the model are subsequently explained in detail with each layer allocated a separate chapter.

If your job is to make an information strategy, for example, as a CIO, the model comprises all the stakeholders and processes you should focus on. The model also gives clues about why most BA projects fail, which is simply because it is a large cross-organizational activity. You can compare it to a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link and if one of the departments involved is incompetent or if the knowledge handover between departments fails, your project will fail.

OVERVIEW OF THE BUSINESS ANALYTICS MODEL

The BA model in Exhibt 1.1 illustrates ...