Business Intelligence Competency Centers: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive Advantage

Chapter 1. Introduction

Overview

Business Intelligence is reaching more and more constituents inside and outside your organization. Information demands, data volumes, and audience populations are growing and will continue to grow exponentially. As the demand increases, so does the imperative for a sound strategy that meets your short-term needs and that provides the foundation to meet your long-term vision.

Current spending is changing focus from products that help control costs to those that can help grow the business.

Key Questions

Are you thinking about how to get the most out of BI? Are you wondering how to best sustain your investment in BI? Do you worry about how to ensure that every business decision made in your organization is backed up by the correct information? Are you asking yourself how to implement a comprehensive BI strategy that supports organizational goals and addresses the information requirements from the business? Do you wonder how to get information when you are sure the data must be there, but you do not know how to get a meaningful report?

BICC Concept

More and more organizations are forming a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) as an answer to those questions. Gartner Research (www.Gartner.com) defines a BICC as a cross-functional team with specific tasks, roles, responsibilities, and processes for supporting and promoting the effective use of Business Intelligence across the organization. The hope is that a BICC can act as a center of expertise for ...