Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 4

Assessing Your Technical Readiness

Business Intelligence Maturity Model

In Chapter 3, we discussed 10 criteria for evaluating the readiness of an organization to implement a performance dashboard. This chapter focuses more specifically on evaluating an organization’s technical readiness. Without a strong technical foundation—especially in business intelligence (BI)—most performance dashboards will not survive. They will be crushed by the weight of cumbersome and costly data-gathering processes, inaccurate and untrustworthy data, poor performance, and antiquated functionality.

Like organizational readiness, technical readiness does not happen overnight. It takes years to build a robust BI infrastructure and develop the internal skills and talent necessary to support an effective performance management system. During the past several years, many organizations that initiated performance dashboards became disillusioned when they could not automate the solution or populate its metrics with valid, accurate data.

I have created a BI Maturity Model to help organizations understand the maturity of their BI infrastructures and, by extension, their readiness to build and sustain a performance management system. The five-stage model shows the trajectory that most organizations follow when evolving their BI environments. Typically, the journey takes the BI program from a low-value, operational cost center to a high-value, strategic initiative that delivers a competitive advantage. ...