Assessments - A Mandatory BI/DW Pit Stop

Radha R would like to thank Krishnan Raman, a general manager with the business intelligence practice at MindTree Consulting, for contributing this month’s column.

In the current competitive business environment, a successful data warehousing organization may well be the successful business enterprises of the future. A reflection on the millions of dollars spent on business intelligence/data warehousing (BI/DW) solutions by individual organizations, that has yielded less than expected ROI and the burgeoning TCO for these organizations to maintain those solutions is enough to make us focus on what needs to be done better. Even in a traditional factory setup, there is a practice of reviewing the health of the equipment by monitoring critical parameters like vibration, noise-level, wear and tear limits etc., as well as a rigorously adhered to preventive maintenance schedule. However, I find that a DW solution that has multiple choreographed moving parts, with an immense potential to deteriorate is seldom considered a candidate for a routine health-check.

When implementing DW solutions, you need to keep revalidating the strategy as you progress, depending on the environmental factors. Big bang implementations have been massive failures. You typically adopt a phased roadmap BI/DW solution, which can be even tougher as there is no static goal to be achieved. The goal for a BI/DW solution is continuously shifting:

Business needs to be served by the DW can change with changes in the business processes.
Changes to an environment like a merger, acquisition or a restructuring can introduce radically different requirements.
Emerging technologies and growing maturity require recalibration of strategy. An organization that was comfortable with basic reporting and analytics, would want to mature over a period of time and move up the continuum towards dashboards/scorecards, data mining, predictive analytics and operational BI.

With DW being one of most crucial and a “financial big spend” implementation for every organization, it is critical to learn from the past and leverage best practice approaches and avoid pitfalls.

What is BI/DW Assessment?

A DW initiative is a journey with a clear goal, but its undertaken in phases with appropriate checks and balances.. Your enterprise must understand and commit the people, processes and technologies necessary to achieve an enterprise DW solution that manages data as your corporate asset. The essence of DW assessment – the why, what and how of assessment – is directed at defining and refining the warehousing process to place the DW initiative in the right trajectory to successfully achieve the overall business goals.

Why Assess the BI/DW Solution?

The reason for assessing a DW depends on the type of assessment. Based on my experience, I would classify assessments into two broad types:

Readiness assessments, and
Post implementation assessments.

Any new DW initiative will benefit from a rigorous and comprehensive assessment. This will help understand the current landscape, set the right goal and position the initiative for success.

A more prevalent assessment is in an organization with an existing DW environment. A DW solution is a long journey and you tend to loose steam and waiver in your direction over a period in time. There are multiple causes that warrant an analysis and a renewed life cycle for the implementation: