As information management is gaining acceptance, good governance is becoming even more critical for the whole process of retrieval, acquisition, organization and maintenance of information. The crucial factor in information and decision process analysis is an improved design-thinking attitude. Only when decision-makers use a good process and methodology for making decisions under limited circumstances can people’s information management needs and desires can be made technologically feasible. Because all the information ultimately is managed by individuals, wherever there is human intervention conflicts between facts and myths exist. I have come across the following eight myths in information management.
Myth #1: Performance management is not a BI solution.
For sure, performance management is the buzzword of the year. Performance management is definitely closely tied with BI. The fact is, any new buzzword takes its own time and pattern to catch up with the reality of implementation and utilization. It’s like a new technology entering into the market creating hype, promises and anxieties. Some performance management vendors argue that they are different from BI. For me this appears to be a complete myth. To address it, let’s define business performance management. The terminology could be defined as a solution that enhances processes and procedures by proactively identifying the risks and problems by using specific methodology. It helps in predicting and answering what-if scenarios with a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach.
But before making it a strategic initiative, companies have to do some homework in assessing the true nature and purpose of the performance management initiative, and if their environment is conducive for the performance management tools. Any performance management tool does well only if the underlying system is stable and robust. And for performance management, the underlying system is a robust data warehousing and BI architecture and infrastructure. There are lots of companies where data warehouses still look like mirror images of their operational systems. In such cases, you will never receive any benefit from a performance management investment. At most, the performance management vendor will end up building a complete BI and DW for you, which is not what a performance management solution would typically offer.
Myth #2: Data warehousing and BI are technology solutions.
It’s a myth to call a DW/BI solution a technology solution because DW/BI is not any product, but a combination of tools and technology put together that enables a business to answer its decision-making questions in a much faster and efficient way. DW/BI is actually a business solution. BI/DW terminology has been around for couple of decades, but the myth is still very strong in the IT community that BI/DW is all about delivering with tools, whether it’s ETL tools or reporting tools. We always hear about the BI/DW in terms of how many reports it delivered, how many dashboards were created and the load time taken by the batch. We hardly hear BI/DW solutions in terms of “this initiative could address these business issues.” One can find a number of write-ups on the success criteria for a BI/DW (good design, best tools, right staffing) and why BI/DW initiatives fail (data quality, inadequate requirements gathering). But there are hardly any pointers which emphasize that it’s not important how much data you bring into the DW, but its associated business value. This essentially means that the BI/DW solution has its ultimate value in generating revenue and cost savings for the company. It’s possible that many of us know this fact, but it’s always good to get in touch periodically with basics, particularly basics of data warehousing to keep the investments, vision and directions right.
Myth #3: You cannot tangibly measure ROI on BI investments.
Measuring the return on any investment is dependent on various factors like your company, the person owning these metrics, tangible and intangible measurement types and direct and indirect returns. All these things are true in BI/DW projects and programs. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. So, for sure, you can measure ROI. It’s as simple as that. However, what’s not simple is the way you measure it. The good news is now BI/DW has reached a stable and matured state where guidelines can be used to calculate ROI along with the TCO (total cost of ownership) on the BI investments. Some of the key factors used to capture this are:
