Giving Business Intelligence the Business, Part 3

 

End-to-End BI Process Architecture 

Building upon the theme of my last post, Business User Adoption (meaning, the degree to which BI systems are actually being used in the course of real work), business understanding and acceptance of BI would be greatly enhanced if it could be displayed within a Business Process context, rather than a Technical one.

In other words, by defining technology in the language of the business. Not a very novel concept, but one that we have to keep learning. It’s in keeping with the belief that Technology within itself does not deliver Business Value; such value can only be delivered through the way in which Technology is used.

As proposed at the end of my last post, BI can be viewed as an end-to-end business process, starting with the collection of data and ending with the action taken in the use of that data. And herein lies the fundamental difference in this approach when compared to the technical way in which BI is viewed today. In a Technical context, BI ends with the delivery of the information via reports, analytics, alerts, etc. In a Business Process context, BI ends with the action taken (i.e., the business result). While I can find no references to this concept with respect to BI, there has been much written about I.T. being viewed as an end-to-end business process from a transaction systems standpoint. The best I’ve seen was provided three years ago by the preeminent BPM resource, the BPM Institute (What is End to End Anyway?).

A proposed end-to-end BI process is displayed below. Note that it is a linear flow, not a circular one. Linear flows represent both a beginning and an end to a process. This is the language of business. Circular flows are intellectual depictions of interaction and their use in depicting business processes should be stopped. But I digress…

 

Walk into any business manager’s office and explain BI using this process flow, and he/she will get it immediately. Once at the same level of understanding, walls will come down and true collaboration will begin. The business manager will understand what BI is about, and perhaps most importantly, the I.T. professional will send the message that Business Value is the real goal of I.T.

Regards,
Rick