Should BI Teams Reside on the IT or the Business Side?

"BI Teams" covers a lot of things - but if you mean who should own a BI development project it is the business. The data is theirs, and they know their information requirements. If IT owns it, the project will just become technology-focused. And remember that IT is part of the Corporate Axis of Evil, along with Procurement and HR. The business understand quite well that if IT takes ownership of a BI project they will deliver delays, obfuscation, and bad excuses long before the finished product. Today we see the business being less intimidated about taking ownership of BI projects - and this is a trend that will continue.

Kirsty,
I think that both is necessary - and more. I had experiences when we delivered and covered all techical aspects of BI, from databases, data warehouses, sql queries, optimisations, cubes, demensions and measures. In that case, something is missing - business authority.
My opinion is that clients expect more from BI, they expect business know-how too (maybe because bussiness intelligence sounds like that). Almost all of them don't know really what they want to see on dashboards/reports, they have only distant picture of it.
Bottom line is, perfect team is consisted from IT experts, business experts but visual design experts also.

I agree with Hrvoje above that a good project will involve both IT and the business side. BI is worthless if it does not provide value to the business side. On the other hand, most organizations find that it works best to take the everyday "care and feeding" of the software off of the functional business user's plate. When properly managed, this arrangement can be a win for everyone.

The situation that David described can also work well, but this is a little forward-thinking for many organizations.

Unless your IT department is not helpful, I would definitely have both ends involved. The business users must define requirements and the end results. IT is responsible for gathering the data from source systems (and possibly external entities), and making sure that the data definitions are consistent across the organization. Data definitions should be agreed upon between the business and IT to make sure verybody's on the same page.

If only a single business department is driving this, then it will not provide value across the entire business, and will lead to silo building within your organization.

I can't believe the answer that you received above from the 'Axis of Evil' guy. That's a sad commentary on business and IT today, and a leading cause as to why business cannot get the data that they want out of their systems. That being said, if your IT department is one that denies, derails, and defers your projects, then I would look to make it business driven and would work with an outside partner.

BI is for business intelligence, IT should do the installation and integration, however, the results of BI are not for IT support and business must chose based on enterprise decision support benefits.

The BI oversight should be a business function and not an IT function although both sides need to be joined at the hip.In my experience business too often abdicates their role to IT partly because business doens't fully understand how to use the data, what questions to pose and what to do with the output once they get it. So it gets passed to IT by saying we want a "data warehouse with all the data incorporated so we can do whatever analysis we want". By not defining the problem to be solved in more finite terms the data integration piece becomes unwieldy, the analysis is complicated, and the busines side ultimately doesn't use it because its more of a technology solution. If on the other hand there is a busines champion, supported by senior management or is part of senior management who understands what is to be accomplished, the data to be used and how to apply it there is a winning combination. The business champion does not have to be an IT expert nor a statistical expert but should be well versed in both areas so he/she can marry both business and IT together.

I think that it really depends on the situation and goal of the project. However, based on experience, the BI projects that have been most likely to succeed are ones that have both aspects - in terms of being driven by the business through the requirements phase with collaboration with IT. Although business units understand (in general) what want to achieve, understanding how that ties into the current IT infrastructure and what technical considerations are required will fall outside the scope of business expertise. Consequently, IT is required to bridge that gap and to tie in business rules to data sources, tables, table joins, and queries. In essence, to achieve success, the inclusion of both becomes essential.

Malcolm - Sad, ain't it? BTW, besides the "Axis" any politically powerful internal function may create the same distorting negative affects (fear and loathing) and effects (policies, procedures and decision rights.)

As with many of the questions being posed here on Focus.com and elsewhere the lack of specificity leads immediately to the consultant's standard retort: "that depends..." (What’s your budget? and Is it authorized? come next.)

The concept space of BI has many dimensions: type of organization, size, information needs, decision structures, analytic needs, execution capabilities and capacities, sources of data/info, strategic-tactical-operational focus and intentions, current technologies, industry and market risk to name a few. The intersection of particular values implies a solution set i.e. a combination of organizational and technical components with a measure of probability of success. So, again, back to: "it depends."

In some sense I am a pragmatist. Most companies (greater than 97%) are small (less than 100 employees, US stats from 2004) and they are likely to be resource constrained in some functions, most likely IT (if the IT function is staffed at all it is bound to operations activities.) So, if companies need BI (whatever that is), that "need" comes from a small set of functions which, from my perspective, are more likely to get the best Time-to-Benefit and ROI from the outside. I believe building IT capability in the BI application area is a strategic stretch - not strength.

Another problem with any answer here is the question of what IT does. If you look at the history of business organizations, IT has moved from a Data Processing center to a service management center (think SaaS like Salesforce.com, Cloud Computing etc. at the extreme.) As the field of IT or better said "Information Services" advances, the conception of IT as an internal "organelle" becomes absorbed into other operating functions and external services. This is another reason I believe engaging external expertise is the way to go.

But then, that's just my opinion...

For BI to be successful in an organization it is necessarily multi-functional in data origin, cross-functional in applicability and validity, and executive level in influence.

IT plays a large role in determining, implementing and supporting the tool set that enables BI to materialize from a concept to an effective mechanism, and also is the custodian of the resident data (in DW, ODS, federated data etc). But it is the business that owns the data and the outcomes, which drive the business decisions.

One could say that BI should stand on it own as an independent department with controls and input from both sides of the line, but the reality is that it often resides somewhere in the traditional departmental lines. The best place for it to reside will be subject to the culture and structure of the organization but given the nature of the beast, in general, the mechanism (technology) should be owned by IT but the ownership (processes and definitions) and final residence of the initiative/program etc should be the business.

The larger and more complex the organization, the more that the executive level must play a role in managing and directing the differing opinions, priorities and requirements to achieve a successful BI implementation and on-going program.

Both. The consumer of data (business) must have input. If the data is not in a format that is useful, it benefits no one.

On the other hand, IT knows where the data exist, how to access it.

They should both be at the table at all times from now on.

David O'Neil is dead on. In the changing IT landscape it's less clear what belongs where but BI's purpose is to measure, analyze , and improve - that's all about the business and it's mission. Authority for BI should rest there, forever and ever Amen.

Thanks for all your answers so far. I think it depends on the type of BI provided. For example, in house specialists are vital for traditional BI software, which require code to be written for each query as well as servers to be maintained and software to be integrated. SaaS BI is delivered over the internet so there is no software to install, no servers to maintain and no integration to be done. It is intuitive to use and does not require a single line of code. I can't speak for other software vendors, but our software Bime is designed to empower professionals outside of the IT department, with a view to freeing up IT demand so that IT departments can focus solely on their strategic IT role.

The foundation of any BI Project is to incorporate strategic information to generate added value to the company, thinking that the areas of business and IT join forces in a single BI Team would be the ideal world, however the degree of maturity of the companies to work united in an information strategy is what makes you decide which part will be the team that brings the drive to influence the rest of the company, remember that the attitude change is essential in these projects. What should be clear is that deals that both participate. It is feasible to involve business consulting firms or technology during the development of BI Projects, or in the operation of strategic information, however, must always be clear roles, responsibilities and accountability.

There are concepts that have incorporated specific visions to this question in specific BICC (Business Intelligence Competitive Center) is good, I recommend you follow up on this concept, is maturing within enterprises.

Always the Business Side. If not, they will loose their job.

Regards,
ricardo

So long as it doesn't reside under Finance....

Seriously, it's all about roles and responsibilities. I believe it's best handled by both departments with a crystal clear understanding of who is responsible for what. Have not Finance and IT partnered for years to set, manage and control a company's finances? Why can't it be the same or similar for Business Intelligence? IT should own the data management and technology strategy. IT should configure, maintain and operate the shared tools. The business should own the data, its definition, quality and content.

IT is the toolset to deliver what "C" execs define as relevant and meaningful within the framework of enterprise expectations. Decision support the enterprise..

The BI team does need to have the support and authority of the business, in addition to the above, should always be align IT to the business. Including sponsorship and support of business, the BI team needs to hit or cause change on the way to work. That is the reason that a multidisciplinary team was set to be completely satisfactory results. The authority must be on the side of the business fundamentally

I represent a BI team that defines and owns all the requirements of a BI portal, which resides on a contact center suite of applications. In our case, the BI team consists of domain experts; they perform market research, analyze customers' requirements, and analyze existing system to define core requirements and functions of the BI applications. All requirements and business rules are reviewed by exec team.

Application development, integration and implementation activities are performed by a team of software developers and support engineers. This model works for us.

In a nutshell, both BI and IT team are required to deliver a successful application. Roles and responsibilities of each team may vary as per business needs or the domain involved.

Successful BI involves both technology, as the enabler, and business people, who guide the strategy. From that perspective, it is hard to imagine a successful BI project that does not include strong representation from both the business and IT sides.

The business should guide IT regarding project goals and business outcomes. However, IT must inform the business about constraints and issues that could interfere with accomplishing those outcomes.

Successful projects really are a collaboration and partnership from the two sides playing together as a single team.

In my view, BI teams should absolutely be composed of both IT and business side users. That could be as simple as "the finance (etc) reporting folks know roughly what they want", and the IT folks get it for them, iterating as necessary until the reporting tool answers the right questions ... or it could be a technical person learning the business side in-depth to provide value-added BI content.

It's arguably a better use of time for the technical people to learn the ins and outs of various BI tools, while the business side users concentrate on figuring out what questions they want reports to answer. Reporting tools are usually at least somewhat user-friendly, but getting the data there (ETL, modeling, OLAP, etc) is often quite arcane and not something I'd want to foist on most business users (unless they *really* enjoyed that kind of thing and had plenty of time... yeah right!).

So perhaps - business defines the questions, IT defines how to (try to) get the answers?

I think that it should not matter as longs as the results of BI are actionable and both IT and the Business can benefit. I think there are benefits as well from having BI teams on both camps because each can provide a different perspective on a solution to the challenges at hand. In the end, integrated business intelligence should be the goal, where not only IT and Business are involved, but client feedback as well. Not an easy thing to do but necessary for sustainable long term growth.

The really key point is the team! Implementing a BI solution is a team effort in the broadest possible way for each enterprise. Using a very simple model "implementing" a BI solution consists of 3 very broad activities. In sequence I see these as:
- system selection and acquisition. Both IT and the business most share this process. Does the proposed package meet the enterprise objectives? Can IT support the desired BI solution (hardware, software, licenses, support etc) within the context of the existing infrastructure. Do you want analytics with your order?
- installation, integration, loading data and training. Initially an IT function. Key in this the role of Master data architect/model. Does the enterprise have a MDA function and who owns it? This will impact a lot of "fun" and potentially expensive ($$ and hours) activities such as implementing data feeds from the business critical applications. Some of which will be legacy and perhaps lack adequate documentation. Okay, "integration" does hide a whole lot of critical activities with potentially destructive consequences to the project. Training, of the end-user on the new system. Again I'm hiding a lot of work in a few words.
- the third and most important part of BI implementation project is how the enterprise uses the newly available information to re-engineer existing business processes. This is where we see the ROI for the enterprise. I think this is mainly a business function, the outcomes will impact IT once the re-engineering process is define.

It is called Business Intelligence not IT intelligence.

Putting it on a binary scale is hard. As a technologist and business innovator I don't think we can look at this question with a black and white mindset. The reality is that without a blended approach regardless of where the function sits it will fail. However, in my capacity for planning and building BI teams and depending on the size of the organization, IT, Finance or Marketing are the best starting areas for a BI implementation. Depending on the size of the organization many of these divisions will yield very quick positive results in a BI launch. Interestingly though, if the start-up occurs in a division other than IT the challenges with skillets and focus occur. Marketing and Finance aren't as use to the outside demands and constantly changing scope that IT people become masters at managing over time.
The key is to create a partnership with other stakeholders in the project and create champions in the business units or IT to help the project succeed. For instance, at a bank, you'd want to make sure that in your credit, finance, accounting, and product divisions you have a strong hero in the department who's willing to go above and beyond for the cause of the BI success. Allowing these individuals to feed the rest of the team and get them hungry for more BI is the best approach from my chair.

Yes.

To stop BI projects failing:
(i) the initial project needs to be driven by the business with senior BI champion. Designed to satisfy the needs of the business and then implemented by IT - not vice versa!
(ii) The business must use the system, not just initially but over the long term. This means that it must evolve to satisfy changing business needs.
(iii) The information that is provided must drive the business forward. The data must be analysed and interpreted for the users.
A BI team therefore needs to be driven by someone who understands the business, has analytic skills, understands what is possible and how to share the information. Thus the team needs input from many skills and should therefore not be embedded in a particular business function.

The answer really depends on the maturity of the relationship of the business and IT units. At the end of the day, IT should be seen as another arm of the business, and hence it should be acceptable for a BI department, which often consists of many IT talents, to sit there.

However, this can only work if there is true integration between IT and business. This integration is still nascent and usually the idea is that business sends a request to IT and IT delivers a product for business consumption. In this case, BI can not work in that scenario, as the business MUST understand they are the leading partner in any succesful BI implementation.

The answer really depends on the maturity of the relationship of the business and IT units. At the end of the day, IT should be seen as another arm of the business, and hence it should be acceptable for a BI department, which often consists of many IT talents, to sit there.

However, this can only work if there is true integration between IT and business. This integration is still nascent and usually the idea is that business sends a request to IT and IT delivers a product for business consumption. In this case, BI can not work in that scenario, as the business MUST understand they are the leading partner in any succesful BI implementation.

If BI team can report directly to Top Management not under the other Business Units such as IT, Marketing, Sales......etc.., the result of BI implementation will always be positive.

If that is the case that BI must be in either Business or IT, I think Business side will be more appropriate as long as BI is used for businessman to make decisions.

If BI team can report directly to Top Management not under the other Business Units such as IT, Marketing, Sales......etc.., the result of BI implementation will always be positive.

If that is the case that BI must be in either Business or IT, I think Business side will be more appropriate as long as BI is used for businessman to make decisions.

Depends on the leadership in place that's running BI. If you have a business savvy technology person with a customer service attitude i think you can run it in IT and have a great BI platform. The BI team that I run reports to me than through the CTO. We've been incredibility successful in the organization by making sure to at least keep 2 business savvy analysts on the team. They're able to slice and dice problems and help users get to the root of what they want to do.

Our BI initiative started in Finance, but the skill sets weren't their to really execute on the vision of what BI can really do for a company. So we brought it back into IT and took a shot at it and when IT can be engaged directly with the lines of business you end up with a great product in return.

In essence, i don't think where it sits that matters, it's how strong of a leader you put in place to manage it and the culture of the organization.