Data Management for Business Intelligence.

Data Management for Business
Intelligence

March 2008 Data Management for Business Intelligence Page 2

Executive Summary
As the sheer amount of information available for Business Intelligence (BI) Research Benchmark applications has grown, and the sophistication of BI capabilities has Aberdeen's Research accelerated, organizations are striving to improve time-to-information for Benchmarks provide an in-business users. Data storage and retrieval decisions have started to be made depth and comprehensive look based on cost rather than fulfilling a business need, and this has led to into process, procedure, compromises that impact business performance. In January and February of methodologies, and 2008, Aberdeen Group conducted a research program among 333 technologies with best practice respondents from several industry sectors, geographies, company sizes, and identification and actionable job roles. The program included an on-line survey and several one-on-one recommendations interviews. Thirty six (36) respondents were disqualified due to their status as either a software vendor or solution provider, leaving a total of 297 respondents that were included in the analysis. This report investigates the strategies, capabilities, and supporting technologies that Best-in-Class companies are employing to alleviate the pressure to accelerate the delivery of actionable information within their enterprises.
Best-in-Class Performance Aberdeen used four key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations: . Time-to-information for users of BI applications. Best-in-Class "Our data is not organized in a companies achieved an 8% mean average decrease in time-to- way that can provide insight. As information in the past 12 months, compared to a 2% mean average a Six-Sigma black belt, my job is decrease among Industry Average companies, and a 1% mean increase to influence management and IT to organize information among Laggards. correctly. The process by . Number of end-users receiving access to BI applications. Best- which we make decisions based in-Class companies achieved a 10% mean average increase in the on KPIs is a struggle. Fulfillment number of users receiving access to BI applications in the past 12 is one of the big KPIs and months, compared to a 5% mean average increase among Industry involves an end to end process from order received to actual Average companies, and a 3% mean average increase among Laggards. order shipped. We have also . End-user productivity and efficiency. Best-in-Class companies acquired many companies with achieved a 12% mean average improvement in end-user productivity and many systems to manage and efficiency (measured as time spent looking for business information many data sources. It takes a within BI applications), versus a 3% mean average improvement among lot of time to extract the data, and on the business side, to Industry Average companies, and a 7% mean average decrease in determine what data to productivity among Laggards. extract. Many things are missing . Data management infrastructure costs. Best-in-Class companies when we try to aggregate data achieved a 7% mean average decrease in data management from disparate systems." infrastructure costs (hardware and software) to support BI applications ~ Six Sigma Process in the past 12 months versus the prior 12 months, compared to a 2% Improvement Lead, Large US mean average decrease among Industry Average companies, and a 6% Manufacturer mean average increase among Laggards. In combination, these metrics provide a means by which respondents can be benchmarked based on their ability to achieve improved business performance. © 2008 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 723 7890 www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897 Data Management for Business Intelligence Page 3

Competitive Maturity Assessment Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared several common characteristics. There is no one specific capability that is more important than another, but rather a mix of capabilities that must be balanced in order to achieve improved data management performance for BI deployments. These include: . The ability to understand end-user needs early in the implementation process . The ability to automate the integration an... [download for more]