Requirements Gathering

Requirement Gathering is an important part of all BI Projects. These requirements are used to guide the BI Project to success, ensure it's completed on time, and on budget.

In many ways, the requirements are like a contract in BI. "Here is what we hope to deliver, and this is when we expect that to be done".

Typically, a new BI Project starts with a proof of concept. Management needs a new Dashboard which shows how the business is performing in Sales, or Marketing, or delivering goods and services.

The requirements for this new POC then starts off the process. As an experienced BI Consultant, I can work with the necessary people to define these requirements. I can help ensure that everything needed for success is discussed, documented, and agreed upon up front so there is no confusion on what will be delivered.

Extracting & Modeling Data

Once the project has been defined, and database access has been provided, a significant amount of work is done to extract the data from the ERP System and transform that data into something easy to consume and analyze.

Getting only the data that has changed since the last time data was pulled is always a challenge and a goal of a BI Project. This minimizes the impact to the ERP System, and speeds up the processing of data.

Moving this data to another location is critical as processing large amounts of data will impact the ERP System.

Data Modeling is truly an art and has many important aspects to it. This process involves taking data that is stored in multiple tables in a database, pulling that data together into something meaningful for reporting while cleaning up that data and most importantly Organizing it.

Analytics Platform

The data that was just modeled, is then consumed by the Analytical Platform. How the data was modeled greatly impacts how it can be analyzed and consumed later in the Reporting Platform.

The Analytical Platform provides many services:

• Security Model ~ who gets access to what data. Each Sales Person should only be able to see their Sales Territory.

• Metrics ~ advanced formulas, percentages, aggregation of costs, expenses, volumes, and pricing.

• KPI's ~ Key Performance Indicators define goals that are measured based upon the criteria that defines them.

• Calendar ~ data may be reported on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. Some businesses define specific days as a business day, a holiday, or work day for example.

The Analytics Platform becomes a single source of truth. Once the data has been audited and accepted as valid, the business can use this single source of truth in all reporting.

Reporting Platform

The Reporting Platform is where the business interacts with it's data. It is the last piece of the BI Puzzle. It translates data and numbers into easy to understand visuals that tell a story. That story is what the requirement gathering process was all about.

It's important to understand up front that each team within a business will have different needs when it comes to reports and analytics. Forcing the users to adopt a single reporting platform typically works against the adoption and use of the platform. This also affects the experience of the change process.

Financial people typically feel more comfortable using a spreadsheet to work with numbers. Pivot tables can be leveraged to create self serving analytics.

Sales people want an easy to understand, but detailed breakdown of their sales, and commissions.

Supply Chain may prefer a paginated report. Something that can be printed, archived electronically and physically shared.

With 25 years of experience I have a lot to offer on a BI Project. In those 25 years I have worked with many businesses, in different industries and helped them to become more competitive in the market, realize better profits, streamline the processes and more.