In a business world where companies are receiving a constant influx of information, it comes as no surprise that the difference between a competitive business and a stagnant one is down to how efficiently their data is organised, analysed and understood.
The answers to business questions are often hidden behind decentralised data feeding dozens of reports, heritage dashboards that are inadequate for the company’s evolving needs, and teams scrambling to put together insights to make their next decisions.
Implementing a BI tool means transforming data chaos into a streamlined, organised package of insights ready to be accessed to inform strategic decision making.
In this blog, we’ll guide you through:
- The benefits of BI implementation for your business
- Important considerations when choosing your BI tool
- The key phases of the implementation lifecycle
- The process to follow for successful deployment
- The first steps to set up a governance framework
Benefits of BI implementation
But what does it mean exactly to implement a BI tool?
The most immediate answers might be “to have all data in one place,” “to have a centralised source of truth for our numbers” or “to stop pestering your data team to send us that report every Monday morning” – and all of these answers are valid!
Implementing a BI tool isn’t just about adopting new software; it’s about transforming how your organisation operates, actively involving all the teams to be part of the new pathway.
What could this look like in a real-world example? Let’s explore the daily responsibilities of a Data Officer who doesn’t have a BI solution.
- For a few years, the Data Officer has been in charge of manually refreshing dozens of weekly reports to send to different departments on a Monday morning.
- He needs to collect the data, clean it, adapt it to the template reports, filter them for each manager’s preferences, copy and paste the same dashboard on different spreadsheet files, attach the relevant files to individual emails, and hit send.
- He’s spending so long on the same task every week that he doesn’t double-check the numbers anymore. One day, some wrong values sneak in, and an inflated revenue total makes it to the board meeting. In the urgency of sending those emails out, he sends the UK data to a manager in Hong Kong, causing confusion.
- One day, the marketing team asks the Data Officer to build a new report. However, he has no idea where the marketing data is stored, and spends all morning searching through disjointed spreadsheets.
If your company lacks adequate BI tools, this could be how your data is being handled. So, let’s see how BI tool implementation can help your company.
- The automation of data collection and processing reduces human error and eliminates extensive manual data handling. The data goes through the same set of rules every time and returns solid, trusted results.
- Centralised data models mean that different reports start from the same source. Numbers are therefore consistent and up to date, with the same core view offered to different teams.
- It provides reporting automation and flexibility, allowing for the building of user-friendly dashboards tailored to each department’s needs, from executives to sales or marketing.
- It frees your employees from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on developing data-driven solutions to help your business grow and pioneer innovative ideas brought by the new insights available.
All of these elements come together to foster a thriving data culture, allowing for easier collaboration within and between teams thanks to the common “language” that the BI tool allows them to speak. With unlocked knowledge comes more opportunities; you can use these insights to anticipate trends, optimise your supply chain, improve your customer service and maximise your revenue.
Tool selection
When selecting a BI tool, focus on the desired end state for your business intelligence strategy. It’s not just about where you are now, but where you want to go.
Consider your current state and look at your long-term vision. Your BI tool of choice needs to fit smoothly on your trajectory to support that desired end state:
- As your data volumes and user bases grow, can the tool scale with them, supporting your changing business needs?
- Is it capable of integrating with your current systems, such as databases, cloud platform and Excel files?
- Will the expenses fit the budget? Consider the initial investment, as well as the costs of ongoing licensing, maintenance and support.
- Can it consolidate your data pool and streamline data to ensure data quality and proper data governance?
- Does it support artificial intelligence features to offer more advanced analytics?
- Is it user friendly for both end users and developers? How much training is required? Are skills for this tool readily available in the market or are they niche and expensive?
This list is just a starting point, as each organisation has their own personal targets. However, let’s see how one of the most leading BI tools on the market, Power BI, would answer these questions.
- Power BI is designed to scale with your business, as it leverages Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to manage increasing data quantities and user demands.
- It integrates with a wide range of data sources ensuring flexibility and compatibility with existing systems (e.g. SQL Server, Google BigQuery, various file formats as Excel, CSV, JSON, and online services such as SharePoint or Salesforce)
- Licensing is structured around Fabric capacities and user licences, allowing businesses to choose between different capacities.
- Through Fabric and OneLake, Power BI can offer unified data storage, enhance security, and provide a solid base for a governance framework.
- Power BI empowers users to generate sophisticated reports and analytics through advanced features such as natural language query and AI-driven insights (supported by Copilot, and the range of possibilities is still expanding).
- The intuitive interface makes it accessible for both technical and non-technical users, minimising the learning curve and promoting widespread adoption across the organisation. Its similarity to Excel logic will feel familiar to the majority of users.
Much of the same can be said for Tableau, where the economy of scale can make licensing pricing incredibly competitive. While there are a wide range of BI tools on the market, many with niche visualisation approaches, there are benefits to adopting a market-leading tool like Power BI or Tableau, such as scalability, online community knowledge sharing, and the availability of existing skill sets on the market. Consider your business goals in the first instance and remember that, while the tool you choose is important, how you implement it is what will ultimately make or break your BI strategy.
Implementation lifecycle
The implementation lifecycle involves several key phases designed to ensure a smooth and successful deployment.
- Start by identifying the key stakeholders – such as executives, analysts, department managers – and determine their specific needs and objectives.
- Define the primary use cases – such as sales analysis, customer insights or financial reporting – and clearly outline the desired end state you want your BI tool to help you achieve. Identify your key performance indicators (KPIs), and any other metrics that will help you to measure success.
- Learn your audience’s language and build your BI tool with this in mind, allowing the end state to evolve with the business itself.
- Bring your key stakeholders on the implementation journey with you. Especially when working with a third party, if your target audience sees nothing of the journey from initial requirements to launch, it’s likely that something will be missing. Frequent project updates and reviews with stakeholders are key to ensuring success and maintaining adoption rates.
- Customise the tool spaces according to your company’s security and governance structure, and develop your projects after properly collecting project scopes, business requirements and objectives.
- Once you’ve developed your BI solution, it’s on to the testing and validation phase. Stress test your BI tool with different data loads and usage scenarios to make sure the tool does the job smoothly, that all functions and visualisations work correctly, and that the performance standards are met. You want a functional test group to give you feedback so you can fine tune the project to fix any problems before end users receive the production product.
Deployment phase: Your ‘first impression’ chance
Once testing is done, it’s time for deployment. You want to avoid a hard launch; by starting with a smaller group of end users, you can take feedback on board to optimise the system before the full-scale deployment.
- Introducing a new BI tool comes with challenges that must be addressed. For example, user resistance is common, especially if coming from a legacy project (e.g. manual Excel-based pivots vs centralised Power BI reports).
- Don’t impose the BI implementation with a top-down approach. Instead, guide your audience through this phase using a clear communication plan. Rather than technical lingo, make sure to inform the entire organisation about the benefits and positive changes that the new tool will bring.
- Ensure that your users feel confident by providing training, tutorials and support. Pick champions; those enthusiastic users who can become your advocates and help to engage the most resistant peers.
- Winning your audience over is the key to ensuring that those new reports will be widely used and accepted. Be open to user feedback and be ready for new requirements; these are great signs that your implementation is a success.
Setting high-level governance
Once you’ve deployed your BI tool, it’s important to place your data within a solid governance framework that ensures effective, secure and compliant use throughout your organisation. The goal is to provide the right people with access to the right data while avoiding unnecessary barriers that could frustrate users and slow down adoption. You don’t want your shiny new tool to be collecting dust after all that work!
But don’t stop there! Your BI journey doesn’t end with deployment; it’s just the beginning.
To keep things on track, implement a comprehensive post-deployment monitoring plan.
- Regularly review how your BI tool is being used. Identify which reports are frequently accessed and which ones aren’t. This will help you to gather valuable feedback on how to improve engagement.
- Update and enhance features to meet evolving business needs.
- Adjust roles and responsibilities within your BI team to better support users. Consider adding running sessions to teach your audience how to confidently approach the new tool.
This ongoing commitment not only helps to keep your users engaged but also ensures that your data culture remains vibrant and effective.
Want to learn more about streamlining your BI processes? Check out our exclusive Business Intelligence with Power BI for valuable insights.
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Watch our new 4-part webinar series, where BI experts Colin Gresham and Megan Livadas share practical tips and strategies to help you take control of your data.
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