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INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE INNITIATIVES IN A
COLLABORATIVE INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORK
Irina-Bogdana Pugna
The Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Dana-Maria Boldeanu
The Bucharest University of Economic Studies
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the range of approaches toward organizing an
enterprise for widespread adaptation of BI technologies, in order to leverage the
implementation of Business Intelligence (BI) enterprise-wide. Within a literature-derived
action research framework, the study suggests why a centralized BI approach and proper BI
governance should be considered as an essential component of all enterprise BI initiatives. It
also highlights issues to be included in any strategic BI initiative agenda: collaboration,
agility and on knowledge management. We propose a framework in which BI and KM
initiatives can be integrated as a stable and effective solution for a better acknowledgement
and use of all the activities and processes that lead to a most effective “intelligence”
management at organizational level.
KEY WORDS: Business Intelligence (BI), Business Intelligence Excellence Center (BIEC),
Knowledge Management (KM), governance, collaborative technologies
INTRODUCTION
Big data are being added to corporate databases and Internet each day so that effective
and efficient knowledge discovery and its management has become imperative and
require the existence and use of specific advanced tools for multidimensional analysis,
performance equipment and qualified personal for interpreting the results. Thus,
organizations are determined to develop advanced systems to leverage their
knowledge and information for intelligent decision making and competitive
advantage. The usage of specific systems include diverse technologies ranging from
enterprise applications and internal organizational social media applications to cloud
computing, from social computing tools and web analytics, to advanced intelligent
systems.
The new competitive edge in business is quickly forming to be the adaption of
business intelligence into every face of decision making within an organization. Even
in those companies which do not push BI as a competitive advantage, the importance
of managing information is fully recognized - 95% of organizations in a Forbes
survey recognize that information management is critical to business success (Forbes,
2010). Thus, BI is considered to be a strategic technology. What seems to be missing
it’s a strategic vision to coordinate all the BI initiatives enterprise-wide and harmonize
them in supporting the goal of improving the process of making decisions at all levels
in the organization.
After many years of study and identification of the concepts and definitions of BI,
Dave Wells was going on the same paths as David Loshin who was integrating
business analytics into BI re-stating and updating the BI definition as ”an
organization’s capability to think, analyze, plan, reason, learn and solve problems to
accomplish specific creative and productive goals”(Peko, 2009).
At various phases of its lifecycle, BI relates with different business cases. In a first
phase, BI was used for specific purposes, and in many cases benefits were intangible.
Later, as technology gained in maturity, most business cases were tactical in nature,
focusing on addressing specific business problems. Many BI initiatives were
developed to support the goals of individual business units or departments and
eventually provide a short term return on their investments. As these BI silos begin to
develop within the enterprise, the long term value of the BI investments begin to
decrease due to issues such as data quality, data availability and application
redundancy.
In order to avoid that, many companies go through a third wave of BI business case:
BI optimization, as a way to align BI investments with the overarching corporate
strategy. They struggle to find the optimum solution that is applicable to their
industry, size, culture and organizational culture. Therefore a comprehensive BI
strategy must take into account different needs of various stakeholders and to provide
services within a common understanding of the level of ambition the organization
chooses to have.
Prashant Pant (Pant, 2009) advanced the idea that it is imperative to building an
effective and efficient BI strategy that aligns with an enterprise goals, improves
knowledge management, advances business by making the best use of information,
enables BI penetration into the business processes and helps enterprise with strategic,
tactical, and operational decision making.
According to Albescu (Albescu et al., 2008), integrating Business Intelligence and
Knowledge Management in order to respond to the challenges the modern enterprise
has to deal with represents not only a „new trend” in IT, but a necessity.
Cheng (Cheng, 2011) pointed out that as business competition intensifies and the
market environment becomes increasingly complex, more and more enterprises learn
to make use of KM and BI in order to improve corporate decision-making capacity
and efficiency. In this sense it is recommended for the big corporations to effectively
integrated BI and KM strategies in order to give full functionality to their
complementary functions.
For ongoing relevance and responsibility in actions, real implementation of a
company’s BI solutions there is the need for accurate governance in order to
incorporate the guiding principles, decision-making concerns and oversight
procedures to ensure strong data governance.
BI governance “manage” at the organizational level a structure developed around the
idea of a competency center, an entity which brings together business and IT, a whole
combined into what is called Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC).
Nowadays, in many corporations exists certain types of informal BICC. Each business
unit has a team that works with the central IT unit to link the BI applications to the
central data architecture in order to ensure the success of business unit applications
while following the central IT guidelines.
Successful BI governance can be translated into an efficient BICC which serves to
help collaboration between team members, define best practices for decision analytics
in order to improve business results.
The structure of the paper is as follows. The first chapter deals with the research
methodology of the paper, carried out as literature study and action-oriented research.
The second Chapter presents Business Intelligence governance, as a way of
optimizing the process of making decisions and Business Intelligence Competency
Center as a mechanism for leveraging the BI investment and integration of essential
BI competences and skills. The third Chapter is divided into three subchapters. In the
first one we discuss the role of collaborative technologies and their impact on BI and
KM activities. The second subchapter seeks to address a framework proposal (BICE)
in which these activities can be integrated, and the last one explores the issues of
Business Intelligence Excellence Center Performance and benefits as a whole. In the
last Chapter, Discussions and conclusions, we intend to provide some final remarks
about BICC, advantages of BI – KM integration in a centralized intelligence unit,
some limitations of the paper and future research actions.
1. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The paper brings into the viewers’ attention the new advancements that BI brings in
order to streamline the business processes, enable knowledge management policies
and integrate them with BI strategies to support strategic decision-makers and. The
work is carried out both as literature review and action-oriented research.
We intend to contribute to the growing body of knowledge in the domain of business
intelligence as business enabler and support. As science often progresses from a
practical knowledge of how to do something, to a deeper knowledge of why this
something works the way it does, our contribution draws on investigating some of the
best practices regarding the process of BI optimizations.
The research is founded on secondary data, that was available in different studies
published in the last years regarding the challenges companies have to face and the
best solutions they have found in implementing a BI strategy. Lately, in that domain,
new knowledge and insight appears more and more from such practical experiences
and less from academic research. Technologies have reached a high level of maturity
and the focus is now on business and human issues. As there are no universal
solutions or recipes that can be used when a company wants to increase its
“intelligence degree” and to improve the use of intelligence in achieving all its goals,
that unusual approach from procedural knowledge (know how) to declarative
knowledge (know what/ about) seems to be more appropriate.
The present research contributes to empirical domain of knowledge by explaining
how company’s intelligence can benefit from a strategic vision of business
intelligence. The imperative concept of BI governance will be analyzed in that
context. We will raise issues that, in our opinion, must be an important part of the BI
strategy – collaborative environment, agility through analytics and focus on
knowledge management. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework in which
KM and BI strategies could be integrated, in order to coordinate and centralize all
organizational efforts through a most effective management of information and
knowledge, as a mean to enable “intelligence” use to reach its full potential.
2. BI GOVERNANCE - OPTIMIZING THE PROCESS OF MAKING
DECISIONS
Today in many companies, we can still find different fragmented BI solutions and
initiatives, with little coordination between departments and business units. That lack
of governance leads to a decentralized and chaotic BI environment with rising costs
and ambiguous value. Beside fragmentation, there is no common business
terminology, weak collaboration and shared decision making, multiple versions of the
truth.
The solution for this problem is to implement a strong governance process. BI
governance refers to the structures and processes that are in place to manage, guide
and support BI strategies. In effect, governance functions will chart the direction of BI
– related initiatives and steer the BI program towards its objectives. Once the
governance framework model is enforced and stakeholders are held accountable, user
needs can be addressed and implemented based on the greatest value to the business.
According to Johnson, the idea of centralizing a function in an organization usually
centers around a focus on coordination, standardization and consolidation of
equipment, processes, technology and customer and vendor management and enables
a shared vision and reduces redundancies found in individual business units (Johnson,
2011).
A centralized BI unit houses all the technical and managerial expertise needed to
perform BI functions within the enterprise. Business units become the BI unit’s clients
and the BI unit becomes the central hub for all intelligence activity. That BI unit is
called Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) or Business Intelligence
Center of Excellence.
But should Business intelligence be centralized? Is there a real need for a centralized
unit that coordinates the management information? The answer is yes, as there is more
to BI than simply employing technology. There is a need for a comprehensive,
strategic approach to BI that addresses technology as well as people, processes and
organizational culture. A lack of strategy will result in inconsistent BI deployments,
difficulties in managing, implementing and supporting BI initiatives that span
multiple departments, and a lack of standardization of methodologies, processes, tools
and technologies as well as insufficient BI skills.
Standardization especially is an important function that a centralized business unit can
provide. Standardization is one of the best sources of competitive intelligence
available (Purcell, 2007). It is very difficult to create and enforce standards without a
centralized body to govern them. Experience has shown that BI standardization
without implementing a BICC is destined to be a short-term solution that ends with
higher costs, frustration for end users, and decreased trust-making it harder than ever
to implement a successful strategy (Business Objects Report, 2009).
One recent study showed that 75% of CIO’s wanted to eliminate silos of information
and were seeking to develop a BI strategy (Davenport, 2010). Howard Dresner,
former Gartner analyst and leading BI thought leader stresses the importance of
centralizing BI: “So much BI is implemented at a departmental level or by IT as ‘self-
service’ reporting. One approach that can help is the establishment of a competency
center or center of excellence to establish and promote uniform best practices for BI
within an organization” (Computer Business Review, 2007)
According to a Leadership White paper from Oracle (Oracle, 2012) a BICC is an
organizational entity that groups interrelated skills, experience, and domain expertise
to promote and deliver BI through a consistent set of skills, standards and best
practices. BICC includes developing a BI strategy, implementing BI tools and
applications and then training and supporting the business users who rely on them
(Rouse, 2010). This more holistic approach to business intelligence encompasses
more than just the technology – it is a part of an overall information strategy.
BICC are an essential step towards more strategic use of information throughout in
the organization (Elliot, 2011).
Figure 1. BICC – Align BI strategies with the organization goals
(Source: adapted after Elliot, 2011:4)
According to Baars (Baars et al., 2009) implementing a BICC as an organizational
entity naturally involves the definition of rules and responsibilities – the establishment
of a central BICC fosters regulation.
Departmental BI
Multiple BI tools
Enterprise BI
Standard platform and
shared services
Strategic BI
Integrated BI strategy
to execution
In the last years big corporations from European pharmaceutical area, telecom area,
banks, oil and gas companies and US insurance companies have reacted positively for
their business by establishing specialized units for running and supporting BI
solutions – central BI “centres of competence” (BICCs). According to (Baars et al.,
2009), (Miller, 2006) and (Unger et al., 2008) BICCs act as linking pins between the
user side and the infrastructure provision.
A model of BICC where it can be noticed the integration of essential BI competences
and skills can be seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Integration of essential BI competences and skills – BICC model
(Source: Elliot adapted after Gartner, 2011:15)
The Business Intelligence Competency Center can be seen from the perspective of the
BI governance in “managing” at the organizational level a structure developed around
the idea of an entity which brings together people, processes, technologies – business
and IT.
Incisive Analytics considers Data Governance to be a crucial element of any BI
solution. BI depends on using data that is credible, authoritative and valuable to an
organization. This means that governance is a crucial element of any (BI) strategy. A
successful BI strategy empowers business users with better tools in order to increase
productivity and provide a more cost effective use of BI.
According to a Gartner survey (McMurchy, 2008), the most important drivers for
investing in BI are related to providing faster response to user’s need for data,
decreasing costs and enhancing the user’s methods for sharing and self-service.
In the last years, as Mircea (Mircea et al., 2011) already highlighted, Cloud
Computing represents one of the significant trends in the development of provision,
management and security of IT within an organization
In situations of economic and financial crises as we have experienced in the last years,
technologies like Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence (BI) are becoming
increasingly important in gaining advantages over implementing expensive and
complex software on-site. Cloud computing makes sense to BI solutions only if it
offers benefits to customers as (West, 2009):
Lower costs
Scalable provisions of resources
On demand performance improvements
Automated uploads and real-time access
Fast deployment
Easy maintenance
Safeguard the privacy of organization information
Ouf (Ouf et al., 2011) considered that BI in the cloud has been developed in order to
enhance the efficiency and productivity of business intelligence and increase the
performance of BI software.
Cloud is becoming part of the BI solutions from big corporations. As Wells was
properly mentioning since 2009, when business analytics, agile development methods,
collaboration technology, social media, mash-ups, text analytics, data mining and
predictive analytics converge, they will change the nature of business information and
push business management to new horizons (Wells, 2009).
Organizations which that have already embraced the Cloud Computing opportunities
for BI activities noticed benefits and expressed them into a survey (BI Leadership
Forum, 2011) by ranking the most important reasoning for choosing this facility:
- speed of deployment (30%)
- reduced maintenance (30%)
- flexibility (19%)
- cost (11%)
- performance (5%).
3. BI – KM GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
EXCELLENCE CENTER
A very important issue in establishing a coherent strategy for information and
knowledge management is, in our opinion, the impact of Business Intelligence
centralization and optimization on knowledge management policies. One of the most
important qualitative objectives of a BICC is to enable knowledge sharing. In fact, we
can look at the BICC as a result of a management information strategy and that has to
be correlated with the knowledge management strategy of the organization. Any
strategic objective, even that of improving the decision making process by optimizing
BI, is a result of the knowledge management strategy. We think that aspect is not
emphasized enough - either by researchers or by practitioners. It supposes a long-
term vision, and it should be approached consequently. BICC should offer the
framework for a collaborative environment, in which different types of information
users and providers share not only information, but also knowledge. Not taking
advantage of that could be a huge loss for the organizations. Even if there are separate
initiatives related to knowledge gathering and sharing in most of the BICC agenda’s
(like establishing and maintaining a corporate knowledge base) a more holistic
approach – in terms of people, processes, governance is required. Of course, the way
to do that depends in the first place on the organizational culture and attitude to
knowledge – if there is a knowledge management strategy in place, an appropriate
infrastructure to share knowledge or knowledge related objectives and
responsibilities. In our opinion, one feasible approach could be enforcing strong KM-
BI governance, on the existing BI governance for the Business Intelligence
Competency Center.
From a technical perspective, such integration can be facilitated by new collaborative
technologies, which are transforming on a continuous basis the work environment and
sustain all the activities related to information and knowledge management.
3.1. From insight to action in a collaborative environment
When we judge the success or failure of any BI initiative, one of the main measures
that we use is the effect of associated decisions on performance, effect that should be
in line with the objectives and strategic plans for the organization.
Having the right information is only one component in decision–making; the benefits
come from implementing that decision, not from the decision-making process itself.
Too often what is missing from BI is transformation of insight into action.
Information and analysis must be actionable.
Figure 3. BI value chain in a collaborative environment
Collaboration greatly improves the speed at which decisions are made and the quality
of those decisions. People collaborate during the decision making process – when they
analyze data, alternatives, expected results.
Collaboration becomes more important each day for a variety of reasons. The nature
of work itself is constantly changing, different kinds of jobs requiring much closer
coordination and interaction among the parties involved in producing a service or a
product. The major part of labor force tends to be composed of jobs where interaction
is the primary value-added activity. The growth of professional work, the changing
Data
Information
Knowledge
Action
Value
Collect
Analyze
Deci
Act
Review
Collaborate
Collaborate
Collaborate
organization and scope of the companies, the emphasis on innovation – all
determining continuous changes in culture of work and of organizations – are factors
that empower constantly the need for collaboration.
Business benefits of collaboration and teamwork are largely recognized, and the
general belief that the more a company is “collaborative”, the more successful it will
be strengthens the role of collaboration within and among companies.
Figure 4. Collaboration and performance
Collaboration requires a supportive culture and business processes. The degree in
which that collaboration effectively takes place depends on the organizational culture
of the enterprise – particularly related to its policy regarding knowledge sharing.
Developing a culture of collaboration and sharing among employees is a key factor
for the success of any Knowledge Management initiative.
Although the communication is still done mostly using traditional channels – phone
calls, meetings and email – there is a growing interest in collaborative tools, as the
world of social media is moving from the consumer world to the corporate office. At
Gartner Business Intelligence Summit that took place in London in February 2012,
according to Gartner Inc. one of the predictions was that “by 2013, 15% of BI
deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software to produce better
analytics-based decision-making environments so they can operate more efficiently
(Finley, 2011).
Communication and collaborative technologies, semantics are evolving and
implemented very fast by companies. E-mail and instant messaging, Social
networking, Wikis, Virtual words, Internet – based collaboration environments
become familiar tools for any organization that shares the values of a knowledge
culture or creative culture. The shift from a knowledge repository approach in KM to
a conversational collaborative foundation - from organizational networks to
knowledge networks – was possible due to the massive increase of communication
technologies (Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 – Semantic web).
COLLABORATION
QUALITY
COMPANY
PERFORMANCE
Collaboration capability
Open Culture
Decentralized structure
Breadth of collaboration
Collaboration technology
Use of collaborative
technology for strategic
planning
Use of collaborative
technology for
The concept of collaborative intelligence, defined by Lee (Lee et al., 2007) as being
“…the measure of the collaborative ability of an entity or a group”, was situated in a
framework in which is sustained by three pillars: the collaborative technology
environment, intellectual cooperation and rally the area of knowledge. Developing a
culture of collaboration and sharing among people – the primary source, but also the
beneficiaries of knowledge – is recognized as being one of the key factors in KM.
In addition to the elements presented above an important part in a strong collaborative
environment is provided by the artificial intelligence technologies. According to
Cozgarea (Cozgarea et al., 2008), "artificial intelligence could become a base alternative"
for solving issues which can occur within business processes, "which require complex
mathematic calculations or complex optimization".
In our opinion, collaborative environments can be considered as frameworks in which
business intelligence and knowledge management activities are naturally melted in the
process of achieving a higher degree of organizational actionable intelligence.
3.2. Business Intelligence Excellence Center - framework proposal for
integrating Business Intelligence and Knowledge management at organizational
level
We believe that a centralized Business Intelligence unit, which coordinates all the
technical and managerial expertise needed to perform BI functions, can have a more
flexible structure with the use of collaborative technologies. The most known models
of such a center – real BICC, virtual BICC – can be “reshaped” in this context.
In the same time, on the existing structure of the BICC, a new model can be
developed, in a larger perspective - not only to centralize all BI initiatives, but also to
relate them with KM activities in order to integrate all organizational efforts related to
information and knowledge management.
We propose a new framework, developed on the existing BICC unit and based on
communication and collaborative technologies, in which BI and KM can be
integrated.
We will call this framework Business Intelligence Excellence Center – as we consider
it as developed from the BICC (called also Business Intelligence Center of
Excellence) and its main objective being to offer a stable and effective solution for a
better acknowledgment and use of all the activities and processes that lead to a most
effective “intelligence” management at organizational level.
Figure 5. Business Intelligence Excellence Center – framework
Business, people and IT are brought together in a coherent structure, aligned with
organizational strategy. Both information and knowledge flows, empowered by a
strong collaborative environment, are shared and better serve to deliver actionable
intelligence.
3.3. Business Intelligence Excellence Center Performance
A comprehensive Business Intelligence strategy must take into account different
needs of various stakeholders and to provide services within a common understanding
of the level of ambition the organization chooses to have. In the absence of such a
common understanding, optimizing BI can have different meanings and, therefore,
different expectations across the organization.
Table 1. Each level of ambition has its own issues and expected benefits
EFFICIENCY
DOING CURRENT
THINGS RIGHT
EFFECTIVENESS
DOING THE RIGHT
THING
TRANSFORMATION
ENABLING NEW
THINGS
Focus
Improving a current
situation that is often
characterized by
fragmentation of
Design better processes
New processes
New ways of
New business models
Knowledge discovery
Knowledge creation
New role of KM strategy
information and
multiple disparate tools
in use
working
New insights
as “precursor “of
organization strategy
Benefits
quantification
Time savings in
developing reports
Reduced number of
toolsets
Reduced
maintenance/
integration costs
Improved customer
retention
Increased
marketing or selling
effectiveness
Reduced
receivables
Faster time to
market
Reduced inventory
Increased market
share
Improved strategic
position
Increased “IQ” of
the organization
It is important to agree on the level of ambition but also to consider these levels as
being equal – even if a higher level cannot be reached in the absence of benefits of the
other levels (transformation cannot be achieved in an inefficient environment, for
example).
Like any other project, the program of creating a centralized Business Intelligence
unit must have a measurement system. A consistent evaluation system is needed to
ensure that everyone judges the Business Intelligence Excellence Center on the same
basis. As BIEC is a process in a continuous evolution and not just a project, it’s
important to make a formal review of it on a regular basis. The strategy map and
balance scorecard should represent a complete program of action.
Strategic goals must be clearly stated and communicated. Balance scorecards will
measure its performance and proper action plans will be put in place.
For BIEC there are mainly two types of measures to consider. Business measures,
such as customer satisfaction, analysis and decision making time – target issues that
are the main motivation for centralizing BI. Measuring them over time can reveal the
degree of impact that results from the adoption of best practices. The second type of
measures focuses on the operation of BIEC itself, evaluating the responsiveness and
quality provided to its users.
A Business Intelligence Excellence center is an entity that brings together Business
and IT and provides a visible, structured approach to analysis and fact-based decision
support. One of the expected results of that strategic initiative is gaining competitive
advantage though deep performance insight, by aligning perspectives and by allowing
people to spend less time chasing and rationalizing and more time solving problems.
Also, it can improve compliance by enabling the organization to align with
regulations and simplify documentation. It can enable a more agile and confident
organization. The process itself of centralizing the enterprise BI strategy implies
developing a cross functional plan that includes effective communication between
business groups and IT requires a mechanism for managing enterprise wide customer
information and collaboration.
On each level of ambition the Business Intelligence Excellence Center has certain
benefits:
Table 3. BICC benefits at different levels of ambition
LEVEL OF AMBITION
BENEFITS
Efficiency
Control costs
Consolidate infrastructure
Standardize the IT infrastructure
Unify business data
Establish an enterprise-wide framework
Centralize tool support
Effectiveness
Create and share knowledge
Centralize performance management
Strengthen compliance
Transformational
Manage information to gain competitive
advantage
Create and share knowledge through the value
chain
BIEC is an agent of business transformation – it brings new ways of making decisions
and running business processes. With the introduction and development of a
successful BIEC, the focus shifts from a reactive approach to a proactive, results-
oriented approach. All the organizations that implemented a BIEC report various
benefits. In a survey conducted by BetterManagement.com in 2010 organizations with
a BIEC cited as significant benefits: increased usage of BI (74%), increased business
user satisfaction (48%), better understanding of the value of BI (45%), increased
decision making speed (45%), decreased staff and software costs (25%). At the end
all are summarized in a most effective “intelligence” management at organizational
level, an essential ingredient for success.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Managing information and knowledge, developing a knowledge culture both at the
organizational and global levels are main issues of the contemporary society. As a
general trend, organizational and human issues become more important today than the
technical issues that received the most attention in the past.
Establishing Business Intelligence governance at the organizational level, in order to
create an environment in which people, processes, software collaborate in a
standardized manner and use information in a coordinate way to achieve business
goals represents an organizational initiative that seeks to optimize the process of
making decisions.
A good BI requires a good team that works in an appropriate structure and strong
governance framework. In our opinion, the dominant theme in BI is communication.
As organization and users speak different language, an interpreter which understands
their needs and can make sense of them in terms of the organization is needed.
Business Intelligence Competency Center can play that role.
The BICC offers a mechanism in which best practices and standards are converted
into organizational efficiency, effectiveness and competitive advantage. As a central
structure for defining, executing and supporting the BI strategy it ensures the
robustness and reliability of the information infrastructure, and enables different
groups of information consumers to use information in a coordinated way to achieve
business goals.
Although the importance of a strategic vision of BI is recognized by all the executives
and there are a lot of BICC implementations in companies around the world, with
measurable performances translated in financial terms, there are still many
organizations (in a Gartner report in 2011 27% of the companies) that still have no
plans for a coherent information management infrastructure. In the cited study is
claimed that “Through 2015, more than 35% of top 5,000 global companies will fail
to adapt to significant changes in their business and markets due to underinvestment
in their information intelligence infrastructure and analytic competencies”.
It’s important to consider BICC as being a process of which components – people,
processes, software, standards are evolving continuously - and not just a project. That
requires full time project management and also permanent alignment to it’s the
ultimate goal: improving and serving the business. In short, it's not “do it, you're
done”. There's a lot of ongoing evolution.
Although the BICC is an excellent forum for addressing many tactical issues
efficiently and effectively, it is important not to lose sight of the strategic value of a
BICC. The most valuable BICC implementations, by design, balance both the tactical
needs of the present with a strategy and vision of the future. Focusing on strategy
instead of solely on performance will help an organization understand the long – term
value and importance of the decisions being made today. It will require a long-term
vision and understanding of both the business and technical implications of the
decisions.
In our opinion, it’s very important not to lose agility due to the centralization of BI.
The structure of the BICC should be flexible enough to allow quick and effective
responses to unpredictable changes. BI must be agile, even if in a more structured
framework. The “new concept” on the BI market (Gartner BI Summit 2012) is the
concept of Business Analytics with its BAT – Business Analytics Team so that it
supersedes the BICC – so BI has to be lots of different things. Important is to add
every time something new to its services or to improve them without altering none of
its old capabilities.
A very important issue in establishing a coherent strategy for BI is, in our opinion, the
impact on knowledge management policies, as one of the most important qualitative
objectives of a BICC is to enable knowledge sharing. Trends toward business
networking encouraged by business collaborations require knowledge sharing both at
the organizational and inter-organizational levels.
If we consider the BICC as a result of a management information strategy that has to
be correlated with the knowledge management strategy of the organization, we can
advance the idea of creating strong KM-BI governance on the existing BI structure.
Knowledge in business settings requires both horizontal and vertical integration to
business logic and continuous market updates.
We proposed in this paper a framework in which BI and KM can be easily integrated
if there is strong governance in place. Of course, there can be developed different
models for such frameworks. After all, there is an organizational choice. “How” such
a structure – which we have called Business Intelligence Excellence Center, but can
receive any other name – is thought and implemented depends on the existing BI
governance and also, on the different aspects related to the organizational culture and
attitude to knowledge.
The research can be further developed in order to offer different models, frameworks
and ways of actions, more detailed “architectures” for such integration. Once
organizations will involve themselves in that kind of project, both best practices, as
learned lessons will be available.
We are aware of the fact that, for many organizations, even the idea of BI governance
is new or not sufficiently explored. And the existence of a BICC only – if – a future
project.
However, we consider that it is important to acknowledge the advantages of BI –KM
integration in a centralized intelligence unit- a central hub for all intelligence activity.
A collaborative environment is one in which different types of information users share
not only information, but also knowledge and the necessity of an integrated BI – KM
governance at organizational level. The real challenge businesses have to deal is how
to organize their resources to best enable intelligence use to reach its full potential.
And a strong BI–KM governance can be the organization’s answer in which best
responses to this challenge can rise.
Business Intelligence evolves with the new requirements and expectations of business.
In the same time, businesses grow as new technologies, initiatives and models of
gathering and using intelligence are implemented in organizations. People gain new
skills and become more and more involved in the management of “intelligence” at
organizational level. Knowledge management – which is continuously rediscovered
and reformed, in terms of new approaches, strategies, methods and even technologies
- is changing the way businesses are managed, creating the premises for evolving to
another stage of organizational culture.
Although there is no universal recipe for progress, there are many initiatives,
experiences, from which we can learn but also anticipate new insights. The interest in
efficient, effective and transformational management of information, knowledge and -
why not? - intelligence will never be lost, as there resides the most flavorful
ingredient in the recipe for success.
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