5 Ways a BI Competency Center Adds Value To The Business

According to the Gartner Group, a Business Intelligence Competency Center (or BICC) transforms business intelligence, analytics and performance management from siloed efforts driven by the IT organization into business-driven, cross-organization initiatives. Such competency centers enable businesses to better control processes, costs, delivery, standards, security and compliance; treat BI as an ongoing program rather than a series of disconnected projects; drive BI adoption throughout the business; and, manage stakeholder interests at all levels through greater alignment with corporate strategy.

Here are 5 ways a BICC can add value to your business:

Simplifies a Complex Undertaking

One of the biggest problems companies have when it comes to implementing BI is how complex it can be if the implementation is not approached in a strategic manner. Ultimately, a BICC seeks to take something complex and break it down into manageable parts. By implementing a system that works across all platforms, the BICC is able to make the BI implementation process a lot more efficient.

Encourages Communication Between Departments

The success of your business intelligence program hinges on how well departments within your enterprise communicate with one another. Unless there’s a centralized body holding them accountable, communication between departments will likely be slow, making it difficult to implement BI effectively. A BICC, however, solves this problem because it supports a system for increased communication across all departments relative to their analytical and reporting requirements.

Reduces Implementation Costs

While BI can help your organization save money over the long term, implementing it can be costly. A BICC can save you money by consolidating best practice functions, increasing operational efficiency, and utilizing strategic BI deployment planning. Since a BICC can implement business intelligence quickly, and on a large scale, your organization will be able to benefit from it much sooner, which will help you save money over the long term.

Improves User Satisfaction

Since a BICC helps to ensure that sustainable business value is provided, user adoption and satisfaction is generally higher than not having a similar “support organization” for BI in place. Great user satisfaction also stems from the fact that BICCs support business-driven analysis and performance management – addressing the analytical needs of users both directly and consistently across the enterprise.

Standardizes the BI Process

Business Intelligence can be complex, which means that in order to use it the “process” of identifying BI needs and deploying solutions to the business community needs to be standardized. The BICC can identify and leverage any new opportunities to use BI throughout your organization. Without a standardized process, these opportunities may get lost.

In other words, a key purpose of a BICC is to implement a standardized set of practices across an organization, enterprise, or business. It also serves as a body that will successfully educate the organization and all its departments as to how to best implement BI. The ultimate goal is for the process of business intelligence to become more efficient, which will allow the organization to better use the data to make key decisions.