Selecting business intelligence software and planning a rollout is a significant undertaking. The real work should begin well before you start selecting software. You must comprehensively assess your entire organization’s information needs, wants and data workflows. 

Building a Strategic Vision Roadmap 

We call these planning sessions Strategic Vision Roadmaps (SVR). InterWorks has a well-developed, fixed-cost service to help companies conduct these assessments and develop plans. 

You must start the process by meeting with senior executives whose insights and guidance are invaluable. Educate them about what you are undertaking and why. You should solicit an executive-level sponsor and get an endorsement from your company’s CEO or COO. This demonstrates that the project has high visibility and an executive mandate. 

Evaluate your technical team. Do they have current knowledge of the business intelligence software landscape? Do they have hands-on experience working with modern analytics software? Consider retaining consulting experts who do, as they can to keep you from early (costly) missteps.  

A Strategic Vision Roadmap aims to capture information by workgroup. Typically, this requires at least 8 to 12 meetings with different teams. We recommend keeping each session to no more than 90 minutes and no more than three or four participants, plus the project team responsible for the software rollout. Your deployment team may include a consulting partner with technical knowledge your team lacks and project management experience in the domain. 

Scheduling the Meetings 

Conducting the necessary information capture typically requires a week. However, a well-organized meeting plan can often be completed in two to three days. If you are efficient and disciplined, you can conduct six to eight daily meetings until you complete all the interviews. 

Who Should Attend? 

Invite teams that perform a business process. Software, process workflows, and the people support each process. The person responsible for the process must be there, along with two or three essential team contributors with detailed knowledge of the workflow. They should be prepared to explain what they do, why and for whom. 

They should bring examples of current reports used, challenges, and a wish list of needs and desires. Encourage them to be a little “pie-in-the-sky” with their wish list plans.  

Plan on four to six weeks’ notice so that the business managers attending can block their calendar for preparation and meeting time. 

How Long Should Each Meeting Last? 

Limit meeting length to 90 minutes for each session. That duration keeps everyone fresh and focused. Schedule more sessions with the team to cover their needs and develop goals if necessary. 

Deliverables from the Meetings 

Document the information collected in an organized structure at the end of the meeting phase.  

We have found many clients do not have the time to prepare and lead these sessions. We developed a fixed-cost service to help clients perform the meetings, gather information, recommend software and create an implementation plan. 

We find it best to present findings in slide deck form that covers every critical aspect of the project: 

1. Team selection 
2. Software selection 
3. Development sprints (order, timing) 
4. Training plans (technical staff, non-technical staff, managers, executives) 
5. Security protocols 
6. Governance (data lineage, data provenance, data catalog, metadata) 
7. Review of KPIs currently used 
8. Metadata KPIs 
9. Project budget 
10. Financial justification 

We’ve completed many of these over the past decade and know how to effectively capture, distill and present the accumulated information.  

Tomorrow’s post will explore the definitions and nuances of data governance, metadata, and the different personas you must consider.