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Business-intelligence software may be ready for the people, but the people aren't always ready for it.
The problem is that dashboard democracy often requires middle managers -- for whom information is power -- to give up some control.
"Historically, our midlevel managers had total control over the green-bar reports that showed up on their desks," says Deb Masdea, director of business knowledge services at The Scotts Co.
But when new dashboards started popping up on desktops throughout the company, that data monopoly vanished. "Suddenly, that manager's boss, and some of his employees, had instant access to all those reports," she says.
It was a tough sell, and it took time to get those managers to release their grip on the information, but Masdea says two things made the transition successful. "We had to show these managers that by giving up control, they also reduced their workload because they no longer had total responsibility for managing all that data," she says.
The other strategy was to sell the system from the business rather than technical side of the house. "We had analysts - superusers from the manager's own business units - do the training," says Masdea. "These were not techie types, so they could talk to the managers in their own language and clearly show them the business benefits of the system."
At real estate firm CB Richard Ellis, senior project manager Sue Willess used similar approaches to make sure a new PeopleSoft scorecard system didn't fall by the wayside. Plus, she shrewdly started deployment with office managers who she knew would be most resistant to change. "Our experience is that it is easy for people to criticize the thing they know the least about," says Willess. "But these potential detractors will also be your biggest supporters if you can get them on board early."
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