BI Projects Pose Big Hurdles for Companies

Computerworld - PALM DESERT, CALIF. -- Companies can use business intelligence tools to make big improvements in their operations, but numerous technical, cultural and internal-process challenges must be overcome first, according to IT managers at Computerworld's Business Intelligence Perspectives Conference here last week.
The people and process issues can be even more daunting than the technical ones, said Bubba Tyler, CIO at Quaker Chemical Corp. in Conshohocken, Pa. For the past 10 years, Quaker Chemical has used software from SAS Institute Inc. to do data analysis and reporting. But the project wasn't a simple matter of installing the applications and giving workers access to them, he noted.
"It was a nine- to 10-year process and a heck of a big investment for a company of our size," said Tyler, who spoke at the conference. He noted that the chemical company moved ahead slowly and had to continually re-examine the BI model it was putting in place.
The addition of the SAS 8 software also required Quaker Chemical to collaborate and share information on a global basis, prompting it to tie employees' pay to their level of cooperation on the project.
In addition, the company had to create a common business intelligence language -- a time-consuming task -- and speed up the collection of data, Tyler said. It also developed a homegrown query tool to make SAS 8 palatable for widespread use, although Tyler has said he might replace that with a set of simplified user interfaces built into a SAS 9 upgrade released last spring .
During a user roundtable discussion, Andy George, senior vice president of technology at ProfitLine Inc. in San Diego, recommended that companies phase in their BI implementations.
ProfitLine, which manages billing and other administrative functions for telecommunications companies, uses Business Objects SA's WebIntelligence software to analyze and audit customer bills. George said that during ProfitLine's rollout, ensuring the validity of data was a big challenge because so many people were accessing information and inadvertently corrupting it. That prompted the company to put a "data czar" in charge of maintaining the integrity of data, he said.
Information security was a major issue for the municipal government of Falls Church, Va., said panelist Shirley Hughes, the city's chief financial officer and general manager. When Falls Church moved from 2,200 separate spreadsheets to a more consolidated business intelligence system, it required all employees to read and sign a document that explained proper procedures, such as not sharing passwords. In addition, access to the BI system is "tightly controlled," Hughes said.
Proper maintenance of data being used in BI applications is so crucial that companies should seek legal advice about what can and can't be stored on a long-term basis, said Al Brill, senior managing director of technology services at Kroll OnTrack Inc.
The Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company uses homegrown analytical systems to help collect and present data to lawyers for use in court. But Brill warned of "vampire" data that could linger in a system for years and then "come back to bite you in the neck." As an example, Brill cited the possibility that old e-mail messages could be subpoenaed during litigation.
End-user access to BI systems has to be monitored regularly and kept current, Brill added, noting that workers who change jobs within a company might retain the ability to access data they should no longer be able to see.
Brill described business intelligence as potentially the most important technology investment that a company can make. "It deserves the kind of planning and thinking that a project that potentially means life and death for a company should have," he said. "I don't think there are any recipes for success, but there are a heck of a lot for failure."

Al Brill of Kroll OnTrack Inc. Image Credit: Ned Redway

Read more about business intelligence in Computerworld's Business Intelligence Knowledge Center.