Customer Reviews

Business Intelligence Competency Centers: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive Advantage (Wiley and SAS Business Series)

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When I think of "business intelligence", I tend to envision the gathering of competitive information. But it's really much, much more than that. The book Business Intelligence Competency Centers: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive Advantage by Gloria J. Miller, Dagmar Brautigam, and Stefanie V. Gerlach explores the subject and goes into what it takes to build a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) at work...

Contents: Introduction; Business Intelligence in the Organization; Primary Functions of the Business Intelligence Competency Center; Planning a Business Intelligence Competency Center - Using the Information Evolution Model; Human Capital; Knowledge Processes; Culture; Infrastructure; Setting Up and Ensuring Ongoing Support; Cases from the Field; Ten Recommendations for a Highly Effective Business Intelligence Competency Center; List of Abbreviations; Additional Roles; Index

This book is authored by SAS employees, and the organization figures prominently in many of the examples and case studies. Even so, the content doesn't turn into a 200 page advertisement for the company. The significant issue for building a BICC (for me) was the emphasis on coordinating the use of data within the organization. Business intelligence encompasses the use of *all* the information in your company. The data marts that often end up as an IT resource should be the foundation of a BICC area. The goal is to have a single authoritative source for data and answers, and to eliminate the "one-off" areas of siloed information. The book goes into plenty of detail on how to design a BICC, what it takes to run one, and what type of changes a company will need to make to allow it to all work together. There's also a good series of questions at the end by which you can judge your potential options and plans.

This isn't necessarily a "fun" or easy read. It will appeal most to those who are already inclined to want to move down this path. It could well serve as your guidebook to manage the creation of your own BICC. And don't feel that you'll be steered down a specific software path (like SAS). For a book that's sponsored by a software vendor, it's more software-neutral than I expected...

Some interesting ideas mixing the sociological and technical aspects of setting up a BI competency center. A little heavy on the capabilities of selecting a BI vendor, tilting the selection criteria towards SAS. Focused on large organizations - both the organizational structures and the software requirements would be somewhat onerous for a smaller organization.

Providing with analytical support requires much more than acquiring software: is about studying the business, assembling multidisciplinary teams and producing the workflows that will bring order, accountability and performance measures to such support. The book presents a mature vision of the logistics to consider for the management of operations such as designing executive reports, supporting new operations with measurements, or controlling operations through dashboards, yet it is not a guide and examples of such BI results must be sought elsewhere. This book is about the roles and the resources. I suggest all workers and managers of this growing field consider the vision this book communicates while their team is taking form.

We have been running "BICCs" in the late 80s already. It was terms MIS (Management Information Systems) then and the team managing and supporting the technology was merely called MIS support.

20 years later, BI having gone through a number of maturity and adoption cycles and a new term is coined: BICC

The fornality and team approach is well documented though, albeit not a new concept nor science.