Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App [Hardcover]

Cindi Howson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 26, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0071498516 | ISBN-13: 978-0071498517 | Edition: 1

Praise for Successful Business Intelligence

"If you want to be an analytical competitor, you've got to go well beyond business intelligence technology. Cindi Howson has wrapped up the needed advice on technology, organization, strategy, and even culture in a neat package. It's required reading for quantitatively oriented strategists and the technologists who support them." --Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor, Babson College and co-author, Competing on Analytics

"When used strategically, business intelligence can help companies transform their organization to be more agile, more competitive, and more profitable. Successful Business Intelligence offers valuable guidance for companies looking to embark upon their first BI project as well as those hoping to maximize their current deployments." --John Schwarz, CEO, Business Objects

"A thoughtful, clearly written, and carefully researched examination of all facets of business intelligence that your organization needs to know to run its business more intelligently and exploit information to its fullest extent." --Wayne Eckerson, Director, TDWI Research

"Using real-world examples, Cindi Howson shows you how to use business intelligence to improve the performance, and the quality, of your company." --Bill Baker, Distinguished Engineer & GM, Business Intelligence Applications, Microsoft Corporation

"This book outlines the key steps to make BI an integral part of your company's culture and demonstrates how your company can use BI as a competitive differentiator." --Robert VanHees, CFO, Corporate Express

"Given the trend to expand the business analytics user base, organizations are faced with a number of challenges that affect the success rate of these projects. This insightful book provides practical advice on improving that success rate." --Dan Vesset, Vice President, Business Analytics Solution Research, IDC

 

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In today's highly competitive global economy, actionable business intelligence (BI) is crucial to success. Yet while many companies have made substantial investments in BI infrastructure, few employees are taking advantage of the powerful BI tools they have at their fingertips. This is because technology is only part of a truly successful, company-wide BI strategy. Executive support, an analytic culture, and strong business-IT partnerships and collaboration are among the many other facets that make up a winning end-to-end BI initiative.

Written by industry analyst and BI consultant Cindi Howson, Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App reveals how to get the most value out of your BI investments. The book draws on exclusive survey data and real-world case studies of BI success stories at Continental Airlines, The Dow Chemical Company, Corporate Express, 1-800 CONTACTS, and other companies to identify proven BI best practices you can put to use in your organization, including:

• Gaining executive support and aligning your BI strategy with business goals
• Organizing BI teams and experts for success
• Choosing the best BI tools to meet user and business needs
• Improving data quality so decision-makers trust the BI solution
• Finding the relevance of BI to all employees, including front-line workers
• Using agile development processes to deliver BI capabilities and improvements at the speed of business
• Measuring success in multiple ways

Business intelligence has the power to change people's way of working, to enable businesses to compete more effectively and efficiently, and to help non-profits stretch their dollars further. Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App holds the key to bringing technological innovations together with the people, processes, and culture of any organization in order to achieve a competitive and profitable BI strategy.

 

About the Author

Cindi Howson is the founder of BIScorecard, a website for in-depth BI product reviews, and has 15 years of BI and management reporting experience. She writes and blogs for Intelligent Enterprise, and is an instructor for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). Prior to founding BIScorecard, Cindi was a manager at Deloitte & Touche and a BI standards leader for a Fortune 500 company. She has an MBA from Rice University

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (November 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071498516
• ISBN-13: 978-0071498517
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.7 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Founder of BI Scorecard, an independent analyst firm focused on helping customers select BI tools and manage their BI portfolio. We publish side-by-side evaluations based on exclusive hands-on testing. I teach for TDWI (The Data Warehousing Insitute) and contribute to Information Week.

I grew up in NJ and MD and moved to Switzerland where I first began my career in BI in the early 1990s. Giving into the frustration of trying to build a BI application for income statement analysis that I didn't understand, I earned my MBA at Rice University in Houston, TX.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Seasoned Professional Shares Key Insights December 23, 2007

By Richard Hackathorn

Format:Hardcover

Cindi Howson has impressed me as a thoughtful and knowledgeable professional who has contributed greatly to the BI field by living in the trenches, digging into the details, and teaching others about her experiences.

It is hard to find a comprehensive book on BI that is written without an impenetrable cloud of technical concepts. Ten years ago, successful BI depended on the expert execution of those technical concepts. However, BI has matured, increasing the importance of nontechnical factors for successful BI.

This book tracks this trend by clarifying the current success factors for successful BI projects. Oldies and goodies are covered, such as the necessity of executive support, data quality, and business-IT partnership. However, the real contribution lies in highlighting some of the new success factors, such as:

- Measuring Success: If you can not measure BI, you will not be successful. The book suggests numerous ways to measuring your BI effort.

- Role of Luck, Opportunity, Frustration and Threat: We hate to admit it, but BI projects are often successful (or not) for reasons beyond our control or even our imagination. Get over it! The book suggests ways of maximizing your success by making you aware of this dynamic.

- Agile Development: Do not build BI systems in the old traditional way. We all know this. But do we know a good alternative? The book outlines the Agile Manifesto to deliver early and continuous versions, embrace requirements changes, intensify person interactions, etc.

- Organizational Culture: Experienced BI professionals realize that some company cultures are so messed up that there is no way to have a successful BI project. Sad but true! This book suggests the essential cultural characteristics based on the research of Jim Collins.

I highly recommend this book to both BI professionals who have some experience and business executives who are new to BI. The old timers can refocus and sync with the new trends. And, the executives can focus on the real business issues, avoiding paralysis over technical details.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Strong on the business side of BI development - light on the technical and tactical November 9, 2008

By Lance Hokanson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Secrets to making BI a killer app would be better worded "Secrets for a successful BI initiative" (though that is far less interesting). Howson concentrates on the practical aspects of building demand for BI, working through the politics/sponsorship, and team organization. Most of the information was very high level and though reinforced with real world examples provided little in the way of practical and actionable examples.

If you are new to BI management and looking for a project overview, I'd recommend the book. If you are looking details, technical examples, detailed case studies and steps of MAKING a killer BI app, not just describing the project, development and business buy-in process, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Of worthy note is the authors frequent recommendation of involving business users early and often, securing a strong sponsor, speaking business-speak, short iteration deployments and making sure the tool fits the job.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book for those New to BI or Running BI Shops June 21, 2008

By T. Powlas

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Excellent book defining BI best practices, how BI measures processes, BI for process improvement, defining what BI is, how to set up a BI strategy with real-life case studies.

I cannot tell you how many times I have referred to this book - it is dog-eared, post-it noted, and referred to many times in my daily life of working in Business Intelligence.

Cindi Howson explains what BI is, what agile is, what's worked well, what hasn't worked well, and there's a survey at the back of the book that I am anxious to use. For example, I have heard the term "agile BI" several times at trade shows but I never really understood it until I read this book.

This book is a must-read for those working in BI, managing BI, or those who need to strategize based on BI results. It is a fantastic book!