KPI Services

Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC)

Organizations are looking for ways to manage and support Business Intelligence (BI) deployments through the standardization of technology. A BI Competency Center (BICC) can provide the centralized knowledge and best practices to make this broader use of BI possible - driving repeatable, sustainable, manageable deployment of Cognos solutions. KPI promotes your ongoing self-service success by helping your organization develop its own Cognos BICC.

What is a BICC?

A BICC is an organizational structure that groups people with interrelated disciplines, domains of knowledge, experiences and skills, for the purpose of promoting expertise throughout an organization.

It doesn't matter what you call it - Center of Excellence, Competency Center, Center of Knowledge - the BICC is a strategic enterprise initiative that:

• Promotes and provides delivery enablement through a consistent set of BI skills, standards, and best practices.
• Enables repeatable, successful BI deployment through the development and focus of people, technology, and process - in ways that makes sense to an entire organization or division, rather than just a "single project".

Why the interest in BICCs?

• Essential ingredient in the strategic deployment of BI.
• Maximize the efficiency, use, and quality of BI across all lines of business to drive standardization.
• BI deployment initiatives need to have higher success and deliver more value, at less cost, in less time.
• Simply providing BI to an increasing number of information consumers doesn't guarantee more people will use it - drive adoption to ensure its success.
• Eliminate gaps that exist between the business and IT that tend to occur when connecting people and technology.
• A balance of agility and management of technology is needed to drive business efficiency.

What are some customer objectives of a BICC?

• Leverage more critical/advanced Cognos skill sets.
• Eliminate IT bottlenecks from backlogged projects.
• Deliver performance management/decision support capabilities.
• Maintain cost-efficient application and data staging support.
• Maintain and enhance BI standards, leading practices, methodologies and practice aids.
• Manage the Cognos technical infrastructure.
• Accelerate BI knowledge and familiarity across the organization.
• Promote a standardized platform.
• Provide a single point of contact for the Cognos relationship.

What are the benefits of implementing a BICC?

• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and implementation risk by providing best practice centralized functions and services.
• Leveraging and enhancing deep Cognos skills and business unit knowledge/experience.
• Improved user satisfaction and business self-service.
• Enforcement of the BI standard through registration and guidance.
• Identify new opportunities to leverage BI to improve business performance.
• Accelerate rollout success through strategic BI deployment planning.
• Higher and faster adoption of the complete BI lifecycle across the entire enterprise.
• Predictable, repeatable, consistent, and dependable deployment and use of BI.
• Maximize use of technology resources and assets (competency and operational efficiency).
• Alignment of technology to strategic goals (competitive differentiation / regulatory requirements).

What are some of the challenges of developing a BICC?

• Balancing resource capacity with demand as you recruit the right mix of business and technology skills.
• Continuing to spend more time delivering new BI capabilities while "keeping the lights on".
• Decentralized model is more challenging to maintain due to turnover/attrition.

What does KPI offer our customers to help them build a BICC?

• BICC Methodologies that leverage the Cognos Solution Implementation methodologies (CSIM).
• Market awareness and education (Industry Expertise / Thought Leadership)
• Discovery and Readiness Workshop.
• Services to help you take the first step (Establishing a Culture of Best Practice).
• Managed Engagement to Analyze, Design and Build your BICC.
• Optional services and knowledge transfer to help you deploy, operate, and become self sufficient with your BICC.
• We provide you with implementation support of a BICC, including:
  • BICC Definition
  • BICC Business case
  • BICC Roadmap
    
    
• BICC Definition:
  • Standardization, Centralization
    • Architecture
    • Data Bases
    • Servers, Network (LAN/WAN)
    • Development environments: test, production
    • Technologies et tools
    • Interface with users
    • Data Creation/Transformation
    • Delivery of information to users
      
      
  • Information Creation/Transformation
    • Operational DB (Real Time), Informational DB
    • Data Warehouses (Data Marts)
    • Extraction processes from multiple sources
    • Data Transformation
    • Creation of area specific data marts
    • Meta Data (Business Rules, /Languages used/Naming conventions)
    • Security (users, files, tables, profile)
    • Information Delivery
      
      
  • Level of information:
    • Strategic, Tactical, Operational
    • Operational DB (Real Time), Informational DB
    • Key Performance Indicator, reports, analysis
      
      
  • Information Presentation:
    • charts, tables, images
    • Live  Reports, static views, self-serve
      
      
  • Delivery methods:
    • Dashboard, Portal, e-mail
    • HTML, PDF, Excel…
    • Frequency (regular, alerts)
      
      
  • Report Creation:
    • Presentation (templates, disclaimers)
    • Security
      
      
• BICC business case:
  • Centralized Hardware and software acquisition
  • Single installation/configuration of hardware, software, network
  • Data Backup (mirroring, High Availability)
  • Expertise in all areas:
    • Installation, configuration
    • Support et maintenance (new releases)
    • Business Analysis, Training
    • Data extraction, creation of Data Marts, Cubes, Reports
    • Report Deployment and scheduling
    • Report presentation editing (look and feel/templates)
      
      
  • Single place to define security
  • Insured growth
  • Insured scalable infrastructure
  • Provide Thought Leadership / enterprise innovation
  • Standards:
    • User Support
    • Infrastructure maintenance
    • Deployment
    • Reduction of total costs
    • Facilitate integration
    • New companies, divisions, acquisitions
    • Applications, DB
      
      
• BICC Road-map to success:
  • Pick an executive Champion (Sponsor)
  • BICC execution must be tied to corporate strategy
  • Initialization of BICC:
    • Develop vision
    • Develop a business case
    • Define goals
      
      
  • Define how BICC will support the enterprise
    • Develop a strategy
    • Definition of BICC
      
      
  • Plan a detailed project scope:
    • Enterprise BI requirements
    • Critical success factors
    • Requirements, resource availability (Gap Analysis)
      
      
  • Get sponsor approval
  • Define priorities, technologies, methodologies
  • Creation of BICC
    • Assign responsibilities to individuals
    • Train BICC resources
    • Prepare work environment
      
      
  • Operation of BICC
    • Kick-off
    • Initial Project
    • Sell other BICC projects