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Organizational Barriers to Business Intelligence (Part 1)
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Organizations are feeling the pressures from a stagnant economic climate, changing government regulations, new customer demands, privacy issues, and outsourcing. In response, they are grasping at technology solutions to halt their steady loss of business knowledge. However, they keep finding themselves in the same place, only on a new platform. The reason why a large percentage of business intelligence (BI) applications fail is not due to technology. To a large degree these applications fail because of organizational, cultural, and infrastructure dysfunctions. Technology can only address how we do things. However, the root causes for the dysfunctions is often in what we do—or don't do.
This article will be presented in two parts. The first part will elaborate on common organizational barriers to BI initiatives, and the second part will suggest some sorely needed organizational changes.
COMMON ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS
The failure of silver bullet technology solutions to meet expectations is rarely related to the technology itself but to the underlying organizational barriers. Identifying the necessary changes to correct these barriers is not much of a challenge, but implementing the changes is. Changes usually involve something unfamiliar or unknown. It is human nature to fear the unknown. Although clearly defined changes can hardly be viewed as "unknown", the effects of these changes certainly can be.
Changes in Power Structure
One of the most feared changes is a shift in the existing power structure. All organizations have power struggles at every level. Every employee wants to be on the project with the highest visibility, the highest impact on the organization's bottom line, the latest technology, and the highest personal payback. The personal payback usually equates to a promotion and a salary increase — possibly even a sizeable bonus. Everyone wants to be a hero. That is how we climb the proverbial corporate ladder—by standing out. Once the next rung of the ladder has been reached, we fight to stay there. Going up the ladder is one thing, but being forced back down is quite another. BI initiatives frequently shake up the positions occupied at the different rungs of the ladder.
Cultural imperatives
One major impact BI initiatives have on the power structure is the involvement of the business community. To put it succinctly, successful BI initiatives are initiated and driven by the business rather than by IT. That does not mean that non-technical users should be making technical decisions, but it does mean that users should take ownership of the BI environment by making the business decisions, which drive the projects. In other words, users should be in the driver seat.
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