8/13/2019 How Do You Sell BI to the Business Executives

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8/13/2019 How Do You Sell BI to the Business Executives

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21/1/2014 How Do You Sell BI To The Business Executives?

http://blogs.forrester.com/print/boris_evelson/11-10-06-how_do_you_sell_bi_to_the_business_executives 2/2

If you are successful in changing the minds of your top business executives, the next step is

the individual business users. Once again, I am proposing a nonstandard but a very

pragmatic approach. Unfortunately, BI is not a grassroots environment. One cant tell a

business user: Stop using Excel, start using our new enterprise BI apps, and your life will

become rosy and wonderful. No, no, no! Thatll be the end of your good relationship with your

business counterparts and they will forever label you and your efforts as an IT nuisance.

Admit that their life willbecome moredifficult, but its got to be done for the sake of a single

version of the truth, better collaborative decision making, etc, etc, etc. But you have to givethese people something in return, as we human beings will probably never do something just

because someone says so. It goes against our human nature. So everyone has to

have some individual, personal incentive. And what can be more effective as an incentive

than tying the usage of enterprise BI to individual performance reviews, which could affect BI

users variable/incentive compensation? My apologies for being this blunt, but I have indeed

seen multiple cases where this works extremely well.

In order to implement this approach, you need BI on your BI environment to understand who

uses (or doesnt use) your BI applications and when and how. You can get this data from

most of your BI tools and/or databases. If you have multiple tools, consider Appfluent [6]orTeleran [7], which will provide you these statistics on multiple BI tools and multiple DBMSes. If

much of your BI environment is locked in spreadsheets or file-based desktop applications like

Microsoft Access, you can monitor their usage using tools from vendors like CIMCON

Software, ClusterSeven, Finsbury Solutions, Lyquidity, and Prodiance. If it sounds like BI on

BI may become a project of its own well, youre right, it certainly will. We strongly advocate

that BI on BI become a function of your BI center of excellence (COE) or competency center

(CC) [8].

855Recommend this post [9]

Categories:

Information management [10] business intelligence [11]

See more posts by Boris Evelson [12]

See more posts for Application Development & Delivery Professionals [13]

Source URL:http://blogs.forrester.com/boris_evelson/11-10-06-

how_do_you_sell_bi_to_the_business_executives

Links:[1] http://blogs.forrester.com/boris_evelson/11-10-06-how_do_you_sell_bi_to_the_business_executives

[2] http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/business_case_for_bi_now_more_critical/q/id/54955/t/2

[3] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1819486

[4] http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/forresters_bi_maturity_assessment_tool/q/id/55282/t/2

[5] http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/bi_maturity_in_enterprise_2010_update/q/id/58310/t/2

[6] http://www.appfluent.com

[7] http://www.teleran.com

[8]

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/agile_business_intelligence_solution_centers_are_more/q/id/47315/t/2

[9] http://blogs.forrester.com/plus1/vote/6802?token=22409967c78d7c4175b91190b125ecb2

[10] http://blogs.forrester.com/category/information_management

[11] http://blogs.forrester.com/category/business_intelligence[12] http://blogs.forrester.com/boris_evelson

[13] http://blogs.forrester.com/application_development

http://blogs.forrester.com/boris_evelson/11-10-06-how_do_you_sell_bi_to_the_business_executiveshttp://blogs.forrester.com/application_developmenthttp://blogs.forrester.com/boris_evelsonhttp://blogs.forrester.com/category/business_intelligencehttp://blogs.forrester.com/category/information_managementhttp://blogs.forrester.com/plus1/vote/6802?token=22409967c78d7c4175b91190b125ecb2http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/agile_business_intelligence_solution_centers_are_more/q/id/47315/t/2http://www.teleran.com/http://www.appfluent.com/