Is Your Business Intelligence Driving Improved Business Performance?

Article written by Deb Dietz for publication in the January/February 2022 issue of International Market and Competitive Analysis Magazine. Live stream/podcast date TBD.

Now that it’s almost the New Year, you’re moving along implementing the strategic business plan you developed last fall. We all understand that a business plan is paramount for success, but did you take these three critical process steps last fall that resulted in a plan that will deliver on your goals in the New Year? Step back and review if you did. These process steps you should have included are: (1) project planning, (2) data analysis, and (3) targeted research.

Often businesses jump right into plan development, missing key learnings from collecting and analyzing business information that would have put them on the right path. And that's the point. You want to be on the right path, ensuring you have the right focus on your people, your internal operations, your value proposition, and your customers. Because it takes this kind of focus to drive improved business performance. Only then can you drive the financial results for your business that are truly transformational.

In today's complex business climate, each organizational department is being asked to support the company by delivering deeper insight and greater value more effectively than ever before. Today's companies must be:

• More efficient,
• Deliver more robust and effective analysis of key issues,
• Provide more actionable insights that ultimately drive positive change within the business, and
• Identify opportunities that mitigate risk and capitalize on opportunities for growth.

Every company needs two things when embarking on a strategic planning project. Business information, and a clear set of goals and objectives necessary to achieve the maximum benefits from its strategic planning project. The data and information goals may include:

• Company-wide access to one trusted set of corporate information to make decisions based on fact, not instinct,
• The ability to respond with more agility to changing business conditions using effective, corresponding actions,
• Tools that allow business professionals to readily obtain information in response to organizational requests, and
• Easy-to-use reporting and analysis tools that can help business users gain better business insights to uncover issues and spot trends quickly.

So before you get too far down the road, consider your business intelligence framework. Gartner has a great framework that recognizes that, "Increasingly, a broad set of users, in a variety of roles, will be enabled to create analytics content. Leaders of the business intelligence, analytic and performance management initiatives need to foster this trend, encouraging more people to think like analysts."

Articulating these goals is essential. Yet a company must do more than state its goals to achieve its strategic planning objectives. It needs a working framework that provides a blueprint for business. Gartner's framework is defined as "the people, processes and technologies that need to be integrated and aligned to take a more strategic approach to business intelligence, analytics and performance management initiatives".

To make the shift from tactical to strategic planning, companies must start with a shared repository of trusted information. This includes a common set of dimensions, hierarchies and business rules to ensure consistency across all analytic processes. Business users can rely on insights gained through an integrated reporting, analysis and planning solution to fulfill their vision for an information-driven business culture. Think of the business information process as having two distinct phases: the goal and the process. The goal of the project articulates its purpose. To be able to articulate the goal and understand the process to achieve the goal, ask these questions:​

• What - what is the underlying root cause issue to be addressed? What describes the business needs, goals or objectives? What is the problem you're attempting to solve? What is the opportunity you're trying to take advantage of? What is the information/data you need to record and store? What do the stakeholders need, what do they want, what must they have? What should the solution do for your organization? What should it look like? Understanding the "what" first is important because more than one "how" may be able to solve a problem.
• Who - who will be creating the information? Who will be using the information? Who is impacted by the solution?
• Why - why are you considering undertaking a strategic planning initiatives? Why is the company pursuing this opportunity over another?
• Where - where is the data coming from? At what point is the process most inefficient? Where are the stakeholders located?
• When - when do you experience the problem? When do you perform the process? When does the process begin?
• How - the how describes the way business activities are performed or managed, including how and where business data is stored, or how specific processes are executed. How does this problem affect the way you work? How will these changes affect your business area? Business stakeholders may not necessarily care how problems get solved, but they do care very much about what they need to do or have after their problems are solved.

So, don't jump right into the plan development process or you'll miss key learnings from collecting and analyzing business information that would put you on the right path. Before you get too far down the road, ensure you have your goals identified and project plan developed; you've gathered and analyzed data; you've articulated the business problem, impact and root cause; you've developed your project work plan; identified all stakeholders and your planning team members; you have your stakeholder communication plan; and you have identified your project process, timelines and deliverables.

​Deb Dietz, MBA is the Founder and CEO of SMB Value Partners, Inc. She is a champion of BI and data-driven Strategic Planning, offering consulting services and her online course, The Strategic Planning Academy. She is certified in Executive Data Science from Johns Hopkins, and develops, hosts and markets online courses for B2B and B2C subject matter experts, helping them ‘productize and monetize’ their expertise and teach a global, online, target audience, sharing their knowledge with the world.