Champion for Business Intelligence: SMART Goals for Business Focused and Financially Backed Results

Although Gartner’s EXP 2006 CIO Survey ranked Business Intelligence (BI) as the top technology priority, BI projects face tough competition from other projects in IT portfolios promising more tangible financial returns (Wu & Weitzman, 2006) Two major hurdles that prevent BI projects from shining in portfolios are vague requirements and weak benefits calculations. Both can be addressed by examining and learning from a number of case studies that prove tangible ROI on BI solutions when scoped and designed with a focus on specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time bound SMART business goals. In order for BI projects to compete in IT portfolios based on financial measures, like ROI, BI champions need to approach BI requirements gathering with the goal of addressing a specific business problem as well as employ standard ways of calculating BI benefits post project go live. By examining common failures with BI requirements and case studies which demonstrate how successful BI implementations translate into tangible benefits for the organization, BI champions develop a toolkit of tips, tricks, and lessons learned for successful requirements gathering, design, implementation, and measure of business results on BI initiatives.