Business Intelligence: A Process, Not A Project

By Sonny Childs, business intelligence practice lead, IronEdge Group

Reality check: Business intelligence initiatives fail most of the time. Whether that’s back-end infrastructure or front-end visualizations, industry analysts show bleak stats on whether or not your project will be valuable and integrated into a company’s processes. Our practice focuses on offering Business Intelligence-as-a-Service (BIaaS), and we are often asked why we do this rather than the traditional professional services single-project model. The following story speaks to a would-be business intelligence creator and illustrates why BI projects frankly shouldn’t be projects at all. Successful business intelligence initiatives are an ongoing process that become intimately integrated with clear channels of communication and consistently cultivated to prune noisy fluff and grow actionable insights.

Let’s walk through the beginning of a hypothetical story of how one project turned into a process out of necessity.