A critical source of competitive advantage for any organization is the ability to derive valuable information from vast stores of data. Today, more than ever, companies are dealing with increasing market pressure and global competition. Simultaneously, the volume of available data being is rapidly growing due to the expanding use of transactional systems, emergence of data-intensive technologies, and the need to continually communicate with a network of suppliers and customers. As a result, improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of transforming data into actionable business insight is a fundamental challenge.
The Revere Group helps its clients use Business Intelligence (BI) to maximize the value derived from their data by working with representatives of business and IT to:
- Identify opportunities across your value chain
- Justify your projects through ROI analysis
- Identify budget drivers & corporate KPIs
- Manage software selections using our methodology
- Assess organizational change management needs
- Design capability & knowledge transfer programs
- Evaluate & recommend application outsourcing options
Business-Driven BI Roadmaps
Investments in BI can facilitate significant business value. However, to maximize the business impact of BI, it is critical that these investments be driven by prioritized business needs of the organization and address required changes in business processes, organizations, skills, data and technology. Revere provides its BI Roadmap service to help its clients address this need.
Revere’s approach for developing the BI Roadmaps is to work collaboratively with IT and business users to:
- Define a prioritized set of business objectives and high-level BI-related business requirements. This will be derived from the client’s business priorities as well as suggestions from Revere regarding how data, analytics, metrics and reporting can be used to improve business performance based on our experience and best practices.
- Assess the client’s current technical and business environment, including BI-related applications, business processes, organization/skills, technical infrastructure and data.
- Develop a phased plan for evolving from the current state to the desired future state, based on potential levels of investment and ability to change, via a series of manageable initiatives that will each deliver significant business value to the organization.
Business Metrics and Performance Management
One of the most valuable applications of BI and business metrics is maximizing the performance improvements enabled by major business and technology initiatives. An effective set of business metrics and associated analysis processes can motivate proper behavior while providing powerful insight into where attention should be focused in order to maximize quantifiable results.
The Revere Group assists its clients in developing and implementing processes for identifying an integrated set of business performance metrics, implementing measurement/analysis mechanisms and processes, and taking action based on the insight that is generated. This approach is designed to provide business and IT teams with an approach and best practices for working together to define and use business metrics to significantly improve business performance.
Revere works with its clients to:
- Identify the priority business objectives of the performance management program.
- Define the key business initiatives related to business objective(s) that will be the focus of the program.
- Define the set of metrics to be used to measure the effectiveness of the business initiatives in addressing the business objectives, and ways in which the metric information will be actively used to improve performance. This will include an integrated set of leading/lagging indicators as well as comparison and drill down analyses.
- Define and implement the processes to be used to collect and analyze the data, act upon the information, and continually refine and improve the use of the metrics on an ongoing basis.
- Design and implement the technology architecture, dashboards, and analysis tools that will be used to support the initiative.
Data/Reporting Governance
The ability to draw valuable information from vast stores of data is dependent on the quality and effectiveness of the data being used and the reports that are generated. Unfortunately, many companies today are faced with major quality issues with their current reports and data while struggling to continually enhance them as their business needs rapidly evolve. What is needed is a balanced effort that focuses on continually improving the quality and effectiveness of both the data (the input) and reports that are based on it (the output), with the objectives of:
- Maximizing business value of investment in data/reports
- Continually improving the quality/effectiveness of data/reports and their use
- Improving responsiveness to data/analysis requests
- Providing cost effective environment for developing/supporting data and reports
Revere works with our clients to implement data and reporting governance programs by:
- Identifying the priority areas to be addressed and a phased plan for addressing them
- Defining the roles, responsibilities, processes and tools required
- Helping with the roll-out through training, coaching, technology implementation and other assistance
Organizational Change Management
Delivering a successful performance management application involves end-user training, support and overall Organizational Change Management (OCM) before, during and after the formal rollout process. Managing the change wrought by business intelligence and analytics applications is very different from that of traditional operational applications, since analytic applications draw their power from a person’s ability to interpret information to make business processes more effective.
The Revere Group’s OCM practice is dedicated to helping our clients overcome these obstacles. Besides working with our BI practice in the areas of knowledge transfer, metadata development and online help and user training, the OCM practice can assist you in developing an overall change management strategy. They will identify the groups of people that will use the new solution, identify specific changes to each user group, and determine the activities needed to best address these impacts and prepare these people for using the new system and processes. The resulting deliverables include a change assessment, communication plan, detailed training strategy/plan and initial recommendations for a post-implementation support strategy.
BI Software Evaluation and Selection
Over the years, The Revere Group has conducted or assisted in software selection processes for dozens of different technologies across a number of business functions and industries. This experience has been systematically organized through a specific software selection methodology. Consisting of three major phases, our methodology encourages the involvement of both business and technical personnel and is tailored for each unique project. Revere brings additional intelligence to your decision making process based on our existing strategic partnerships with leading business intelligence vendors.