When should we cut BI implementation and Support Costs – NOW

A practical guide to reducing BI costs anywhere from 10%, 20% to 200% ovr strategic periods

You have been a good IT manager for a large company for some time now. You’ve always run a tight ship. Three years ago you were asked to lead a $4 million business intelligence initiative. You followed instructions, you did everything the partners asked you to and you went live in October 2011. In October there was a large Go-live party with wine and champagne and within 3 weeks of post go-live Hypercare most of the vendor consultants left.  In four weeks, by November 2011, by the time business was fully trained you started to hear some business rumblings. In 8 weeks,  by December the dissatisfaction had gone through the roof.  By January you were instructed by your management to fire the old team and find a replacement partner and ‘KEEP COST LOW’ as we do not have the budget to deliver this. You clearly understand if there is another failure then you job itself is on the line.

Further complicating your choices are limitation on choices due to budget cuts, because you don’t report to the CEO you cannot propose slowing down and planning prior to working, business is up in arms and no one wants to hear planning and strategy they want actions right now,

You are not alone. According to the Gartner report more than 50% of BI projects face this dilemma, so close to that percentage of client BI managers face this dilemma too.  Over the Past 14 years I personally have provided consulting assistance to many BI projects starting with Oracle, proceeding to Informix, then to SAP BW, BW Accelerator, Teradata, BusinessObjects and now HANA. Our experience shows that cost reduction is a global phenomenon. The lessons weve learned may not solve all your problems , but they should hopefully provide you with various leapfrog options to enhance quality and keep costs under control.

Two critical things before we start in order to level the playing field>

First, forget about finding one single global cost cutting solution that will radically change your life, your BI environment and the cost distribution of your implementation or support. Tis includes hiring the lowest cost offshore partner or sending the full BI into offshore mode. Instead you should plan to work your own solution from around 8-10 things we have seen work.

Second the depth of initial cutting must be deep and conducted only once. This must be done with a professional Role vs. skill mapping to identify individual weaknesses and strengths (actually that is how you should have hired you team in the first place- visually). By Cutting deep you keep the best, by cutting frequently you are left with the worst who possibly have no other place to go.

Aiming for 10 %

·         Wean the inefficient

·         Build a formal process flow

·         Conduct weekly audits and keep on track

·         Get business participation

Aiming for 20%

·         Wean the inefficient

·         Fill Gaps

·         Get a BI Business Value Architects Audit (5-10 days)

·         Get active business participation (1-2 days)

·         Build formal standards and processes

·         Conduct weekly audits and report findings with mitigation suggestions

Aiming for 200%

·         Let the stakeholder understand the actual costs of failure ( 4 hrs)

·         Get a BI Business Value Architects Audit (50-100 days)

·         Reward achievers

·         Appoint your Business Value Owner (part-time internal resource)

·         Slow down to optimize efficiency

·         Build formal standards and processes

·         Understand and deploy the BVA principles of Scientific BI Management

·         Wean the inefficient

·         Fill Gaps

·         Get a BI Business Value Architects Audit (5-10 days)

·         Get active business participation (1-2 days)

·         Conduct weekly audits and report findings with mitigation suggestions