I have been working in the BI industry for almost ten years. I have done BI projects in the manufacturing supply chain, and I have also followed the BI construction of retail e-commerce, real estate, and banks. Friends often consult about the content of BI construction. Today I summarized a set of BI Project construction guide, share it directly with everyone, remember to like and collect if you think it is good.
Under normal circumstances, the construction of enterprise BI projects is generally divided into two situations, independent development by itself or participation by Party B.
If the IT department of the enterprise has the ability to independently build BI projects, it can choose to build itself, otherwise it needs to introduce BI product suppliers (vendors) or outsourced project teams. The specific process is as follows:
The four stages of enterprise BI construction from 0-1:
Phase 1: Collect and clarify BI project requirements
It is not easy to collect and clarify requirements, especially to dig out the detailed and deep-level requirements of the demand side. When many companies conduct demand research, often due to differences in problem description and understanding between the two parties, large deviations occur in the process of continuous transmission of requirements, resulting in the final developed functions being quite different from the original business requirements.
So, how can we do a detailed research on requirements so that the requirements in real business scenarios can be accurately communicated to the final developers?
To sum up, there are two points: grasp the overall thinking and principles, and do a good job in three key links.
Part 1: Investigate business department analysis scenarios
① Management level
Investigate the analysis needs of indicators related to corporate strategy by dismantling the strategic goals of enterprises and departments layer by layer, and then analyze from the perspective of data supporting strategic goals to obtain demand data.
For example, from the dismantling of a company's corporate strategy to the departments that support strategic goals
This department supports the OKR of the strategic goal and the corresponding business action; the
measurement indicators and measurement dimensions formulated to measure the business action;
whether the data currently has a data storage location, etc.
②Daily analysis scene
③Invisible demand
Session 2: Research Data Quality
The data in the enterprise is mainly divided into business system data, manually collected data, and external data according to the source.
For business system data, the project team needs to identify the contact person of each business system, and obtain relevant data interfaces and data dictionaries. If they cannot be obtained, they need to negotiate and formulate coping strategies.
For manual data, the project team can first collect historical manual data, and this work can be carried out simultaneously with the demand research of the business department.
For external data, you can refer to the research method of business system data, focusing on data availability and usage scenarios.
During this process, the project manager needs to communicate clearly with the IT staff of the information department on the following two points:
Collate the existing database data together and confirm the data quality;
both parties confirm whether the data can meet the demand, and directly provide or provide a new table if the demand can be met, and return the business for re-investigation if the demand cannot be met.
Link 3: Design, confirm and modify the data system
When designing the data system, two levels, the original table and the basic wide table, are mainly considered. Combined with the minimum granularity of the data usage requirements considered in the previous research, as well as the dimensions and indicators that may be used in the analysis, the analysis scenario is as accurate as possible. Full coverage, meeting various data granularity requirements.
Phase Two: Selecting the Right BI Tool
Judging from the survey results of CIOs by Fanruan Data Application Research Institute, CIOs are most concerned about whether BI tools are efficient, easy to use and convenient. Gartner also pointed out in the report that the ease of use of tools is the first influencing factor when selecting a tool. Based on the results of major surveys, the selection of BI tools can basically be divided into three major factors:
tool
① Ease of use
The ease of use of BI tools is mainly reflected in the difficulty of getting started, interactive experience, and the richness of learning resources .
② Performance
A good BI tool has a matching data engine . On the one hand, it can improve the speed of data response, and on the other hand, it can flexibly adjust the calculation mode and scheme according to different data levels and types. Secondly, in terms of functions, BI tools must also ensure their stability . Frequent downtime and failures are unbearable for enterprises.
③ function
BI tools have many functions, and the needs of different enterprises are also different, but there are several core functions that must be possessed, mainly including data preparation, data processing, data analysis and visualization, platform management and control, scene demand conversion, etc.
④ Purchasing cost
The selection of BI tools is usually limited by the financial budget, so the procurement cost is also a key factor for many enterprises to consider when selecting models. However, the control of procurement costs is not equal to simple quotations and counter-offers. The lowest price is the best, and it also includes the consideration of many hidden factors.
Enterprises need to pay special attention to two points: one is to comprehensively consider various costs, and the other is to learn to use the ROI model to quantify value.
In Gartner's report on the evaluation of BI tool procurement costs, the following three suggestions are given :
- When evaluating BI vendors, the cost should be comprehensively considered in terms of functional requirements, commercial benefits obtained after using their products, and potential business benefits.
- Don't just focus on initial price negotiations, but also on incremental pricing costs as your BI tool deployment scales, and on BI platform maintenance costs over time.
- When considering moving from a more expensive BI tool to one with a lower total cost, evaluate the switching costs.
manufacturers
At the vendor level, three elements are mainly considered: brand, service and solution.
① Brand
A brand is a comprehensive reflection of the overall strength, market share, user recognition and word-of-mouth of a BI manufacturer. No matter what you buy, it is always right to choose a leading brand.
② service
When selecting a model, it is necessary to fully consider whether the manufacturer provides localized services, whether it can respond quickly, whether it has a complete problem-solving mechanism, etc., and also consider some specific needs of the enterprise, such as whether the manufacturer can provide services to support BI products secondary development.
③ Solution
Whether it has a specific industry solution reflects whether the manufacturer has accumulated enough experience in the BI application of the industry.
market
The so-called big waves wash the sand, the market is the best touchstone, and it is a comprehensive embodiment of the two major elements of tools and manufacturers. The two main industry leaders in foreign markets are Microsoft's PowerBI and Tableau; domestic Fanruan has ranked first in the domestic BI market share for five consecutive years.
Bonus tool selection score sheet:
Phase 3: BI Project Planning
Determining the scope of the project: what to do
The scope of the project includes 5 aspects of organization, function, business, data, and interface .
- Organizational scope: It defines the main body of the implementation project. The enterprise needs to clarify whether the current project needs to be implemented only at the headquarters or at the headquarters and all subsidiaries, and which business departments are involved in the implementation content.
- Functional scope: refers to the functional modules and specific functions included in the BI project.
- Business scope: describe the daily business processing and analysis tasks that enterprises need to realize through the BI system, and mainly define business modules, analysis applications, analysis dimensions, and analysis forms.
- Data scope: including data source scope and data association rules, etc. The data source scope not only describes where the data comes from, but also includes the understanding of source data, source data quality assurance, data extraction, etc.
- Interface scope: consider whether the BI system needs to be embedded in other information systems of the enterprise, and realize functions such as single sign-on.
Forming the project team: who will do it
The roles of the project team are divided into four categories: team leader, business proficient, solution designer, and technology implementer .
Design implementation plan: how to do it
The project implementation plan should include 3 main contents, namely project plan, blueprint plan and project management method.
1) Project plan
- Understand the environment in which the project will be implemented;
- Split the existing tasks. For example, if the self-service analysis project has four nodes, then it is necessary to split the tasks that need to be completed by these nodes;
- List the project plan, and list the specific content and completion time nodes according to the current split tasks;
2) Blueprint scheme
The blueprint scheme of the project generally includes three parts, namely the overall scheme, the system environment scheme and the detailed scheme.
- Overall plan: including three aspects: business plan, technical plan and data plan.
- System environment plan: describe the configuration requirements of the software environment, network and server environment.
- Detailed scheme: it is to further refine the scheme of each module on the basis of the overall scheme.
Phase Four: BI Project Development and Management
Project risk management
As far as BI projects are concerned, risks generally exist in management, requirements, data quality, prototypes, hardware environments , etc.:
Requirements Change Management
Under normal circumstances, a requirement change needs to go through four steps: change application→change evaluation→decision-making→reply. If the change application is passed, the two steps of implementing the change and verifying the change need to be added.
Project acceptance management
The purpose of project acceptance is to ensure the quality of the project, which is generally reviewed and accepted by each demander or project leadership committee.
Summarize
The article briefly describes the complete process of a complete BI project construction, and systematically answers what the enterprise BI project should do, who should do it, how to do it , and how to successfully operate the BI project in the enterprise to produce actual business value, etc. question.