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Speaking of club-class golfers one can not help but not aware that the correlation between the price of the equipment and the golfing capabilities of its owner is largely thin. Speaking of the corporate world (and specifically SMBs) one can see a similar situation with regards to the investment in BI solutions and the RoI, or lack of it.

No doubt that the more expensive golf clubs incorporate advanced material, cutting-edge designs, and features that are provided to offer higher levels of accuracy and performance (distance, loft, spin, etc). However, not many of these expensive golf clubs are designed with ease-of-use in mind. In other words, they are not dummy-proof. It would take nothing less than a Greg Norman or a Tiger Woods to be able to leverage what these clubs have to offer. But most of us are not Tiger Woods. Like my friend pointed out, we're more like tigers-in-the-woods.

My point is: just because you have decided to invest in a best-of-breed, full BI stack vendor solution does not mean you'll get your desired results. In fact, you could fall woefully short of your expectations. For one it could be that you did not select the right BI solution; or more importantly, your organization may not be ready to use such a comprehensive (and expensive) offering.

Callaway Golf, a leading golfing equipment manufacturer, has teamed up with Autodesk to design its Hyper ERC driver using AliasStudio. It's all about performance engineering; similar to designing automobiles I would imagine. Now it is not uncommon to see a golfer wearing an expensive straw hat saunter off to the tee, take a few dry (practice) swings with his Hyper ERC, address the ball, take a swing and shoot right out of the fairway into the woods . He would then go back for his mulligan (second shot allowed only on the first tee-off) starring at his Hyper ERC in complete disbelieve. Once again he would go through the routine, and shoot the second ball off into the woods one more time. More disbelieve on his face, suspicious glances at the Hyper ERC, shaking his head in denial, and all that. But one thing is clear: he simply sucks at golf.

What happened at the tee is something that has been occurring in the corporate world all along. It happened with ERP systems and is now happening with BI systems and will continue to happen till you prepare the ground prior to deciding upon any form of enterprise-wide software implementation.

They say you can not hit a good golf shot if too many thoughts are going through your head at that time. Too many thoughts mean too many loose ends; too many ifs and buts; and inevitably a faulty swing which can lead to disastrous results. The last thing on the pro-golfer's mind is the swing part. Due to the fact that his 'flying plane' gets locked with a couple of dry swings, he's able to focus on the more immediate tactical issues relating to current playing conditions. And, adjust his swing (if required) to suit those conditions.

A reasonably good golf swing is a basic requirement before you step on to the course. The better it is the more you can get out of your equipment. Likewise you need to have reasonably stable systems and processes in pace to be able to leverage a sophisticated BI solution. That would institute the basic eligibility for an expensive BI platform. Let's look at some of the questions that you need to answer prior to making a BI investment decision:

– Do you have stable and reliable processes across the organization?
– Are these processes tightly aligned to the business goals and objectives?
– Do people across different functions rely on empirical data for decision-making?
– How would you rate your data reliability / integrity?
– Do you have legacy systems running?
– Can you migrate data from these legacy systems?
– How accurately can you define your business requirements?
– Can you name the top five BI product capabilities that are most relevant to your organization?
– Do you have a clear yardstick to measure performance gains?

For starters if you can respond to these questions to your complete satisfaction you can consider yourself ready for a BI solution. And start with the vendor selection process. That incidentally is another story. But at least you're on your way to becoming a Tiger.

In my eight years of golfing around I'm still to find a club-class golfer who has been able to drop his handicap (improve golfing performance) using expensive equipment. But in the hands of Tiger Woods, and the likes, one can see remarkable performance improvements.

So, to BI or not to BI is a question that will depend upon the responses to the above questions. Till then we'll find many more disgruntled companies fighting it out with the vendors, and some even taking them to court.

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Source by Pravir Ganguly

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