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Seven Thoughtful Tips for a Multicountry BI Implementation

BI Outsourcing

  • Radha R
  • DM Review Online, November 8, 2007

Businesses and organizations are becoming truly global and so is competition in today's business landscape. Strategic moves need to be considered on a global scale. Whether it is business and market expansion, product and service portfolio expansion or cost containment, the benefits are reaped only when global strategies are thought through. It is imperative and mandatory to think globally first and then act globally.

 

The need to view business as a global entity, engage with customers worldwide and contain costs across the value chain drives global business intelligence (BI) initiatives. The rhythm and sophistication of global initiatives pose varied challenges to organizations. Here are some thoughtful tips that could take you forward in this global journey.

 

Begin with the Right Purpose

 

Defining the right purpose is the first step in conceptualizing a multicountry global BI initiative. The right purpose has to be the business driver. Begin with the end in mind.

 

The purpose needs to stem from an identified business driver as shown in Figure 1:

If you can identify with any of these, you are ripe for a global or regional BI initiative.

 

Do not think of it as a replacement project. It is not a mere replacement of the reporting solutions of various business units and countries, and it is not just technology platform standardization. It should carry a global purpose and objective. If you can not find a global cause do not move further.

 

Remember to periodically re-evaluate whether the vision you had set for yourself still holds true. A global financial organization I know of started building an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), but during the project, the vision got compromised and it became another information silo. (Before the system was rolled out there was talk about building another EDW.)

 

Who Goes First?

 

The first and most sensitive question to tackle is which country goes first with the implementation as a pilot site. Typically, there is a political entanglement to solve based on the size of the operations in a country, the financial muscle, the stronger negotiating hand and the crying need.

 

The most prudent selection would be to go with the country that shares the vision and purpose of the initiative and has the inherent desire and commitment to bring this vision to life. A showcase country can create the right pull from all other countries. Go with the country that has evolved business processes and choose a domain or subject area that is most evolved from a process perspective. The first country is always your pilot initiative and the core architecture and design stems from our in-depth understanding of the process and the measures. Look for quick wins. Global initiatives call for good budgets too. Showcasing quick wins in the first country makes the road ahead easier.

 

The right country or the right cluster of three countries is the way to succeed.

 

Get the Right Team and the Shared Vision

 

The third crucial challenge is to get together the right team for this initiative. Business ownership and key sponsorship from the business is critical. Participation and drive from the key business divisions depending on your choice of domain across organizational and geographical boundaries is a must for success. If you are involved in financial consolidation as an example, the key sponsor has to be your corporate chief financial officer (CFO). The shared vision should emerge from a facilitated discussion amongst all country CFOs who functionally form a part of the initiative, anchored by the corporate CFO setting the direction and pace.

 

IT needs to rope in the key stakeholder and a strong sponsor who has the power and drive to get the country buy-in. Getting the countries to share data, streamline business processes as per the corporate vision and establishing a harmonized way of looking at measuring performance is a tough task, but is, at the same time, the key to a successful global initiative.

 

Selection of the right partner organization determines your true success. Do not just look at technology or tool centric partners. Look for someone who has done this before and has the right capability to think and architect a nimble, scaleable and reliable solution for you. While you are attempting to handle local countries, cross cultural issues and change management issues, political overtones inevitably tend to surface. Hence, it is critical to choose a partner who is flexible, agile and does not add to the burden of bureaucracy or pre-existing undercurrents across countries.

 

Select Appropriate Tools and Technologies

 

You have the purpose; you have narrowed down the initial domain and the country; it is time to think of the appropriate technology to use.

 

Multicountry implementation is definitely a multiyear initiative and, depending on the size of the purpose, can take several years spanning across multiple domains. It is imperative to choose a relatively future-proof technology. Look at technology sustenance from at least a three to five year perspective.

 

The right partner truly brings you this vision and expertise in playing an advisory role on technology direction as well as in mapping your functional and scalability needs with the right tool or product. Multicurrency capability and support becomes a non-negotiable feature to look for.

 

The BI layer is increasingly moving to multiple levels within the organization. Executive users, business heads, line managers, call centre operators – the variety and classification of your users might be many. The most crucial aspect of tool selection and choice is an appealing front end, and this is no easy task. I have seen organizations take an easy route with BI implementations maintaining different front-end tools as choice for various countries as they have been used to these in their earlier implementation. While this approach helps you over the immediate hump of business buy-in, the prudent approach would be to standardize. Make the right proof of concept, demonstrate to a wide spectrum of users and do the necessary change management upfront. Multiplicity of tools is a sustenance nightmare which is best avoided.  

Architecture and Data Model Considerations

Information delivery to multiple user profiles becomes the core of a BI implementation. From the standpoint of information delivery, it may still be difficult to standardize on one common way of delivering information, keeping in mind country specific needs. The architecture and the data model should be one that is flexible and scalable to respond to a variety of needs. The report format or the modes of delivering alerts such as email or messages could still be different and to the convenience of local users. Consider best practice key performance indicators to determine global performance measures. 

Explicitly harmonize dimensions and have a common global hierarchy of analysis.

As various countries and business units might have divergent ways of analyzing information, it is imperative to get convergence on various analysis drill paths. A facilitated business discussion that paves the way for visioning and scoping the project is a good ground to leverage for bringing synergy in the analysis drill paths.

 

Create a logical corporate data model before implementing the data warehouse. Ensure coverage and understanding of all business processes; bring out the process loop holes and integration issues. Tease out those outlier scenarios that will facilitate impact analysis of future business changes on the data model.

 

 

When it comes to architecture, there are so many physical architecture considerations. For example, round the clock data loading due to difference in time zones should not affect reporting performance of the solution. If each country sends data at different times so a global report can only be churned out when the last country has sent the file, the problem becomes even more complex in case of allocation engines where global costs have to be charged out to individual countries proportionately.

 

Also looking at operations and service level agreements (SLAs) (data loading, user helpdesk, security) right at the beginning is going to be critical. Design has to accommodate all these complexities.

 

Readiness Assessment and Country Buy-In

 

When the pilot country implementation is a success, group together an assessment team comprising of the core implementation team and local country team to start rolling off the initiative in other local countries. This will ensure local buy-in and tabling the global and local know-how. The scope of the global engagement needs tweaking for local country-specific business considerations and to factor in regulatory norms, language, organizational culture and change management issues. Remember that the local sponsor buy-in must be assured in the very beginning during the global visioning exercise. Local resources in leadership roles will help in resolving most of the issues related to country specific implementations.

 

Program Management and Governance

 

The last but the most significant is the whole aspect of managing the program given the complex multicultural scenario. Language, culture, attitudes and politics can get in the way of any global program.

 

Visioning, scoping and country buy-in plays the fundamental role. Planning, estimating each country implementation time and drawing the risks and mitigation plans is the second step. Deciding on the right and appropriate governance model is to be done before the implementation kick off. On a periodic basis, check point reviews with country stakeholders, business users from the operating country and global teams is a must. Keep different time zones, travel lead times, local infrastructure ordering and delivery times in mind throughout.

  • Clearly define the RACI matrix and clearly communicate the authorization structure.
  • Keep the momentum high throughout the initiative. Rotate key positions (program manager, chief architect and other people) every two years to bring in fresh ideas and bring in momentum. It is a marathon with a large team coming together.
  • Remember not to overdo consensus building. You cannot please everyone. 
  • Over communicating is always better in a multicultural environment.

It is great fun working on a global initiative and gaining exposure to multicultural environments. Not many people have the chance. Relish the opportunity.

 

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing," said Helen Keller.

 

A global initiative too is an adventure which needs outright planning and determination.

Radha R heads the Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Practice for MindTree Consulting, an international IT and services company, co-headquartered in New Jersey and Bangalore, India. She is responsible for overall profitability and customer satisfaction for MindTree's DW/BI business across all global markets. With more than 17 years of industry experience, Radha has handled various product and service lines in her career. In her earlier role at MindTree, Radha was responsible for developing and cultivating all its India-based customer relationships.

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