Our BI Implementation Framework addresses all areas of the BI stack and provides a methodology and best practices for delivering an end-to-end BI implementation.

The BI Stack
The Framework attempts to encapsulate and promote the latest trends and tools in Business Intelligence, including:

• Integration with “real-time” operational systems  via message-based architectures or Enterprise Service Bus  for improved operational visibility and automation.
• Closed loop integration where analytics trigger automatic processes.
• More pervasive presentation and usage across the organisation, leveraging web 2.0 capabilities.
• Architecting for high performance analytics, critical for explosive data growth. This includes addressing  and optimising the entire end-to-end BI stack; and use of specialist streaming analytic appliances where appropriate.

Our vendor-independent methodology for BI implementation is an accumulation of experience, best practice and existing methodologies. It includes the following structured project phases with an iterative approach to validate results and ensure early business feedback and buy in.

BI Methodology

1. Project Initiation:  Agrees and documents the scope, application and data landscape, executive sponsorship, project team roles & responsibilities, high-level project timeline in a project initiation document (PID).
2. Analysis: The most challenging part of any BI project, specifying the insightful questions that business executives need answers to, requires a structured and collaborative approach to elicit, including use of stakeholder workshops to storyboard key metrics and use of customisable project templates by business function and process.
3. Architecture: Specifies the technical architecture and environmental landscape for the solution.
4. Prototype Design, Build, Test, Validate:  A key success factor to most projects is to prototype as early as possible a subset of KPIs across a well understood business process to get feedback and executive buy-in.
5. Implementation Design, Build, Test, Validate: Risk is reduced by breaking down the implementation into iterative steps for each functional area.
6. Deploy: Includes migration planning and go-live execution, support and maintenance documentation and user training.
7. Manage: After go-live, the solution will require support, maintenance and tuning to overcome any initial operational and user challenges. Further changes will be managed under normal change management processes or subsequent project roadmap phases. Convergent Development Services can assist with ongoing maintenance either onshore or offshore.