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BI: Attendance is Required
In the movie Field of Dreams, a prophetic voice claims, "If you build it, he will come," and sure enough, when Ray Kinsella creates a baseball diamond in a cornfield, a long-dead Shoeless Joe Jackson appears. Unfortunately, simply building a business intelligence (BI) system doesn't ensure users will adopt it. At Meriwest Credit Union, we encouraged widespread adoption of our new BI system by ensuring - and then effectively communicating - its relevance to our employees. Derived from our experiences, we feel the best practices included in this story can help any organization increase the speed at which employees fully adopt BI as their key source of strategic information to improve decision making and continuously improve performance.
Meriwest Credit Union, a full-service financial institution, serves the San Francisco Bay Area and Tucson, Arizona. Like many organizations, we have multiple information systems, including our proprietary core transaction system and a Siebel CRM system. Relying on IT to create reports often resulted in long delays in obtaining required information. And the inability to integrate data from the information systems resulted in the "viral" spread of Excel pivot tables, which in turn led to significant inconsistency in our view of business results.
The goal for our BI system was to make it easier for all users to look at the same data, to deliver one version of the truth as the basis for improving decision making, and to provide the speed and flexibility of ad hoc queries. After setting up a data warehouse using Microsoft(r) SQL Server 2000, we opted for a BI solution from Business Objects.
Planning for User Adoption
Two key steps should be taken before deployment of the system even begins.
1. Get C-level Buy-in. Meriwest was fortunate that members of our executive team were key supporters who helped drive our BI solution. They recognized that data integration and analysis would enable them to spot trends and patterns they could not otherwise detect. In addition to making it far easier to obtain the funding we required, this top-down support promoted user adoption. Our CFO initially requested numerous reports, which clearly indicated to others the value and importance of the system. Both the CFO and COO also participate in our Business Objects User Group, another powerful signal that the BI system has support at the highest levels of the organization.
Organizations that don't have enthusiastic support from C-level executives should devote time and effort to create it. This can typically be accomplished through the presentation of articles and case studies and the development of return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses.
2. Design for users. To ensure the BI system would deliver the information users really wanted and needed, we involved the potential user community from the very beginning in developing our BI strategy. First, we categorized the types of users to make sure we understood who they were: C-level executives, vice presidents and assistant vice presidents, branch managers, department managers, and marketing staff. We then held focus groups with members of each category to determine the information they needed, how they used this information, and what current solutions or methods they used to get and analyze information. We created a "wish list" that would serve as the basis for the initial reports we would create and also reviewed existing Excel spreadsheet reports.
Gaining an understanding of the different types of users and the different ways they might use the system ensured we would standardize on a BI solution capable of meeting diverse needs. We standardized on the Business Objects BI platform because it allowed us to create all the reports our various users required, provided access to reports through an easy-to-use Web-based portal, and included the ability to add desirable second-generation capabilities, such as dashboards, within the same platform.
Report Development - Relevance
3. Commit to an iterative process. Getting users to change their behavior and automatically go to our BI system when they needed information depended foremost on the information actually being there. It was critical we develop the reports users really wanted. Even though we had our report wish list, we recognized that refining these reports was an iterative process. Individuals don't always know what they are looking for. They may be fishing for trends or patterns, and they may need to see a report multiple times before they recognize what they really want. Our IT department maintains an "open door" policy that ensures users eventually get the information they need.
4. Develop a comprehensive report strategy. Our goal was to go beyond merely replicating existing reports within our BI framework, or responding to each request with a report that merely answered one or two specific questions. Such a piecemeal approach would ultimately lead to wasted IT efforts. Instead, by looking at the bigger picture, by analyzing the report wish list and the Excel spreadsheets, we focused on creating larger, more flexible reports that would answer most of the questions users would have. We then allowed users to drill down into the report to find the most relevant view of the data. These reports ensured a unified view of the data and provided users with all the information they needed to make better business decisions.
5. Utilize a gatekeeper. The BI development team reviews all incoming report requests and where appropriate, suggests that a report might already exist to meet the requestor's need, or shows how the requested data might not provide the answers the user is looking for. As part of our iterative report development process, the gatekeeper strategy has helped us avoid the "viral" spread of reports.
6. Employ business analysts. Meriwest has also relied on two business analysts to serve as "translators" between the old and new ways of acquiring information. The business analysts have an intimate knowledge of the tables and data flow in our core transaction system. They also understand the bigger picture of how information flows within the organization. With this knowledge, our business analysts have played a key role in ensuring the BI system accurately reflects the real data needs of the business.
User Adoption - Communication & Training
7. Make education key. Meriwest is very much committed to employee education and has established Meriwest University, which provides employees with eight hours each month of continuing education in a variety of areas such as leadership training and listening skills. Meriwest University now offers a three-hour Business Objects training course which introduces users to ways to access reports, drill down for more information, make ad hoc queries, and request new reports. To help ensure the success of this course, we called on one of our developers to "train the trainers."
8. Create a monthly BI user group. Our IT department established a user group open to anyone using the Business Objects system. The user group meets regularly to conduct mini training sessions and review the use of existing and new reports. These sessions provide users with both an understanding of the larger business context of reports and the lineage of the data supporting them. The sessions also provide an opportunity for users to get to know their IT colleagues and the willingness of IT to support them. At Meriwest, our CFO and COO attend our user group meetings whenever they can - further validating both the BI system and the user group - and encouraging greater attendance. The value of the user group as both a communication and training vehicle for spreading the BI message cannot be overstated.
9. Encourage continued dialogue and feedback. At every stage of the rollout, our developers have encouraged interaction with users. The Business Objects User Group, the Meriwest University course, and additional one-on-one meetings all promote dialogue and feedback, providing developers with direct input on what works, what doesn't work, and how the system can be improved. These interactions create an important "bottom-up" perspective, directly resulting in changes to the system that have in turn increased user buy-in and promoted additional user adoption.
Dialogue is also critical for developing trust in the new reports. Inconsistencies between existing and new reports can quickly undermine user confidence in the BI system. Meriwest has responded to this by encouraging one-on-one meetings between users and developers or the business analysts to ensure that a clear understanding of any discrepancy is quickly developed. Once the results of the BI report are validated, users can confidently rely on the BI report - and only the BI report - for analysis and decision-making.
10. Build and sustain momentum. Key to building momentum for user adoption is creating a sufficient number of reports to drive users to the report portal. As reports continuously become more relevant, we have seen the adoption rate increase. When only a few reports existed, many users resisted using the new system because they did not want to live in two worlds, getting some information from our BI system and getting other information from spreadsheets. As more reports came online, users recognized they could rely solely on BI.
Another key to momentum is relying on early adopters to communicate the advantages of the system. At Meriwest, our early adopters reacted enthusiastically with responses such as "it's awesome" and "it's so easy to use." They would explain to co-workers that they could access the same basic information available in spreadsheets, but that they could also access additional information, drill down to see underlying data, make ad hoc queries, and easily update the reports. This led to a much more positive "viral" effect as those still using spreadsheets wanted access to the new "cool" system.
Thanks to our successful user adoption strategy, Meriwest has universal user buy-in. And thanks to careful deployment of a BI system that delivers the information users really need, we have enthusiastic support for developing new capabilities and features such as dashboards. To develop and roll out our new capabilities, we will use these same best practices that worked so successfully in the past.
Anni Evans is vice president of e-business at Meriwest Credit Union.
Anni Evans is vice president of e-business at Meriwest Credit Union.
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