Ways of calculating ROI from BIDW implementations

Most of us read that, about 75% of implementations don’t give the ROI in BIDW related projects. When I first started to work in BIDW projects, I used to wonder why management / team is not able to prove the ROI.  After being in this area for a while, its very evident that why we say 75% of implementations did not give quantifiable ROI.

BI projects objective should be enhancing the knowledge of a Decision Maker. Enabling them with more consolidated view of their part of business is the VALUE we provide through BI projects. Can you rate what’s your knowledge worth? Its based on how effectively you use to make money.

Implementing the BI projects wont save money for the company. In fact it costs very high in some cases. Decision Makers negotiations will be better (favoring business) with respective parties based on the knowledge they gained by using BI applications. This VALUE / SAVINGS to company is not recorded any where in the business. This knowledge of the decision maker gives him / her a better bonus in the year end . So, one way to know how your BI projects impact is to see how many managers performed better after implementing BI projects. If you don’t see any improvement in the decision making process, then typically no one uses the BI in a way its supposed to be used. BI Programs should show demos on how to use the BI reports / dashboards to enhance the knowledge to Decision Makers.

The Program Manager / Owner is responsible to keep an eye on how many different business managers used the system which equips them with better negotiation skills. This can be done by a CIO level Survey regarding the BIDW application usage.

Store the following information to prove the VALUE of BI applications.

• Usage of Application
• Decision Maker Stories and Impact
• Streamlining the data transfer between BIDW and Downstream applications

Stories / Trends which are unique in your business should be shared across the organization to create awareness of the BI Application. Power users should help the Process Re engineering team to save the cost in the operations.

Start gathering information on processing time, data load, Data Quality, Business Stories, Impact of Revenue, Impact of Manager’s decision making power in the project management system or application usage layer of your BI projects.

You are bringing in a culture change, its hard and it takes more time. The more stories you have in your kitty, the better your end users can rely on the BI implementation.