The Seven Deadly Sins of Balanced Scorcard and BI Implementations

Implementing a technical solution to support your Balanced Scorecard (BSC) or Business Intelligence (BI) system can have major benefits for your business, but without the right knowledge, planning and Business Intelligence tools, you could be on the fast track to your own version of corporate limbo - so close to the BSC ‘heaven' you desired, yet so far away. In this blog I will attempt to describe some of the major traps - or sins - and propose ways to avoid them with help from Microsoft's BI toolset.

Despite the promises of software companies that their tools will provide your managers unparalleled insight into the ever-increasing amount of data held within your business systems, the tools themselves have no intelligence or business acumen, no matter how large or impressive their range of outputs. What makes the difference between the success and failure of a BSC and BI technology implementation is the planning and hard work put in during the establishment phase, having the right technology, realistic expectations, and educating staff on the use of the powerful new tools that will be available to them.

Gluttony: Too much data, too much choice..

Manigent has identified Seven Deadly Sins associated with BSC implementations. Avoid them at your peril.

1. Gluttony - Stuffing your dashboard full of every KPI, chart and list of data you can find and gorging on all the business data without regard to quality and value of information..


2. Sloth - Expecting the BI tools to do all the data preparation as quickly as the data visualisations and ignoring the time and effort needed for the background work of data preparation and automation (extract, transform and load or ETL to the techy guys)


3. Lust - Rushing to use the BI tools for short-term gain with minimal training, instead of taking time to learn best practice and understand the long-term implications of BSC implementation design.


4. Pride - Believing BI tools will allow you to do everything yourself, instead of identifying the variety of skills required and then including the use of experts, where necessary, in the project delivery.


5. Anger - A common sin with clients who resist changes to their established procedures, then expect the new solution to do exactly the same as their old stuff, or try to force the new product do things it was not designed to do.


6. Envy - Becoming distracted by added functionality in later versions or new technology as the project progresses and so losing sight of the intended system benefits.


7. Greed - Wanting it all, without compromise. Insisting on achieving 100% of the project scope from day one, for the same cost and in the initially agreed time frames.

So we will look at each of the seven sins in detail and provide advice on how to avoid their temptation, leading you on the path to BI enlightenment and BSC implementation project success.

Comments

[Jason Francis-Sutton]

I fully agree with the thoughts on this and for me there are a couple of other things to consider.

The first is 'Consumption', many people when looking at BI & Balanced Scorecard solutions look for a nice presentation to show to their friends and colleagues. This only confuses the reason for the technologies/methodologies and can leave you feeling like you have just had a Chinese take-away or McDonalds, which looks great and tastes great, but you consume it quickly and it leaves you feeling hungry again after 30 minutes. The trick is to make sure you have the depth and breadth of a solution to fill the hunger for business information.

The other point to consider is 'the in-flight magazine syndrome', which is something senior exec's can sometimes be accused of. The in-flight magazine can be good for updating you on new locations and what's on in different places but it also has adverts for solutions which claim to be the best or number one in what they do. The suppliers who claim this may be right, but when the exec comes off the plane and contacts their CIO and states they must have it because its number one and will resolve their problems it's a hard discussion to have. Choosing the book by its cover does not always give you the content you require.

Jason Francis-Sutton
Head of Business Intelligence
Homeloan Management Limited