As we begin to emerge from the other side of the economic downturn, companies are looking for new avenues of opportunity, and BI can help unveil where these avenues lead.

I like the way Jill Dyche, a well-known business intelligence proponent, describes the benefits BI delivers: “priceless.” In a recent interview, Jill says she is seeing first hand how BI is delivering competitive advantage. However, many companies tend to jump too fast into BI solutions before they’re ready – successful BI requires enterprise data integration and governance. “The best opportunities for BI are for supporting business growth,” Jill relates. The adept use of BI tools answers key questions such as: “Who’s the next customer and what will they buy?”

Companies need to make sure they’re ready for BI from an organizational perspective before they go in and invest money in tools and technologies. Jill puts it this way: “BI tools are not recommended when they’re the first topic in a BI discussion. We’ve had several ‘don’t-go-into-the-light’ conversations with clients lately where they are prematurely looking at BI tools rather than examining their overall BI readiness.”

Jill raises some good points, as many companies make the mistake of throwing money at systems and software that end up as shelfware. That’s the reason so many organizations have every conceivable BI package sitting around, with no coherent strategy for employing these tools to move information across enterprise boundaries. Worse yet, managers and professionals grow frustrated with the tools and rely on an old standby – Excel spreadsheets.

In instilling a BI-aware culture that can be best served by a BI tools investment, managers need to consider and act on the following questions:

Is there a plan for enterprise or master data management? Data needs to be reconciled from across the enterprise, to ensure consistency and that all business units are working with a single version of the truth.

Who will have access to the BI solution? The current problem with BI now is that it is only available to a few select analysts or executives, who use the data to make historical analysis for their decisions. The more employees that have access to analytical data – or applications that reflect analysis – the more likely a BI solution will deliver results. Does the solution enable widespread enterprise licenses, or will its use be restrictive?

How will the information be acted on? Will BI information be quickly made available to appropriate decision makers, or will it be backward looking, relating to last quarter’s results? The organization needs a strategy to effectively integrate BI-generated data into real time dashboards, portals, or applications.

Will the solution be as easy to deploy and use as Excel? Many decision makers simply find it easier to dump data into their own spreadsheets than to fuss with a new system that seems complicated or slow to respond.

Will decision makers be able to build their own reports? An issue with many BI tools is managers and professionals often need to rely on their IT departments to generate reports. Backlogged IT departments often take days, or even weeks, to produce information. Self-service capabilities can greatly increase the chances of BI solution adoption.

As organizations move into the coming economic recovery, BI solutions will help them realize the new opportunities that evolve. However, effective BI solutions require well-governed enterprise BI cultures.