What is a BICC?

Below is the continuation of the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of Business Analytics and Competitive Advantage. The presenter is Mark Flaherty, Chief Marketing Officer at InetSoft.

Mark Flaherty (MF): Now it’s also important to understand what the BICC is made up of. This is not just an IT group. From a terminology perspective I distinguish between BICC and a COE or center of excellence by the focus as far as the expansion. COE could be an IT organization that is a center of excellence that runs a shared service that different lines of business will access in order to get their reports or to get their information or to run their applications.

When I talk about BICC, it’s more of an infrastructure from an organization and skills perspective. So you have the IT skills that they understand the administration, the security, the governance of data, and they also manage the tools and the systems. But you also need analytical skills from a business perspective, for instance people who understand data how to slice and dice it, how to do statistical analysis and how to tie that into what the particular business needs are.

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And business skills are very, very important as well. You need to make sure that you have the business involved in this organization as a member because they understand what the business requirements are, they understand how the business operates, they understand how this information is used and how these tools are used based on the abilities and the capabilities of their users.

So you put users from each of these organizations or the skill-sets within a BICC, and they will manage the strategy, the training, the solutions, the requirements gathering, establishing standards and also the marketing and evangelizing of business intelligence within the organization.

This sounds pretty complex and comprehensive, but you don’t have to start with all of this in place at once, you can start with a single project. Start establishing these standards. Start establishing these users and these organizations at a small level and build them as you mature and get the visibility and return on your investment that will help you to reinvest in building this out further.

So now let’s talk a little bit about a process to really help you dive into business intelligence within your organization to understand where the quickest wins are for focusing your energies on the top priorities. Start out with the current BI needs, baseline analysis. From our experience working with companies from different industries, we have noticed what are the typical BI challenges and pains that a particular line of business will have.

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Whether it’s sales, marketing, finance, operations, or IT, whatever it is, through these common questions you can understand how painful these BI challenges are for them. And they will rate them. They will score them, and then we also ask the question about what is the business value of closing this gap, how beneficial is it, or what is the importance to you to close this gap, and they rate that as well.

This questionnaire allows us to come up with a gap analysis to show that wow, in this top right quadrant, we had the most painful business intelligence challenges but also the most beneficial to solve. So let’s starts focusing our energies on those versus these others that could be very painful but low value to solve or low impact.

Next do the same thing with your BI strategy. Basically we are taking the best practice categories and asking you questions as far as how do you develop this, how far have you executed, and what’s the value of closing this. And again, we do the gap analysis for both the BI needs, the BI strategy, and the execution to determine what the business priorities or the strategic priorities should be for you based on your own or the organization’s own rating of the gaps.

Finally, we reiterate what the business challenges are, the value of solving these business challenges and the recommendations to help you get started on solving those.

BI Challenges That Sales Deparments Face

Sales departments face a multitude of challenges in leveraging business intelligence (BI) effectively to drive performance and achieve strategic objectives. While BI solutions offer valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and sales performance, navigating the complexities of data management, analysis, and implementation can pose significant hurdles. Here are some common BI challenges that sales departments encounter:

  1. Data Silos and Fragmentation: One of the primary challenges for sales departments is the presence of data silos and fragmentation across various systems and platforms. Sales teams often rely on disparate sources of data, including CRM systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, and external databases. Integrating and consolidating these disparate data sources into a unified BI platform can be a daunting task, leading to inconsistencies, data quality issues, and difficulty in obtaining a comprehensive view of sales performance.

  2. Data Quality and Accuracy: Ensuring the quality and accuracy of sales data is paramount for effective BI analysis and decision-making. Sales departments often struggle with data inconsistencies, duplication, and inaccuracies, which can undermine the reliability of BI insights and compromise the effectiveness of sales strategies. Cleaning and validating sales data to eliminate errors and discrepancies require dedicated effort and resources, but are essential for deriving actionable insights and making informed decisions.

  3. Lack of Real-Time Data: Timeliness is critical in sales, and relying on outdated or stale data can impede sales performance and responsiveness to market dynamics. Many BI systems struggle to provide real-time or near-real-time access to sales data, leading to delays in decision-making and missed opportunities. Sales departments require BI solutions capable of delivering timely insights and updates to support agile decision-making and proactive sales strategies.

  4. Complexity of BI Tools and Dashboards: While BI tools offer powerful capabilities for data analysis and visualization, the complexity of these tools can be overwhelming for sales teams, especially those with limited technical expertise. Sales professionals may struggle to navigate complex BI interfaces, create customized reports, or extract actionable insights from data visualizations. Simplifying BI tools and dashboards to make them more intuitive and user-friendly is essential for enabling sales teams to leverage BI effectively and drive performance.

  5. Lack of Analytical Skills: Another common challenge for sales departments is the lack of analytical skills and data literacy among team members. While BI solutions provide advanced analytical capabilities, sales professionals may lack the necessary skills to interpret data, derive meaningful insights, and translate them into actionable strategies. Investing in training and development programs to enhance data literacy and analytical skills within the sales team is crucial for maximizing the value of BI investments and driving sales effectiveness.

  6. Alignment with Sales Processes and Goals: BI solutions must be closely aligned with sales processes, goals, and KPIs to deliver meaningful insights and drive performance improvement. However, achieving this alignment requires a deep understanding of sales operations, customer dynamics, and market trends. Sales departments often struggle to define relevant metrics, establish performance benchmarks, and design actionable reports that align with strategic objectives. Collaborating closely with sales leadership and stakeholders to define clear objectives, metrics, and performance targets is essential for ensuring that BI initiatives support sales effectiveness and contribute to organizational success.

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