Thirteen years after my first Gartner BI Summit, the summit in London a week ago was a walk through memory lane. Yes, the technical innovations, trends and challenges that were being discussed were miles ahead of where we were back in 2001. But then again, despite big data, flashy, mobile-enabled dashboards and the ever-growing data discovery solutions, companies must be prepared to optimally leverage these innovations to be able to remain competitive and effective in their approach to business analytics. What use is the most flexible data discovery tool if there is no data governance, no common defined KPIs and untrained users who don’t know what patterns to look for? The lack of skilled resources, the role of data scientists, and the improved self-service capabilities of the solutions in the market place call for strategy that must not be departmentally driven, but central to an integral part of the overall corporate strategy. In my eyes, it was therefore a Must to attend the session on “BICC2.0 or Analytics Center of Excellence” by Neil Chandler. While the overall theme is still very much the same as in 2001 when I first came in contact with this topic, a growing number of organizations have started adopting a BI Competency Center (BICC). And, the results are in: In addition to more BI users and higher business user satisfaction, organizations with a BICC report significantly higher budgets for analytics, their innovation roadmap is more aligned to current trends (advanced analytics, in-memory, etc.), and their attention to business process improvements is 50% higher in the organization. Gartner’s annual BI Excellence Survey has shown a clear correlation between organizations with a BICC and their BI excellence. Furthermore, Gartner sees an increasing shift of alignment to the CFO that has shown to be more transformative.

But, “one size does not fit all” and the most effective approach will depend on the specifics of the organization, the technical capabilities, available skill sets and businesses processes. One thing is clear; within our hyper-connected world where technology innovation is driving new business models, eradicating business models of the past, every organization must embrace analytics as a central part of its strategy and organize effectively to ensure it stays ahead of the game. Where is your company when it comes to organizing for effective, agile business analytics to lead the market?

Marc Haberland is the Managing Director of Clariba. Marc has more than 15 years experience in Business Intelligence (BI), analytics, strategy management and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) across telecommunication, education, healthcare, manufacturing, banking and public sectors. Marc leads a team of 30+ BI and analytics experts who deliver innovative, reliable and high-quality business analytics solutions, providing its customers with clarity and actionable insight to improve their business performance.

As an industry thought leader, Marc shares his insights on hot topics and trends through various speaker engagements, publications, discussion groups and his company blog.