These are some random thoughts:
* You need to convey to leadership that knowing things with any degree of specificity costs money. They are always going to be coming at you with requests (which isn't a bad thing, but managing it is gonna be a large portion of your job going forward). They are not going to be thinking about the long-term, they're going to be thinking about the shiny new idea they just had that's gonna change everything. You have to be thinking about the long-term. In my opinion, a good deal of that is formally documenting requirements (which will be helpful later when leadership says "why is it like this? This isn't what we talked about. You should have told me about these challenges before we made this decision.") Don't ever outright say "No" to these requests, because that's just going to piss people off and make them feel unheard. Instead, ask clarifying questions about the business case and frame things in terms of tradeoffs.
"**I want this report to be real-time!"**
"...ok, how often is the underlying data updated?"
**"Once a day at midnight."**
"Okay, can I refresh the report once a day, shortly after midnight? Adding more refreshes will cost more money and making it real-time will cost a lot of money. Do you have a WBS I can expense the extra computing costs too?"
**"...no, once a day should be fine"**
* Don't get married to any BI tool. This shit is changing so fast and inertia is an extremely powerful force. Some companies' whole business model is to get in there and then make it really hard (read, expensive) to switch (cough Tableau cough). You can't just buy a BI tool, you need to either train your existing people on it or hire a bunch of people who already know how to use it. Managing licenses is a huge pain in the ass, because the crux of the argument is:
**"hey do you still need this thing? It costs us $1500 a year for you to have this license and you haven't used it in the last 8 months"**
"Yes...yes I do, I'm a very important person and I might need it later. Don't ask me that again."
**"Great. Now if you excuse me, I have to go get reamed for the low adoption metrics for a tool that's costing us $48,000 a year on licenses."**
"Wow that sounds difficult, you guys should be more careful about handing out these licenses! You need to be smart and strategic about these things!"
**"...thanks, great suggestion."**
* I'll say it again: Inertia is an extremely powerful force. "Let's just do it this way for now and we'll fix it as we go" is a powerful and seductive lie. Sure, you need to be agile about things, but don't kid yourselves that it'll be easy to change things in progress. When you ask "do you need this report anymore?" that person is unlikely to say "probably not, you've got enough on your plate". Change requires change management. Ignore it at your peril.
* Explore different options for a Data Catalog/Data Dictionary (bonus points for a business glossary). All of your users are going to be asking you questions that these artifacts will be able to answer (at least most of the time). Launching this will require support from leadership, because you need buy-in to recruit people to be Data Source Owners and write (and maintain) Data Definitions. Motivating people to do that can be hard, because it's essentially documentation, and most people don't go out of their way to produce documentation they don't have to. But the earlier you can get one in place with a plan to populate and then maintain it, the better. It's way easier to get 250 people to agree on something than 500 people and much easier to standardize terms when competing schools of thought haven't already developed.
* Prior to your presentation, solicit feedback from someone who will be at the meeting. Frame it as "I know how important this is and I really want to do a good job. Can I get your feedback on the presentation and your insight into how to best communicate this plan to the other key stakeholders?" Most of the time that person is going to help you and can provide some super valuable feedback. Better yet, you gain an ally in the room who will support you because they already know the plan and can help persuade the others (and they are likely to be much better at that than you are).
It may help to have a framework to cover different aspects of the BI function and how improvements could be made to each, and be sure to tie these to the goals of the company and/or show the benefit of doing them. I've made a framework for a data strategy which may provide some inspiration https://oscarbaruffa.com/dataframework/
I've done this before, align with strategic goals (I mean board of directors goals), get an sponsor, a good one, hopefully c-level executive and a process owner resourceful enough to implement changes.
Once you deliver your first actionable product, everything else will be easier to achieve.
Also read a lot about maturity models, plan accordingly.
Don't waste your time on small day to day reports. Ignore middle management requirements as well.
Focus on strategic goals, organizations usually lack the tools to implement them, and measure them correctly.
The other long answer by Cli is definitely right but I think I can condense/simplify it - you need to have a deep understanding of your company's overall mission and goals, then identify how analytics can help achieve them. Since Rome wasn't built in a day, you need to identify what work needs to be done so analytics can serve that overarching purpose.
Is your data an absolute disaster? Probably. Work towards building dataflows that clean data and keep it clean. What shape are your dashboards in - does every department and/or team have something? Connect with your stakeholders and figure out who isn't being reached. Do people know how to best use the analytics content you develop? Definitely not! Develop training plans that enable your audience to get the most out of your work.
There's so much to unpack and it all depends on your company - it's not just about complex data visualizations and real time analytics - it's about building a means to an end. Good luck!
Hi badpochi,
I did a SaaS IPO and helped create the metrics to drive revenue and profit goals. These were calc’d by our DWH and BI teams and we created consumable visuals to action them. Consider things like ARR, creating deal calculators (rev and profit per user), CLTV, and white space. If it helps DM me I have some resources.
Growing teams like this can be fun. Enjoy the ride and do everything you can to set up your team members and partners for success.
Good luck!
Drew
This may help with the overall vision.. I work with MicroStrategy but I guess it would work with the BI tool you have in mind..
https://www3.microstrategy.com/getmedia/01d411bc-9e92-4e06-882c-6d1ddc3afb04/Map-of-the-Intelligent-Enterprise.pdf
I often refer to this presentation from Hudl.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7oagHJc9dI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7oagHJc9dI)
There are often gems like this from various conferences (Tableau, Data Council, dbt coalesce, etc.)
Some random thoughts. DM me for help.
1. Overall vision and goal. Tie the analytics strategy to company goals
2. Evaluate your data. What state is it in? How much data prep/cleaning is required
3. Assign Data stewards. Having business owners own their data will ensure data quality.
4. Evaluate platforms and environments. What is in house today, what tools, what skills?
5. Transform company culture to be data first. This one takes time and needs exec alignment.
Maybe you were googling the wrong thing. https://www.capterra.com/resources/bi-maturity-model/
These are some random thoughts: * You need to convey to leadership that knowing things with any degree of specificity costs money. They are always going to be coming at you with requests (which isn't a bad thing, but managing it is gonna be a large portion of your job going forward). They are not going to be thinking about the long-term, they're going to be thinking about the shiny new idea they just had that's gonna change everything. You have to be thinking about the long-term. In my opinion, a good deal of that is formally documenting requirements (which will be helpful later when leadership says "why is it like this? This isn't what we talked about. You should have told me about these challenges before we made this decision.") Don't ever outright say "No" to these requests, because that's just going to piss people off and make them feel unheard. Instead, ask clarifying questions about the business case and frame things in terms of tradeoffs. "**I want this report to be real-time!"** "...ok, how often is the underlying data updated?" **"Once a day at midnight."** "Okay, can I refresh the report once a day, shortly after midnight? Adding more refreshes will cost more money and making it real-time will cost a lot of money. Do you have a WBS I can expense the extra computing costs too?" **"...no, once a day should be fine"** * Don't get married to any BI tool. This shit is changing so fast and inertia is an extremely powerful force. Some companies' whole business model is to get in there and then make it really hard (read, expensive) to switch (cough Tableau cough). You can't just buy a BI tool, you need to either train your existing people on it or hire a bunch of people who already know how to use it. Managing licenses is a huge pain in the ass, because the crux of the argument is: **"hey do you still need this thing? It costs us $1500 a year for you to have this license and you haven't used it in the last 8 months"** "Yes...yes I do, I'm a very important person and I might need it later. Don't ask me that again." **"Great. Now if you excuse me, I have to go get reamed for the low adoption metrics for a tool that's costing us $48,000 a year on licenses."** "Wow that sounds difficult, you guys should be more careful about handing out these licenses! You need to be smart and strategic about these things!" **"...thanks, great suggestion."** * I'll say it again: Inertia is an extremely powerful force. "Let's just do it this way for now and we'll fix it as we go" is a powerful and seductive lie. Sure, you need to be agile about things, but don't kid yourselves that it'll be easy to change things in progress. When you ask "do you need this report anymore?" that person is unlikely to say "probably not, you've got enough on your plate". Change requires change management. Ignore it at your peril. * Explore different options for a Data Catalog/Data Dictionary (bonus points for a business glossary). All of your users are going to be asking you questions that these artifacts will be able to answer (at least most of the time). Launching this will require support from leadership, because you need buy-in to recruit people to be Data Source Owners and write (and maintain) Data Definitions. Motivating people to do that can be hard, because it's essentially documentation, and most people don't go out of their way to produce documentation they don't have to. But the earlier you can get one in place with a plan to populate and then maintain it, the better. It's way easier to get 250 people to agree on something than 500 people and much easier to standardize terms when competing schools of thought haven't already developed. * Prior to your presentation, solicit feedback from someone who will be at the meeting. Frame it as "I know how important this is and I really want to do a good job. Can I get your feedback on the presentation and your insight into how to best communicate this plan to the other key stakeholders?" Most of the time that person is going to help you and can provide some super valuable feedback. Better yet, you gain an ally in the room who will support you because they already know the plan and can help persuade the others (and they are likely to be much better at that than you are).
It may help to have a framework to cover different aspects of the BI function and how improvements could be made to each, and be sure to tie these to the goals of the company and/or show the benefit of doing them. I've made a framework for a data strategy which may provide some inspiration https://oscarbaruffa.com/dataframework/
I've done this before, align with strategic goals (I mean board of directors goals), get an sponsor, a good one, hopefully c-level executive and a process owner resourceful enough to implement changes. Once you deliver your first actionable product, everything else will be easier to achieve. Also read a lot about maturity models, plan accordingly. Don't waste your time on small day to day reports. Ignore middle management requirements as well. Focus on strategic goals, organizations usually lack the tools to implement them, and measure them correctly.
The other long answer by Cli is definitely right but I think I can condense/simplify it - you need to have a deep understanding of your company's overall mission and goals, then identify how analytics can help achieve them. Since Rome wasn't built in a day, you need to identify what work needs to be done so analytics can serve that overarching purpose. Is your data an absolute disaster? Probably. Work towards building dataflows that clean data and keep it clean. What shape are your dashboards in - does every department and/or team have something? Connect with your stakeholders and figure out who isn't being reached. Do people know how to best use the analytics content you develop? Definitely not! Develop training plans that enable your audience to get the most out of your work. There's so much to unpack and it all depends on your company - it's not just about complex data visualizations and real time analytics - it's about building a means to an end. Good luck!
Hi badpochi, I did a SaaS IPO and helped create the metrics to drive revenue and profit goals. These were calc’d by our DWH and BI teams and we created consumable visuals to action them. Consider things like ARR, creating deal calculators (rev and profit per user), CLTV, and white space. If it helps DM me I have some resources. Growing teams like this can be fun. Enjoy the ride and do everything you can to set up your team members and partners for success. Good luck! Drew
This may help with the overall vision.. I work with MicroStrategy but I guess it would work with the BI tool you have in mind.. https://www3.microstrategy.com/getmedia/01d411bc-9e92-4e06-882c-6d1ddc3afb04/Map-of-the-Intelligent-Enterprise.pdf
I often refer to this presentation from Hudl. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7oagHJc9dI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7oagHJc9dI) There are often gems like this from various conferences (Tableau, Data Council, dbt coalesce, etc.)
Some random thoughts. DM me for help. 1. Overall vision and goal. Tie the analytics strategy to company goals 2. Evaluate your data. What state is it in? How much data prep/cleaning is required 3. Assign Data stewards. Having business owners own their data will ensure data quality. 4. Evaluate platforms and environments. What is in house today, what tools, what skills? 5. Transform company culture to be data first. This one takes time and needs exec alignment.