Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center

Approaching your BICC

The most successful Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICCs) are pragmatic development efforts that mature over time. The following guidelines can help you build your own successful BICC:

  • Start small
  • Think strategically
  • Accelerate systemically

Because BICCs affect organizational culture, small simple steps will yield greater return. To earn the trust of business intelligence users, your BICC needs an early win to establish a reputation for success. This reputation is important for helping to convince users to adopt your BI standard. Subsequent successes then hinge on choosing the right follow-up projects for your BICC to support.

Before you begin the process of building a BICC, you should consider the following questions:

  • What is your current BICC situation?
  • What are your objectives in forming the BICC?
  • What is the scope of your BICC, based on your organizational needs and environment?
  • What roles and personnel will be involved in the BICC? As an absolute minimum, the BICC should be comprised of a BICC director or manager, a business analyst, and a technical consultant.
  • What are your funding options for the BICC?

You should identify your organization’s perception of the BICC and the maturity level of the effort. Is a BICC a new concept to your organization? Or do you already have a BICC in place – perhaps under another name - and want to improve it or expand its scope?

Implementing your BICC

Establishing a successful BICC depends on the right planning and implementation. Organizations that take a measured, well-managed approach are most likely to succeed.

Cognos, the leading provider of business intelligence software, has developed a Solutions Implementation Methodology (SIM) to guide you through the implementation of Cognos solutions. This methodology follows five standard implementation phases:

For more information on building your BICC, see the Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center white paper from Cognos.