Business Intelligence (BI) refers to skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support decision making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system. Although there could be many factors that could affect the implementation process of a BI system, a research shows the following are the critical success factors for a business intelligence implementation:
1. Focus on business processes and requirements. Often companies get tied up in the technical capabilities and ignore how you want your business operations to run and what your key business requirements are. Once you have this defined, you can engage in a more effective BI system.
2. Focus on achieving a healthy ROI (Return on Investment). This requires developing a high-level business case, establishing key performance measures, setting baselines and targets for those measures, and tracking performance after go-live.
3. Strong project management and resource commitment. Ensure you have a strong project manager to support and participate in the project.