Business Intelligence Competency Centers: Centralizing an Enterprise Business Intelligence Strategy

Enterprises today continue to invest in business intelligence (BI) initiatives with the hope of providing a strategic advantage to their organizations. Many of these initiatives are supporting the tactical goals of individual business units and not the strategic goals of the enterprise. Although this decentralized approach provides short term gains, it creates an environment where information silos develop and the enterprise as a whole struggles to develop a single version of the truth when it comes to providing strategic information. Enterprises are turning toward a centralized approach to BI which aligns with their overall strategic goals. At the core of the centralized approach is the business intelligence competency center (BICC). This paper details why the centralized BICC approach should be considered an essential component of all enterprise BI initiatives. Examining case studies of BICC implementations details the benefits realized by real world companies who have taken this approach. It is also important to provide analysis of the two BI approaches in the areas of BI process and BI technology/data and people relations. The findings indicate the benefits of the centralized BICC outweigh the deficiencies of the decentralized approach. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2650-8.ch005