Business Intelligence business case can be a simple subject, when a business function is looking for creating a data-mart. In this case the demand comes from business and business has worked out their mathematics to justify the needs. The main issue comes when you are building a business-case for foundation investments for an end-to-end platform.
The example of foundation investments include meta-data repository, enterprise data warehouse platform, enterprise reporting tool etc.. These investments can be of significant order. The responsibility of preparation of business-case comes upon a hurridly appointed “BI champion’, who could be CIO, CFO or a major business-head.
Some hard-hitting justifications include regulatory and compliance adherence, customer satisfaction, customer cross-sell and up-sell and avoiding financial write-offs.
Quantifying and ‘justifying’ the business benefits is also a challenge, and one can apply tricks like involving an external vendors and asking specific questions from business owners.
I have placed a page on some of the hard-hitting justifications on the BI, and also some tricks on how one can enhance the benefit quantification impact. Please refer Building Business Intelligence Business case in my portal www.bipminstitute.com.
