How Can a Project & Technology Roadmap Keep Your BI & EPM Strategy On Track?

[A Strategic View of BI & EPM – Part 3 of 6]    

zen meditation garden, relaxation and meditation through symplicity harmony and balancce lead to health and wellness, spirituality and concentration background with copy spaceOur previous article in this series discussed how creating a Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Strategy gets your BI and EPM activities aligned with corporate goals and business opportunities. Going the next step – developing and implementig a Project and Technology Roadmap – gives the Strategy legs and assures your BI and EPM solutions will come on-line at the right time to help you maximize results.

If a Strategy exists only as a document or PowerPoint deck, it’s less likely the right actions will be taken to realize the goals of the strategy. Without a Roadmap there’s a risk of misaligned priorities, under-investing in the right projects or wasting limited budget on low-return efforts.

A BI and EPM Project and Technology Roadmap aligned with your BI and EPM Strategy identifies specific opportunities and defines potential projects. At a high level the Roadmap anticipates resource needs, identifies technology gaps and opportunities, and includes a general project schedule based on priorities, expected payback, and prerequisites. It gives you a view of what it will take to be ready to execute your projects successfully.

On the business side, the process to develop a BI and EPM Project and Technology Roadmap results in identifying concrete opportunities to improve performance analytics, business planning, internal processes and data quality. How well does each project support strategic business goals? Can similar projects be grouped together, to leverage greater impact and reduce implementation time and cost? What dependencies affect the timing of projects? What is the ballpark of expected payback or return on investment of each project (or group of related projects)?

On the IT side, the Roadmap takes into account the software, systems and data sources required to support the projects and deploy the envisioned solutions.   Are the appropriate technologies already in-house or should new technologies be considered? If new technologies may be brought in, how will they align with legacy systems, practices and policies? Do the right source data and meta-data exist or will additional effort be needed to assure correct and complete data?

Let’s not forget about the people component. Development of a BI and EPM Roadmap is an opportunity to align the organization on needs and priorities, and achieve initial buy-in across the business and IT groups. It also provides a way to determine skills needed for projects and enable early planning for finding the right external guidance and assistance.

When is the right time to create (or update) the Roadmap? Just as a BI and EPM Strategy aligns with the annual corporate strategic plan, the BI and EPM Project and Technology Roadmap should be updated at that time as well, immediately following the BI and EPM Strategy or as part of that effort. The Roadmap will then inform your annual budgeting process, when tactical priorities for the coming year are decided and planned. As BI and EPM projects are approved, the Roadmap should then be updated to reflect projects scheduled or pushed out.

How effectively are you driving toward your enterprise analysis, reporting and planning goals? How could a BI and EPM Project and Technology Roadmap help your organization stay on track and make forward progress?

 

Read other articles in this series:

Part 1 :  How Can BI & EPM Help You Build a Performance Edge?

Part 2 :  Who Needs a BI and EPM Strategy?

Part 4 :  Why Do Data Governance and Master Data Management Matter?

Part 5 :  How Can Aligning Reporting and Metrics Improve Enterprise Performance?

Part 6 :  How do you Build and Sustain Best Practices in BI and EPM?