Business Intelligence Competency Centres (BICCs) & Better Business Information: Breaking the Silos

Say it Together

It’s no secret. Let’s say it together “My name is ______ and I suffer from silos of information.” Doesn’t it feel better to say it out loud? The information in the form of data, processes and people is locked up in different parts of your company just waiting to be discovered. Sometimes it is simply unused, it may be used dangerously (since it probably contains unreliable information), and at times it is part of a report that IT create to highlight just how bad the problem actually has become. I can’t count the number of times that I sat down with someone in IT or a business systems role who would desperately proclaim “We have a couple hundred information systems and DB’s, and we might know how half of them are being used by the business!”


We have to realise that there was probably a good reason to invest so much time into this legacy system, and at one time it was used fervently by the business. What your concern should be is that it has been thrown into the corner of the closet like that high school Rugby shirt. While I’m not proposing that the shirt should be binned (which is probably what your partner advised), there should be an assessment as part of larger strategy to determine its longevity and use in future games. Leave the nostalgia behind!


How can a BICC Help?

Creating a Centre for Business Intelligence, or as it is commonly referred Business Intelligence Competency Centres (BICC) should be part of your strategy to unlock hidden information, centralise BI control , processes & systems, and extract value from the entire framework of information. The truth is that this is no easy task, and this approach has only recently caught on in the Australia. It requires a strong team led by “C”-levels (especially the CFO/CIO), IT Managers and Business Managers across the company. Recognition of the silo problem is the first step, but it needs to be followed by an analysis of the skills required to run a BICC, how to get funding to effectively run a BICC, and the limits of control and governance of the BICC need to drawn. If we pretended the BICC were a person, s/he would have the strongest leadership skills in the business, be able to talk business & IT, have extreme credibility, and be able to manage and communicate analytical needs.

The challenge of setting up will allow your organisation to reap the rewards of better business information, data integrity, cost savings and reliable enterprise business intelligence.

To learn more about how a BICC can break the silos of information and deliver enterprise business intelligence, contact me for a workshop.