Business Intelligence Strategy & Roadmap

Your project's Business Intelligence (BI) Implementation strategy must be efficient if you want to get the most out of your BI investment. We propose using a concise Strategy & Roadmap for implementing your BI project. Your business operations will be streamlined if you use Addend's implementation framework.

Step 1: Environment Selection: Selecting the Proper Environment for the BI Platform

The initial set of tasks focuses on determining the best environment for the BI platform. You have the option of using an On-Premises, Cloud, or Hybrid environment. It’s possible that your environment choices will change. We consult with you to explore if you’ll be able to switch from one choice to another in the future.

Step 2: System Architecture: Plan for availability in the system architecture

Let’s architect your BI platform!

Configuration

  • To optimise the BI platform, we use the application parameters.
  • Set up data connections to data warehouses, ERPs, CRMs, and other systems.
  • Connect to the web server, exchange server, and mobile server over the internet.
  • Set up connectivity across your instances: PROD, DEV, TEST, and so on.
  • Define the BI platform's content database. The artefact, user, and permission specifications for the BI platform are stored in the content database, which is an application database.
  • Version, Patches, and Feature Management

  • To perform properly, certain BI platforms require a specific combination of operating system patches and BI application versions.
  • Some technical support also necessitates the creation of exact patch combinations.
  • You can leave this to BI partners like us who would do an excellent job of releasing new versions with new features and problem fixes!
  • The BI team must keep track of new releases and ensure that the BI platform is updated to the most recent versions.
  • Security Model A: Application Security

    Security protections are built-in to your BI platform. We will ensure you're getting the most out of them:

  • Authentication is the process of verifying that the users are who they claim to be.
  • Authorization entails granting the appropriate permissions to authenticated users.
  • Role-based security is a matrix structure that defines a user's permissions depending on the role they play.
  • Content-based security refers to content-level security that permits particular personnel to access content.
  • Security Model B: Enterprise Security

    The overall company security approach does not include BI security. Ascertain that the BI platform is compatible with the overall server, infrastructure, and environment security. We would consider working with your corporate security team or you to ensure that BI security is consistent with corporate security policies.

    Step 3: Data Architecture: Build your BI Building Blocks with Data Architecture

    Dimensions, metrics, hierarchy, and connections are all BI building pieces that must be developed before they can be utilised to create BI content like reports, dashboards, and self-service datasets. The building components also assist BI developers and users in clarifying their data by restructuring it in a logical manner.

    Dimensions

    Your business entities are commonly referred to as dimensions. Your dimensions include customers, products, regions, suppliers, staff, time, and so forth. Dimensions will be used in the production of artefacts later, with developers just dragging and dropping dimensions into the creation area.

    Metrics

    Metrics are also known as measurements. You can report on them because they are number elements. Metrics include absolute numbers, monetary values, ratios, percentages, and so on. After you've built metrics, you can use computed metrics to calculate numbers you already have.

    Hierarchy

    Hierarchies enable you to study data by level and aggregate data based on the levels. The hierarchy is used to drill down. Geographic hierarchy, product groupings, time, and client groups are all examples of hierarchy.

    Relationships

    Relationships connect dimensions to one another. One-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships are all possible. Relationships can be obligatory or voluntary. Defining relationships aids the BI platform in producing the best query, appropriately aggregating data, and retrieving data.

    Step 4: Agile BI Development Methodology

    The development of BI artefacts will be done in an Agile manner. For iteration execution, we advocate adopting or building sprint practises. The sprint practises will show you how to manage your team and carry out the iteration.

    While developing sprint methods for a particular project, we consider following questions internally:

    • How long does each iteration last?
    • What are the iteration’s objectives?
    • How are we going to lead the iteration project team?
    • Which Agile methodology should we use?
    • Who is the product owner and scrum master?
    • What kind of working style should we use?
    • What are the unique concerns that apply to our company?

    Step 5: Production & Go Live: Hand over your BI Management to the Client Operations Team

    In this final phase, we will commence the hand over process. We will collaborate with your team and prepare your users to manage the application’s steady state performance as we plan the transition. We typically follow the 3 step process for the same:

    • Make a bundle for operations.
    • Conduct training for operations.
    • Identify SLAs

    If at this point, you are happy that all your processes can be worked through without a glitch, then we can go live with the systems. You go live and we hang around for a while to provide support to your users as they embark on a new journey with Microsoft Power BI.

    Step 6: Testing & Go Live

    In this phase we get the organizations and users ready for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. We perform QA testing to ensure that the systems meet all the requirements as promised. This is followed by User Acceptance testing to gain employee engagement and buy-in while improving final system functionality and user experience.

    Business Intelligence Strategy & Roadmap FAQs
    What is Addend Analytics’ expertise?

    Addend Analytics is a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Mumbai, India, and a branch office in the U.S. We have successfully implemented 100+ Microsoft Power BI and Business Central projects across U.S. and Europe.

    Do you work with Customers in the US?
    We work with 100+ customers across the US, Canada, UK, and Western Europe.
    What are your charges and are you expensive to work with?
    We provide a milestone-based, low-risk, fixed-fee solution. So, if we don’t deliver as per the agreed project milestones, we don’t get paid. Let’s get it straight! It’s NOT our model to provide a $50k project budget – that eventually gets delayed by months; has bugs during production use, is costly to add new features, has architecture scalability challenges later, and whose ongoing support is even expensive than the original implementation. This is the exact reason why we encourage you to do a free POC with us!
    Can you also provide ongoing support after the implementation phase?
    We provide Managed Services Agreement (MSA) contract to our clients where they can leverage our resources for further continuing months for any small upgrades, customization, etc.
    There is a very small overlap between timing. How would you cover up on that?
    Timings are not an issue because of 2 reasons – our methodology and client coordination mechanism. As far as methodology is concerned, we already described to you our agile methodology where we cut projects into portions and update them on weekly basis. In the client mechanism, we have one project and account manager who will always be your one touchpoint and you can express your grievances or issues to him directly by call or email. And above all that, even our members work on flexible timing modes to suit clients’ geographical preferences, so there is nothing to worry.
    How do we know you will assign the right skilled people to the task?
    This is our strongest point, and we boast about it. While sharing the proposal, we will submit you the list of folks working on the project and we encourage all our clients to explore our members’ Linkedin profiles and see the kind of work they have done and the experience they have! Please feel free to explore their blogs too! They all are Microsoft certified and some of them are even on their way to becoming MVP!
    What happens if we need urgent support in the middle of your night?
    Rarely do such occasions arise! But if they do, then please contact us on our direct phone. This phone is logged only for the urgent Grievance redressal mechanism for our clients. This means your inquiry and issue will be attended to within an hour.
    We don’t know you; how can we trust you will deliver on time and with the right quality?
    We, therefore, recommend doing a free POC so you get a taste of our working style. Secondly, please take a look at our customer base, testimonials, and references. I can even call them on a call with you if you need. You can have a background check and that will speak all.
    How do I contact you?

    Please email your requirements at kamal.sharma@addendanalytics.com and we will get back to you.