Business Requirements

DecisionPath Consulting is widely-known in the industry for our thought leadership on the subject of requirements. It is an area where many have struggled, and our clients have had success by adopting our approach. Specifically, detailed requirements consist of:

• a detailed description of the business information, business analyses, and business decisions that the specific BI increment must deliver and support; and
• a high-level business process model for the target process that will use the BI application to improve business performance

Detailed requirements are usually stated as business questions that need to be answered to perform a business analysis that will support business decisions that lead to actions that improve business performance. They are much more than just a simple list of data elements. There is a very specific connection between a business process that has a profit impact and the BI that would be deployed within the business process to improve profit. That connection is what we call the business value capture mechanism. How must current business processes change to leverage BI to increase profit?

The detailed requirements are absolutely critical in that they determine what physical IT processes and databases get built on behalf of the business users. They also describe which business processes must change and how they must change and the intended use of the information once it becomes available to business users. Unfortunately, it is very common that organizations do not have a common understanding of the intended use of information. Rather they simple expect the flexibility to perform “ad hoc” analysis as needed. This lack of clarity makes it impossible to determine the potential business value of a BI application. It also explains why many BI applications go unused once training is complete. Given their importance, the requirements must be complete, well-considered, and clearly-defined.

The BI Pathway Method includes a proven process whereby DecisionPath works with the business and IT communities at your company to capture and document the detailed requirements. Using our proven process, we collaboratively build detailed BI requirements documents that serve as the foundational inputs to the data architecture, data modeling, design, and implementation activities that move your BI initiative from concept to reality. The requirements documents are typically approved by the business community, and thus they form a compact between the business and the BI team governing what will be built and how the BI will be used to improve organizational performance. This approach substantially increases the likelihood that the BI application will pay off, and it serves as a solid foundation for your entire BI initiative.