Where there is no vision, the IT organization will perish

Does your organization know where it is going?   Too often we in the IT world are so busy putting out fires that we forget that we have to plan.   The inevitable Proactive vs Reactive environment.   So in order to be proactive and make plans, you need to know where you are going.   What is the plan for upgrading your infrastructure?  What is the plan for your ERP?  What is the plan for reporting?   What is the plan for security?   Do you have business units on multiple technology platforms that might need to be consolidated.   These are the kind of questions that need to be answered when looking at your plan.   That plan is called a vision statement.  What is the vision of your IT organization.  I have attached a link for a vision statement below.   If you don't have a plan for where you are going, then you might wake up one day to realize that you haven't moved or that you have moved and you are now walking in a circle.  Your upgrade path has only succeeded in giving you a larger circle.   Start with the basics and then build from there.



What Is a Vision Statement?

Where there is no vision, the people will perish

The old biblical saying is true even in your IT organization.  Someone in your organization has got to have a vision for the future of BI in the company.    What happens if there is no vision?   One word for you, "Tangents."   There are a million and one systems that your organization can use.  Most of them have some sort of reporting functionality attached.   These vendors need to refer to the BI roadmap for your organization.   What?  you don't have a roadmap?   Well you need one.  Realize that if you don't drive your vendors.  Your vendors will drive you.   Your IT department can only support X number of systems.  The only reason for X+1 is a lack of vision.

Joe, I inherited this lack of vision.  How do I get to goodness?   Here is Joe's happy path:

1) Analyze your current environment.  What are the systems and who uses them.
2) Ask yourself, which reporting environment do I want to use for Adhoc reports, General Reporting, and Dashboards.   NOTE: You can have 3 different tools for the three different needs.
3) Develop a plan to get down to 3 reporting systems.  Push as much reporting to your data warehouse as possible.  After all, that is the purpose of the DW.  Your new favorite word is "Sunset" because your the new hatchet person for sunsetting reporting tools.  Sometimes you need to merge a legacy data warehouse into the EDW.   That depends on your business and where you want to move as an organization.
4) Before you purchase a new system, All Vendors will report through the data warehouse - bar none.

After you come up with your new vision and roadmap, socialize this to the business.   Be the new Evangelist for Clean reporting.   Call it the Common Core Reporting.  Feel free to steal that one if you want.


Joe