7 Critical Problems Damaging Your Business Intelligence Integration

In recent years, companies around the world and across every industry have adopted business intelligence (BI) to improve every aspect of their organizational processes. However, even the strongest BI solutions need to be implemented properly to work right.

BI software pulls crucial insights from data across all technology being used by a company for improved strategies and a dependable view of historical, current, and forecasted business operations. But without the right integration strategy, data can be compromised, incomplete, and unreliable.

The following are critical problems commonly encountered in BI integration and what you can do to avoid them in your business. By preventing, or removing them, you can take full advantage of what business intelligence can do for you.

1. Different Data Sets and Formats

By its nature, BI is designed to pull from many pre-existing solutions, but this means that the data being extracted will usually be in different formats. While this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be incompatible with each other, it does mean that data won’t be easily compatible right away. BI managers will need to set processes in place that will clean and organize all extracted data so that the resulting information will be easy to understand, compile, and turn into actionable insights.

2. No BI Stakeholders

Strong BI solutions can take on a huge number of systems and a massive amount of data. But simply consuming as much data and connecting as many systems as possible isn’t an effective strategy. Having a strategy that takes the types of solutions into account, how and when each will be integrated, the types of data being used, and what types of insights will be created is crucial to decide on before beginning a BI integration process. Without a thorough strategy, mistakes and holes in integration can be easy to make.

3. Poor Data Quality

One critical issue in BI integration has nothing to do with the integration itself. Instead, it’s all about the data being used. If your business intelligence system is pulling incorrect, incomplete, and otherwise poor data from one or more of your systems, then the insights being created from that data, even if it’s also leveraging good data from other systems, will lead to incorrect conclusions. The more that a business relies on their BI insights in decision making, the more damaging bad data can be.

4. Data Siloing

Data silos are common issues found in companies who use multiple disconnected systems, which leads to important information being kept in standalone storage. Data integration is designed to eliminate data siloing, but it can be easy for companies to not integrate all of their systems either out of fear or forgetfulness. The result is that data silos can remain, undermining the quality of BI insights that are otherwise possible via integration.

5. No Key Metrics to Focus On

All that data must serve a purpose, and without key metrics that are being created by your business intelligence, these integrations will not have something powerful to create. Key metrics provide a focal point for these data integrations and help companies better understand the types of insights they are creating for their business. Key metrics that are created by a BI solution can always be changed as business goals shift, but having these metrics in focus will provide guideposts for integration and BI usage.

6. Lack of Data Security

With so much data flowing through your integrated systems, it’s crucial that proper security systems are in place. While the solutions you’ve already had in place and the data storage you were using to keep valuable information may already have security, your integrations may expose weaknesses that weren’t there before. The amount of sensitive information often needed for effective BI usage means that a data leak could be disastrous for a company. Don’t overlook the security measures your BI tool provides and make sure to implement all security features during your implementation.

7. Poor End User Training

Now that your BI solution has been properly implemented and is integrated with the data you need for powerful insights, you need to make sure it’s being used correctly. Even the easiest-to-use system can be rendered useless in the hands of team members who simply don’t know how to use it correctly. So make sure that you supply good end user training, often supplied by the BI tool’s manufacturer, to get everyone onboard and using the software correctly. The result is an empowered team that knows how to use their power to its fullest extent.

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