by Angela Guess
David Loshin wrote an article regarding the sometimes tricky process of identifying the data requirements for business analytics. He writes, “When the key stakeholders in the organization have agreed to pursue a business analytics strategy, the strongest urge is to immediately embark upon a quest to evaluate and acquire tools. The business intelligence (BI) tools acquisition process is a well-defined one, with clearly defined goals, tasks, and measurable outcomes. The problem, though, is that while a successful acquisition process gives the appearance of progress, when you are done, all you have is a set of tools, but you still have no analysis.”
Loshin continues, “Identifying the data requirements for your business analytics needs will guide the BI process beyond the selection of end-user tools. Since data acquisition, transformation, alignment, and delivery all factor into the ability to provide actionable insight, one must view data selection and acquisition to be as important as tools acquisition in developing the business analytics capability.”
Loshin point to several concepts to keep in mind when identifying data requirements, the first being measured variables: “Providing performance reports and scorecards or dashboards with specific performance measures implies the collection of information needed for the computation of reported variables; enumerating those calculated variables is the first task, as the dependencies will be tracked backwards to identify which data sources can satisfy the needs of the downstream consumers.”
photo credit: nathanmac87
