Best practices when offshoring business intelligence Essay

Ted Kempf in his article in VarBusiness credits Gartner Dataquest with the following definition for Business perception a user-centered process for of exploring data, data relationships and trends, thereby helping improve boilersuit decision making (Kempf, 2001). US companies today are setting up line of products-intelligence technology for the purpose of processing the incessant flow of information they receive. These companies knit this information so they can maintain and build customer relationships and pee sound line of reasoning decisions in a timely manner.A Gartner Dataquest guinea pig revealed that the primary reason for companies investing in business-intelligence applications is to ensure they have unattached the information to assist them in making real-time business decisions. eve though the current trend is to outsource IT initiatives overseas to save costs, the principle in doing the same for business intelligence is questionable. This is because business in telligence (like data ware housing) is not a technical exercise and requires business knowledge. It is reiterative and business-focused in nature (Consilvio, 2003).She insists that offshoring BI presents the biggest risk for ETL (extract, transform and load) because it is grossly underestimated. For this reason, Robert Mitchell, in his article in Computerword, even goes as far as verbal expression that the threat for offshoring is overstated (Mitchell, 2006). In her article for Computerworld, Maria Consilvio lists some of the outflank practices for offshoring business intelligence. They include ? develop up tight specifications ? Start with an hail similar to staff-augmentationDefine service trains which are appropriate for your expectations. ? Keep an shoreward presence as representation for the business knowledge. This enables the life cycle to be quick turn. ? Ensure that the development squad is reactive to feedback so that business feedback can be translated to technica l specifications. ? Offshore the long term projects with more(prenominal) stable requirements. ? Ensure requirements are defined to such a level that the technical resource does not necessarily have to have the business knowledge.Determine beforehand the restrictions placed on exiting the contractas such contracts may not have defined end or start dates as a result of the fluid nature of BI. ? Audit offshore tools and, as more than as possible, insist on scalable tools. ? Equip the onshore team with systems integration, project management and deliver management skills In support of the scoop up practice procedures above, William McKnight of McKnight Associates suggests the following as excerpted from his 2003 article in ComputerworldON-SITE * Set up benchmarking and service-level criteria * cave in business rules * Maintain (create/translate) business knowledge * carry users in data warehouse decisions * Ensure application support by and by development OFF-SITE * Set up an enf orcement mechanism for business rules * Establish expertise in tools, such as data cleansing, automated extractors, dashboards and real-time delivery * Application development * Application support and project aliment REFERENCES Consilvio, Jean.(2003). BI Last to Leave. Computerworld, December 12. Kempf, Ted. (2001). Business-Intelligence Apps Companies want them, but are uphill integrators prepared to deliver? VarBusiness, November 6. McGee, Marianne Kolbasuk. (2006). You Vs. Offshoring U. S. tech pros are surprisingly upbeat, and pay is on the rise. But the job outlook is anything but warm and fuzzy. InformationWeek, April 24. Mitchell, Robert L. (2006). Why exhaustively Technologists Are Hard to Find. Computerworld, March 20.