How do you prioritize BI use cases for business success?

1 Define your business objectives

The first step in prioritizing BI use cases is to clearly define your business objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). What are the main problems or opportunities that you want to address or explore with BI? What are the specific metrics that will measure your progress and success? How do they align with your overall vision and mission? By answering these questions, you can establish a clear direction and scope for your BI initiatives and avoid getting distracted by irrelevant or low-value use cases.

2 Assess your data availability and quality

The next step is to assess your data availability and quality. Data is the fuel for BI, so you need to ensure that you have access to the relevant, reliable, and timely data sources that can support your use cases. You also need to evaluate the quality of your data and identify any gaps, inconsistencies, or errors that might affect your analysis and insights. You can use data profiling, cleansing, and governance tools to help you with this task. By assessing your data availability and quality, you can prioritize the use cases that are feasible and realistic with your current data assets and capabilities.

3 Estimate the value and effort of each use case

The third step is to estimate the value and effort of each use case. Value refers to the expected benefits or outcomes that the use case will deliver for your business, such as increased revenue, reduced costs, improved efficiency, or enhanced customer satisfaction. Effort refers to the required resources and time that the use case will consume, such as data preparation, analysis, visualization, and deployment. You can use a simple scoring or ranking system to quantify the value and effort of each use case and compare them against each other. By estimating the value and effort of each use case, you can prioritize the use cases that have a high value-to-effort ratio and offer a good return on investment.

4 Consider the stakeholder involvement and buy-in

The fourth step is to consider the stakeholder involvement and buy-in. Stakeholders are the people who will be affected by or involved in the use case, such as business users, managers, customers, or partners. You need to identify who they are, what their needs and expectations are, and how they will use or benefit from the BI solution. You also need to ensure that they are engaged and supportive of the use case and that they have the necessary skills and tools to adopt and use the BI solution. By considering the stakeholder involvement and buy-in, you can prioritize the use cases that have a high demand and acceptance among your target audience and that can drive user adoption and satisfaction.

5 Validate and refine your priorities

The final step is to validate and refine your priorities. You can do this by testing and prototyping your BI solutions with a small group of stakeholders and collecting their feedback and suggestions. You can also monitor and measure the performance and impact of your BI solutions and compare them with your expected value and effort. You can use these results to validate if your priorities are aligned with your business objectives and KPIs and to refine them if needed. By validating and refining your priorities, you can ensure that your BI use cases are delivering the desired outcomes and that you are continuously improving your BI strategy and alignment.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?