0. Benchmarking BI: How to Identify Critical Success Factors and Calculate ROI of Your BI Initiatives
Dr. Bjarne Berg
COMERIT

1. In This Session …
Attend this session to gain insight into key benchmarks for BI project staffing levels, support requirements, BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
A tool to calculate ROI, NPV, IRR, and Payback for SAP BI
Estimate return on BI investments using three different metrics – replacement cost analysis, new capabilities analysis, and decision option analysis
Benchmark your BI performance against best-of-breed and industry averages for project timelines and execution, costs and staffing levels, and ongoing support
What is covered in this session?
Advanced tips and trick in Query designer and BEx Analyzer
The advanced tips and tricks are explained using business scenarios
Overlooked and obscure features are brought to limelight
Lots of demos to explain BExGetData and other topics

2. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

3. BI Spending is Increasing and Gaining Momentum
KEY FACTS
50% of the 2,600 respondents in TechTarget’s annual survey said that they would increase their BI spending by at least 10%
TechTarget.com, 2012
39% of CIOs in a SnapLogic survey said that BI was the #1 priority
BI initiatives are also the #1 priority, ahead of cloud computing, in Gartner's survey of 2,335 IT managers and CIOs
Bimeanalytics.com, “CIO Insights”, 2012
Corporations are looking for a competitive edge with BI. For example, IDC estimated that BI spending increased by 6.9% to $1.8 trillion in 2012

4. Why Are Companies Investing in BI?
FACT: If you want to become a large organization, you need BI as a cornerstone in how you manage
Examples
43% of retail companies with revenues under $250 million use Excel as the core BI tool
13% of mid-sized retailers use Excel as their core BI tool
5% of retail companies with revenues over $1 billion use Excel as the core BI tool
Source: RSR Sponsored by SAP
Key Question: How is SAP BI enabling large organizations to grow and manage better than smaller companies?

5. The Relationship Between Sales and Use of BI
FACT: Pushing BI and analytics to operational line managers and store managers increases sales
Examples
Retail organizations who outperformed their peers in sales growth had 53% usage of BI at line manager levels
Retail organizations who outperformed their peers in sales growth had 52% usage of BI for store managers
Source: RSR Sponsored by SAP
Saturating BI at all levels of the organization creates focus and pushes decision making downwards; it makes the company more agile!

6. But, Is Business Intelligence Really Worth the Cost?
In the annual BI survey by the Business Application Research Center (BARC), it was found that most BI investments are relying on soft justifications
Faster BI
More accurate reporting
Improvements in business decision making
Improvements in customer satisfaction rates
Few were able to justify BI initiatives with hard Return on Investment (ROI) calculations, i.e., tangible cost reductions
BARC, Bi-survey.com, 2012
After 20 years of BI and Data Warehousing, CFOs and CEOs are now demanding proof of benefits before investing more in these technologies

7. But, Is Business Intelligence Really Worth the Cost? (cont.)
BI capabilities have to have hard tangible benefits in order to sustain the current level of enthusiasm and funding
The trick to do this is to not align benefits to reporting, dashboarding, and tools. Instead, focus on operational improvements and make the benefits measureable
CEOs and CFOs are increasingly asking for real evidence that BI and Analytics helps reduce costs, increases profits, and actually contributes to the enterprise and is not merely a non-value cost area.

8. BI — ROI Calculators
There are many BI ROI calculators and tools available on the Internet
Some are vendor and tool specific, while others are focused on BI and Analytics in general
Some calculators are very complex and comprehensive, while others are simplistic and easier to use
Depending on the size of your initiative, a more comprehensive calculator may be more appropriate.

9. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

10. The Current BI Time-to-Market is Too Slow…
A key complaint is that BI development is simply too slow
Currently BI time-to-market is measured in months instead of the time scale businesses operate (days/week)
Source: SAP AG
For costs to go down, and ROI to increase, we have to get better at delivering BI solutions faster
BI Self Service is a key component to reduce time-to-market
Source: B. Oosterhof, Informatica
SAP BI Self-Service for power users and authors is key to fast delivery and higher BI ROI

11. Time to Market — We Are Simply Too Slow …
It has been estimated that 66% of development costs can be reduced by using an Agile or a Rapid Application Development approach for BI
Furthermore, up to 500% of the time-to-market can be reduced through rapid prototyping instead of writing functional specs
Source: B. Oosterhof, “Agile and Operational BI,” Informatica, 2011
For data warehousing, ASAP and JAD may be appropriate methodologies, but for business intelligence Agile, Scrum, RAD, and interactive prototyping are almost always the most cost effective answers
I.e. Scrum, Agile
Source: Dr. Berg, Data Management Review Magazine

12. BI Time to Market — Realizing Benefits Earlier
Benefits (i.e., sales) should be measured both in terms of the time when benefits emerge and the magnitude of benefits
Don’t just write the estimated benefits, track the benefits of previous BI initiatives
Most business sponsors believe IT projects are full of rework and missing features
You have to change their mentality from building systems to doing BI: New features are always added
Source: Michael Krigsman, "75% believe IT projects are 'doomed'. 2011
The Business Case for BI should require some tangible way to quantify what these are and when you should be seeing them in a way that can be measured

13. ROI on BI Projects — Replacement Cost Analysis
The easiest form for ROI Analysis is to take the cost of a BI investment and simply compare it with the costs of the existing one
After this project analysis, we can now estimate the ROI based on a 3-year payback period

14. ROI on BI Operations — Replacement Cost Analysis
In this case, we are replacing the current RDBMS with HANA, so the past costs and future benefits are easier to quantify
To account for the cost of capital, we discount all future savings by 10% compounded annually. This is known as the Net Present Value (NPV).
We divide the NPV with the investment to get the simple ROI.

15. Option Theory — The Inherent ROI of BI
There is an intrinsic value of increasing the time from discovery to time-when-action-is-required
This value is created by simply having more time to evaluate more options before action is required
Issue or Opportunity Discovery
Option found
Action Required
Decision made
No BI
Time
Time to analyze
Time to
Evaluate
Time to Implement
Issue or Opportunity Discovery
Option found
Option found
Option found
Action Required
Decision made
With BI
Time
Time to analyze
Time to
Evaluate
Time to Implement
Option Theory: With BI, we discover opportunities earlier, get more time to make decisions, can evaluate more options, and have more time to implement them

16. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

17. A Step-by Step Example of ROI Calculator
In this example, we are using the BI ROI calculator from Hall Consulting and Research
It is one of the most comprehensive BI calculators available and relies on a 6-step approach:
Profile
BI Initiative Selection
BI Maturity Assessment
Initiative costs
Initiative Benefits
Analysis and Report
Source: Hall Consulting and research
In this demo example we will look at the major activities of this tool, but there is also an enterprise edition with even more capabilities

18. A Step 1a – The Profile – Organization
In this ROI tool we first enter the organizational profile. This include:
Industry
Location
PC users
BI users
Financial Information and cost structure

19. A Step 1b – The Profile – Financial Information
From HR we enter the key labor cost numbers including:
Salaries
Overhead
Standard hours per year
These Labor Costs are used throughout the tool for estimates of ROI, Net Present values (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and benefits graphs

20. A Step 1c – The Profile – Preliminary capabilities assessment
Using simple scores or investments and importance, we quickly build a capability as-is and to-be BI Capability Profile that we guide us in the BI ROI benefits case
Having a basic understanding of the current environment will help us focus our BI initiatives later.

21. A Step 1d – The Profile – Preliminary BI maturity assessment
Using basic scores and answering a few questions, the maturity profile is generated
Building, or enhancing, systems in a mature BI organization is substantially less costly than in emerging organizations.

22. A Step 1e – The Profile – Results
The profile generates a preliminary cost per user, a cost for the organization and the overall benefits.
This will automatically be updated by the next steps where we refine hardware, software and implementation costs
Throughout the tool, the system updates key numbers from other Excel tabs and change graphs accordingly
KPIs per users are key to benchmarking

23. A Step 2a – BI Initiative and Application Selection
The next major step is to determine the BI applications in scope for our initiative.
Business cases and BI strategies should not be focused on a single project, but instead look at major initiatives over months.
Strategy is long-term (1-5 years);
Tactics is short-term (1-12 months)

24. A Step 2b – BI Source System Selection
It is estimated that as much as 40-70% of a BI and DW initiative is spent on Extracting, Transforming & Loading data (ETL).
In this screen we are adding data sources from a high-level and making an assessment of the type, volume, complexity and integration to the DW.
This helps drive a more accurate cost picture of what is required to integrate into the BI solution using key benchmarks

25. A Step 2c – Enhancements to Data Warehouse
In this section we are looking at changes required to the data warehouse to accommodate our BI initiatives.
It also include process improvement, metadata management and enhancements required to data marts and data structures.
The tool also has help and explanations included in each tab to guide a users to the tasks required in these input sheets.

26. A Step 2d – Enhancements to BI and Analytics
In the last initiatives input tab, we enter the changes required to BI and Analytics. This include:
Reporting
Scorecard/Dashbaords
Analytical Tools
Workflow and collaboration
We are now ready to view the output from the exercise so-far

27. A Step 2e – BI Initiatives Profile
The system then generates a BI capability profile of what the current state of the BI environment is and what capabilities the initiative will focus on.
These profiles can help communicate with the sponsor the focus of your initiative

28. A Step 3 – BI Maturity Assessment
By filling out a survey based on objective questions, a BI maturity profile is automatically generated.

29. A Step 4 – BI Initiative Labor Costs
Default values workload by week are selected based on scope, scale and complexity of initiatives. However, these can be changed by planners.
Detailed Graphs are also created based on labor estimates.

30. A Step 4 –Software and Hardware Costs for BI
By filling out a detailed guided spreadsheet with cost numbers for storage, application servers, database, software, utilities, support, desktop software, training and more, these graphs are generated for user costs.

31. A Step 5a – BI Initiative Benefits Input - Revenue
A key to justifying BI spending is to identify tangible and credible revenues generated by the investments.
Work with your finance and sales groups to get numbers you can justify to your management team.

32. A Step 5a – BI Initiative Cost Savings and Productivity
In addition to revenues, benefits can also be expressed as:
Cost avoidance (easy to quantify)
Cost savings (harder to quantify)
Increased productivity (hard to quantify) also known as new capabilities ROI

33. A Step 6 – Final Step – ROI Analysis and Report
The last step is to review the final report. Key measures required in a business case include:
ROI
NPV
Bayback period
IRR
Costs
Benefits
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

34. Calculating ROI with a Spreadsheet Tool

35. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

36. Benchmark Your Organization Against Eight Companies
In this example we are looking at key benchmarks from eight companies that are using Business Intelligence and Analytics instead of a traditional list reporting and Excel
The organizations range from 1,200 employees to over 80,000

37. Savings for Knowledge Worker by using BI
While the hours saved per knowledge worker ranged from 1.0 to 3.0 hours in our sample, best of class knowledge workers spend 1.3 fewer hours per week looking for pertinent information compared to knowledge workers in all other organizations
Source: The Aberdeen Group, Aug. 2012

38. KPI — BI Cost Per Knowledge Worker
A key measure of costs of ownership is the cost per knowledge worker. In our sample, that ranged from $4,271 to $908 per employee.
This included helpdesk, training, desktop licensing, software maintenance, change requests, print costs, and estimated additional developer support
It did not include hardware, new development, data center operations, backup, recovery, network costs, and upgrades to software components by IT staff
From a Total Cost of Ownership, you should also include the cost of executive and casual users (tends to be lower per user but you will have more casual users). You can find the number of users in your SAP EarlyWatch report.

39. ROI for BI Investment by Knowledge Worker Labor Savings
Using the expected ratios of the knowledge workers relative to other workers, as well as their average salaries, labor savings per week, and the overall cost per knowledge worker, we found an overall ROI
This ROI is for Knowledge workers alone and does not include additional benefits from better access to cleaned data, ability to do collaborative decision making, or more timely decisions and better agility of the organization
Plan for a comprehensive business case for SAP BI, but labor hours are the easiest to quantify

40. KPI Benchmarks of ROI by BI Platform Type
ROI of BI depends largely on the number of BI systems and data warehouses you maintain
“Best-of-breed” BI and data warehouses use whatever tool is best in its class. This includes ETL, reporting, management, database, scheduling, admin, etc.
Integrated BI and DW systems use a single platform
Integrated BI has significantly less costs and higher long-term ROI (on average)
Source: SAP AG, Enterprise Business Intelligence ROI white paper
Using a single BI and DW platform instead of Federated Data Warehouses can significantly increase the ROI of BI

41. The Various Costs of BI by Platform Type
Direct Costs
Acquisition costs
Infrastructure costs
Implementation and Deployment costs
Support and Lifetime costs
Uptime, Reliability, and Performance costs
Indirect Costs
Shadow IT costs
Compatibility costs
Lost Opportunity costs
Source: SAP AG
Improve ROI:
The trend for most organizations is to simplify the BI landscape, reduce the number of tools, and go to a single DW and BI platform

42. A Health Check: Is Anyone Using your System?
Real Examples
Named Users: 14,503
Real Users: ,509 (52%)
Active Users: 1,309 (9%)
Named Users: 1,672
Real Users: (47%)
Active Users: (11%)
Named Users: 67,534
Real Users: ,912 (75%)
Active Users: 6,279 (9%)
Named Users: 2,330
Real Users: (33%)
Active Users: ( 6%)
Named Users: 549
Real Users: (23%)
Active Users: ( 4%)
Source: SAP AG
User trend reports are found in the SAP EarlyWatch report – It is a Health Check to see if your initiative is failing or succeeding

43. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

44. BI Project Durations for ROI Planning
While there are many considerations for various BI projects including skillsets, budget constraints, available resources, scope and number users, there are some basic rule-of-thumbs you can use in your ROI calculations
Each BI project requires its own milestone plan and detailed project plan. However, for high-level budgeting these durations may help your business case.

45. BI Project Durations for ROI Planning (cont.)
For reporting and analytics, the data scope and the availability of existing skilled staff and existing infrastructure will drive much of the timelines
Each BI project requires its own milestone plan and detailed project plan. However, for high-level budgeting these durations may help your business case.

46. What We’ll Cover … Introductions
Return on Investments (ROI) of a BI project
A Tool to Calculate ROI, NPV, IRR and Payback for SAP BI
Key benchmarks — BI project staffing levels and support requirements
BI project durations (upgrades or new implementations)
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

47. Where to Find More Information
Asim Abdel Rahman El Sheikh and Mouhib Alnoukari, Business Intelligence and Agile Methodologies for Knowledge-Based Organizations: Cross-Disciplinary Applications, IGI Global; 1 edition (September 30, 2011)
Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G Harris, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (March 6, 2007)
Computing The ROI for IT Projects and Other Investments
Another calculator for ROI calculator on BI projects

48. 7 Key Points to Take Home
ROIs on BI projects must be based on tangible and measurable benefits
ROI should be calculated at a program level and tracked over time
There are many tools available to help you do this – Don’t reinvent the wheel
Benchmark your BI initiatives in terms of project duration, cost per employee, labor savings, ROI, payback periods, and BI platform type
Be prepared to back up your business case with hard facts from the business users and avoid a technology focus
Replacement projects and cost avoidance efforts are easiest to quantify
Some projects are done out of operational necessities and ROI may not be required (audits, SOX, compliance, financial SEC reporting, etc).

49. Please remember to complete your session evaluation
Your Turn!
How to contact me:
Dr. Bjarne Berg
Please remember to complete your session evaluation

50. Disclaimer
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.