Designing a Federated Business Intelligence Development Strategy

Presentation Summary

Michael Wonderlich, University of Illinois

Your centralized Business Intelligence team has created some very successful BI products for your university and your constituents are using your tools to create great BI products to share with their colleagues. Now they want to incorporate their localized BI content into your centralized BI delivery. Finding a way to empower the divisional BI developers to publish their BI products with as few obstacles as possible, yet maintaining the integrity and security of your enterprise BI platform can be a challenge. This presentation will explore the possibilities of partnering the divisional and central BI teams with the goal of creating a highly successful, federated BI strategy by creating a partnerships with defined roles and objectives.

Through the use of Relationship Managers a partnership is established between the central BI team and the divisional BI teams. These groups work to support each other and eliminate redundant work between divisional and central BI development. This organization supports a strong central infrastructure while meeting the BI needs of the university at all levels. It places the BI development as close as possible to the audience for which it is intended to benefit. The result is a BI culture that permeates the university leading to better information sharing and better decisions.