BI Guest Corner - Six Sigma Business Intelligence

Dear friends,
Today I have the honor to publish an article submitted by Alexis Bonari exclusively for this our blog. The subject purposed has been taking increasingly importance in the BI world… The benefits and challenges of six sigma certification in relation to BI is discussed below. Take five minutes and read it... is it worth reading:

Many educational institutions that teach Business Intelligence are taking on a new challenge: quantifying Business Intelligence quality. The most obvious way to quantify or define the quality of Business Intelligence is to create a marriage between the concepts that define Business Intelligence, and the popular Six Sigma Black Belt program.

Six Sigma strategies are defined by their adherence to a statistics-driven model. These models are designed to eliminate resource waste and streamline operational performance within a company. A marriage of Six Sigma statistical strategies with Business Intelligence principals would provide a mathematically based model for cost-effective Business Intelligence implementation. There are two main challenges inherent to applying the Six Sigma model to Business Intelligence.

1. How should the Business Intelligence product be defined?
Although much of the literature surrounding Business Intelligence relies upon terms and definitions that seem to defy strict quantification, data still represents the foundation upon which the definitions are based. Six Sigma techniques can be applied to this foundational data, thereby defining the Business Intelligence product.

2. How should we define the success of Business Intelligence?
The needs and desires of the client define the success of Business Intelligence. Therefore, quality can only be determined if the factors that clients care about are adequately identified. These factors generally include pre-defined industry standards such as performance, accuracy, clarity, availability of data, etc. Metrics can then be used to measure these factors.

A high quality Business Intelligence model will deliver these collated metrics to team members who are in the best possible position to act on them effectively. Six Sigma techniques are well positioned to judge how effectively the information is passed along. As more managers are trained in Six Sigma Business Intelligence, businesses will be better able to efficiently transfer data to the appropriate hands. By streamlining the processes employed in Business Intelligence strategies, companies will effectively reap many benefits that can be passed along to their customer base.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about general education issues as well as information on college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.