Most organizations have established an IT strategy, which aims to support the organization' continued and extended active involvement of IT in all business processes.

The IT strategy often describes principles, strategy and vision for the organization' IT use and represents a substantial part of the framework for the development and maintenance of the organization' business intelligence.

In the public sector one of the current overall political and managerial objectives is that digital administration must be used as a tool for tackling the challenges which the public sector face over the coming years.

Thus the IT strategy cannot be seen in isolation. The IT strategy must support the organization' other business strategies, and it is important that IT strategy not only supports rationalization of business processes but also supports the organization' complete governance model.

Many IT strategies provides a vision for

1.agile IT solutions that provide easy access to information - independent of time and place

2.IT as a strategic tool for the organization' production

3.IT as a strategic tool for change.

business intelligence

Many organizations have built a comprehensive "management information infrastructure", which - through the processing of data, mainly from the organization' production systems - aims to produce information to

1.support management of production and resources

2.deflect the external information requirements and demands

Technical and organizational prerequisites

The overall effectiveness and possibilities of the management information infrastructure is very dependent on

1.thorough knowledge of the organization' IT solutions

2.deep knowledge of the business processes

3.thorough knowledge of the actual registration routines and system use in the concrete business processes

4.(IT) systems and the organization of the business processes

In traditional enterprise systems the functions production, document management and registration are separated, which in its very nature, involve several sources of error and mismatch in the data as a basis for the subsequent data processing in the business intelligence systems.

Corporate IT strategy prescribes therefore often - and the more modern corporate systems often live up to this - that the above mentioned functions should be integrated, thus making it physically impossible to complete a business process without proper registration.

Older systems lack of agility requires often non-intended use of the systems when business rules, organization and workflows must be adjusted.

These problems are sought mitigated through the policies in the IT strategy prescribing that new IT solutions must be sufficiently agile to can handle such adjustments.

Thus corporate IT strategy is therefore also a strategy for the provision of better data support for the production of business intelligence, as well as to address a wide range of other challenges for the company's business intelligence.

Other prerequisites

Another limitation is that there in the nature of things can only be supplied quantitative business intelligence on what actually is registered. Only the data that can be collected and is collected can be counted and analyzed.

All experience tells us that the quality of

the registered data drops with the relevance and applicability for the employees that are wanted to make the registration.

Moreover, national legislation set out a number of restrictions in what can be recorded and how long the registered can be kept

Strategy for business intelligence

The requirements for corporate business intelligence are generally increasing rapidly in the light of increasing efficiency requirements and reporting requirements.

Automation of core production and publishing

Many organizations run by far the largest part of the core business intelligence production more or less automatically, and publishing takes place as far as possible by electronic means.

Countless successful data warehouse projects, have been conducted which enables quick, simple and well-documented production of valid reports.

However, there are still expectations and potential for further automation and not least for improved accessibility. The published reports are often requested to be made more usable for recipients by giving users the ability to interact with and further analyze the information and to apply the available asked business intelligence data into their own systems – e.g. word processor, spreadsheet, and others.

Simplification of maintenance

In particular in organizations with frequent changes in business conditions a lot of effort is undertaken to simplify, automate, and quality assure the very extensive maintenance tasks, resulting in the business intelligence systems each time there are changes in the organization, market conditions, public focus …

There are therefore large potential for efficiency improvements, to the extent that the documentation of business rules could be brought to be used as the basis for business intelligence-data processing systems.

Organizational handling of BI-requirements for systems

If business intelligence is recognized as a strategic factor, and if there are set high goals for the organization' business intelligence, it is inevitable to consider the organization of the business intelligence production itself.

When organizations are designing new systems and implement new workflows, it is easy to see that it can be crucial for the subsequent delivery of valid business intelligence, that the organization' organizational responsible for business intelligence (Gartner® refers to this unit as the "Business Intelligence Competency Center") is involved from the very start of the design. That the BICC in this context, in the vast majority of cases, will be able to provide immediate business value is an important point.

Service Level Agreements

Like others of corporate functions will business intelligence and the organization’ Business Intelligence Competency Center increasingly be met with requirement and should even themself seek Service Level Agreements. Such SLAs should, among other things, clearly declare which reports it is possible to produce in which quality – as well as the development and production costs in doing so.

Summary

The increasing demand, desire and expectation that there must always be easy access to all relevant information means that businesses must pursue a coherent information technology (IT) and business intelligence strategy, that amongst other things, aims to provide efficient administration and well-documented information on the organization’ business processes.

The challenges for corporate business intelligence will not diminish; but the tools and possibilities have been much better. There are good tools and "best practices".