Pathways International Maturity Model
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| The Pathways International Maturity model. |
The Pathways business intelligence maturity model is a tool that we use to establish the technical, business processes and reporting level of an organization for us to be able to determine the best business intelligence processes and tools that fit.
The 7-step model uses a bottom up approach in identification of the levels and maturity of the business intelligence process for an organization.
1. Level 0:
Everything at this stage is manual. The business processes are manual, information is in physical files, there is simply no automation in the organization.
2. Born
Organization has automated data, in most cases spreadsheets are used a lot in data collection, presentation and reporting. Everyone does their own reports with their own gathered data, which results to conflicting views on data making it hard to rely on the information provided. The most common form of reporting at this level is operational.
3. Crawl
Organizations on this level are doing department based reports using off the shelf business intelligence reports.
Data is not accessed from a single source as every department has its own data warehouse and the organization risks downtime on their business processes and compromise of the business data as the data is queried from the operational databases.
4. Stand
Most business intelligence processes in the organization are trial and error based, the business is not sure on what works best for them. Due to lack of an enterprise data warehouse, the company shifts their business intelligence implementation focus to a specific department or area in the organization. Businesses on this level seek to see the use of management dashboards.
5. Walk
Businesses on this level understand the need for business intelligence and therefore they set up a business intelligence competency center that takes care of their business intelligence needs, capacity building etc. The organization adopts a centralized data warehouse and business intelligence solutions that are platform specific. For better reporting and information at a glance, they embrace use of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and dashboards.
6. Jog
Organizations on this level have had a taste of what business intelligence can do for them and are ready to get a full implementation. these organizations seek availability of information across the organization hence they implement centralized management system of data sources and master data management for uniformity across the organization. The company goes ahead to train their users on data processing and eventually business intelligence drives their daily operations.
7. Sprint
Organizations on this level have the confidence in business intelligence and every business process involves business intelligence. There is use of user customized reports due to information availability across the organization for analysis. These organizations are able to do what-if analysis to forecast the future before making any critical decisions. These organizations have achieved maturity and have a competitive edge on their competition.
Conclusion
The maturity model is a very important tool for any organization. A business is able to evaluate their needs and determine exactly what they need and what they already have. It serves as a guideline to making BI implementation decisions. Pathways developed this model as a guide to be used in business analysis of our partners who seek Business Intelligence solutions.
Author: Becky O. Abraham – Operations Lead, Pathways International LTD
