BI Projects That Drive Financial Transformation: Insights from a PMO Leader
In this Expert Insights Series installment, Jon Thompson hosts Tracy Hockenberry, Senior Program Manager at Eaton (85,000 employees worldwide) and former Senior Director of Enterprise PMO at New Story Schools, an Audax portfolio company that worked with Blue Margin to focus the team on the critical value creation metrics.
If financial transformation is a path to value creation in the middle market, then innovative data strategies and effective BI project management are strong predictors of a successful outcome. LBMC Transaction Advisory Services Practice Leader Lisa Nix has noted that the lack of investment in financial systems, data analytics, and processes is common in the middle market and becomes an operational challenge shortly after deal closing. A scalable, cloud-based data architecture becomes necessary for buyers to deploy successful integration strategies and realize pre-closing deal synergies.
Read on for an expert’s view on the vital role that project management plays in BI development and, by extension, financial transformation.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are Tracy’s and do not necessarily represent those of Eaton or her previous employers.
Watch the full interview on YouTube, listen to the podcast, or read the highlights below.
Structuring BI Projects for Financial Transformation
“The shortest way to getting to results is taking time for design.”
Tracy Hockenberry
Financial transformation hinges on well-designed projects. Starting well equates to ending well. Tracy recommends five steps to structure a BI project for success.
The first is identifying your data mobilizer: the person in your company who understands both the business strategy and the numbers and is best suited to act as a bridge between the data and the growth plans. The second is engaging all project stakeholders from the start. While limiting participants can shorten the project cycle, key stakeholders should be involved early to create buy-in and prevent backtracking later.
Third, align on goals and outcomes before moving forward. This is a critical step: do not proceed before aligning your project requirements with the executive team’s goals and expectations. Fourth, define project roles and responsibilities clearly. RACI charts are particularly helpful in outlining who is accountable for decisions, who needs to be consulted, who is responsible for performing the work, and who needs to stay informed on progress.
Fifth, drive organizational and individual change. To ensure your project drives behaviors and decisions that improve outcomes such as increased sales or decreased delivery times rather than just producing outputs like dashboards and a data warehouse, build change management principles into your design from the start. Do not overlook people’s natural resistance to change.
Inspire User Adoption: Get Your Employees to Actually Incorporate Data in Their Work
People do not change without new inputs. If you want your BI project to drive meaningful change, it comes down to adoption.
“Organizational change requires individual change. But why should an individual change; what’s in it for them? Organizational change is collective individual change.”
Tracy Hockenberry
Tracy recommends using relationships to build a bridge to adoption. Sitting down and listening to end-users’ perspectives on the current state and their pain points provides insights into the project requirements that will stimulate adoption. It is also important to keep dashboards simple and clear, centering on the top two to three metrics. For more information on increasing adoption, listen to the podcast episode: Four Simple Ways to Improve BI Adoption.
Hiring an External BI Partner: Why and How
Some projects can be managed in house, while others benefit from outside expertise and specialization. In an overwhelming trend, most firms rely on outside partners to implement their data strategies, with only a small minority completely owning their data management functions internally.
To evaluate whether your firm should seek outside support, Tracy recommends asking three questions: what do you need to accomplish and how quickly, do you have the skillset internally and if not do you have time to onboard or uptrain staff, and what is the cost of increasing internal resources versus outsourcing? She concludes that if you are looking for specific business intelligence capabilities and the time and cost to staff internally is outweighed by the benefit of orienting the team to key metrics, hiring a partner maximizes ROI.
LBMC’s John Mark McDougal has noted that having strong technology, reporting, and processes becomes critical during the periods when significant decisions must be made quickly. If you decide to work with an external data partner, Tracy advocates for an open flow of communication, standing check-in meetings, clear point people on each side, and a RACI chart to stay aligned on responsibilities.
Start Your Data Analytics Project Without Clean Data
“Start with a well-planned project, then clean up your data as you go.”
Tracy Hockenberry
At the beginning of a project, the reality is you rarely have the clean data you need. While clean data is ultimately critical to employee adoption, experts advocate for not letting a lack thereof hold you back from meaningful progress. Consider using the project itself to expose data quality issues and cleaning up the sources as you go, not the other way around.
Once her team’s project was mapped, Tracy used this approach and dove in. Moving quickly meant learning lessons along the way, but the gain outweighed the pain. Based on that experience, Tracy recommends that others do not delay exposing their data to the team. In her words, “Fail fast and fail forward.”
“To lead any business initiative, start by thinking about your current state of data. Data intelligence is key to drive business decision-making and strategy. Is what you’re doing now with data appropriate for your current state? Are you going in the right direction, solving the right problems? Is it scalable?”
Tracy Hockenberry
If you would like to talk with Tracy or Jon about financial transformation, how to avoid BI project pitfalls, or how Blue Margin can help, feel free to reach out.
About Blue Margin
Blue Margin helps PE and mid-market companies quickly convert data into automated dashboards, the most efficient way to create company-wide accountability to the growth plan. We call it The Dashboard Effect, the title of our book and podcast. Our mission is to accelerate your value creation plan.
