In 2010 I started an assignment for USG People. They were having trouble with their business intelligence teams, and asked me to straighten things out.
The European HR world, as the rest of the economy, was still in crisis but the country management of USG People Belgium believed strongly in working smarter so they invested heavily in business intelligence. Only, the results did not follow their investments… The teams weren’t cooperating, the tools were unstable and their design did not support the new vision, morale was bad and stakeholders were starting to lose faith.
My assignment was simple: set things straight! Or, more specific: form strong teams, create an environment in which cooperation for these teams is natural, update the tools to support current and future demand in a stable manner, create return on investment and make the stakeholders interested again. Quite a challenge but it is what I do best!
Starting out I talked to all the members of the different teams and the stakeholders, including country management. The vision was there, but it had never been translated into a mission. If I have learned one thing in getting people on the same page, it is that you need a mission: a simple statement that defines why you spend time together and what you strive to achieve. So with the results of all the talks, I drafted a mission statement.
Apart from that a project was defined to create a new business intelligence tool and another project to create a business intelligence organization. To carry out these projects we hired a skilled project manager with strong knowledge of the business intelligence domain. We secured funding for the project and started working.
The teams had to be dealt with as well. With the new mission in place I started organizing teams in a way so that people would be empowered to deliver their best work. Gaps in the process were defined, functions and roles to fix them were created and people were hired or trained to take up these functions and roles. People that did not perform to the standard were let go. Making clear what needed to be done, taking the team members along in the bigger picture, enabling them to perform at their best and creating short feedback loops created a positive atmosphere and a buzzing creativity. This also lead to better cooperation over the different teams as the mutual understanding of what they did and what challenges they faced grew, what resulted in better end products. The better end products, some with instant benefits for the company (drastic drop in unpaid invoices due to better insights), together with the open communication, regained the interest of the stakeholders which made it easier to secure budgets and to continue the development of the new business intelligence environment.
6 months after I took the assignment, the teams were in place and morale was good.
After 12 months a BICC (Business Intelligence Competences Center) was installed, uniting all teams involved in business intelligence, performance management, business analysis, financial controlling and reporting. This virtual team had clear and simple processes and ensured short and direct communication lines. On the side, a beta version of the new business intelligence environment was released to the members of the BICC.
18 months after the assignment the first version of the business intelligence environment went live after intensive test cycles and the BICC procedure got an update after evaluation.