A Collaborative Approach to Business Intelligence Software Selection

Clayton County Water Authority (CCWA) provides clean, quality drinking water and wastewater collection and treatment to its estimated 275,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Clayton County, GA as well as portions of Fulton County and Henry County. CCWA recently developed a performance management model that identifies strategic and operational metrics aligned with its strategic goals for each department. To effectively track and communicate organizational performance against these metrics to stakeholders, CCWA sought to select an enterprise business intelligence (BI) software to be deployed across the organization. The first step to successful selection and implementation of an enterprise BI software was to develop a robust understanding of CCWA's existing software architecture. Data characterization workshops were held to identify software systems and databases used by each department and distinguish them by hosting environment, user groups, integration with other databases or software systems, general functions, workflows, and reporting needs. This information served as the basis for creating a detailed software architecture map, which provides CCWA with valuable insight into their existing system and a vision for how an enterprise BI software would tie into their existing infrastructure. Information gathered during the data characterization workshops was also critical in defining the BI software evaluation criteria. An initial list of performance criteria was developed based on industry experience and narrowed to focus on key areas of interest for each department within CCWA. The final criteria included a variety of attributes for enterprise BI software including: - Compatibility, which focuses on the ability of the software to integrate with CCWA's existing system and transform data into the correct structure required for creating dashboards. - Development and Maintainability, which includes support for a mature formula language, a scalable and flexible data model structure, integrated metadata capabilities, and consideration for staff resiliency. - User Interface, which centers on the ability of the software to create compelling, easily understood, interactive visualizations of CCWA's strategic and operational metrics. - Ecosystem Capabilities, which considers the ability of the software to enable platform security, administration, and sharing in cloud-based and on-premises environments, and the ability of the software to integrate machine learning techniques. - Market Stability, which focuses on how well the company that owns the BI software has supported its development and innovation in the past and the company's vision for the future. Taking time to gather input from a variety of stakeholders including Board members, general management, department directors, and CCWA staff was critical to the successful selection and implementation of the enterprise BI software. Clearly demonstrating how stakeholder input from the data characterization workshops was incorporated into the BI software evaluation criteria promoted interest, buy-in, and trust across the organization. This presentation will discuss the collaborative approach used to evaluate and select an enterprise BI software including data characterization, development of selection criteria, software evaluation and testing, selection of a final enterprise BI software, and development of a roadmap to ensure successful implementation.