A Common Sence Methodology for Business Intelligence

Step 1 Define the Project Scope
All successful technology projects begin with a definitive project scope. Spending time up front helps to mitigate risks and set expectations. Business Intelligence projects should be started by defining the problem set in terms of a clear problem statement, schedule, budget, and set of deliverables. The project team should use the following guidelines while defining project scope.

Manage the size of the project. Don’t let the scope get so large that the project team is spending more time working with users to understand the problem set than to implement the technology.
Choose a business problem that is well understood and will provide significant improvements to an existing well-defined process or business issue.
Focus on a specific business issue. Narrow the list of possible projects and prioritize the available applications based on estimated payback.

Cost Of Service Example

Problem Statement: Determine the cost and investment components of providing service to customers in the remote area, and present this information to utility executives in a common-sense way.
Schedule: The management team must develop a plan within 30 days, with the value of the remote area due within nine months.
Budget: The management team is skeptical of the business intelligence technology, and approves only enough resources for the initial planning and design of the system. The business intelligence team must seek additional resources in increments.
Deliverables: The management team expects the Cost Of Service application to show the value of the customers in the remote area compared to other service areas, and the application must be re-useable for future evaluations.

Step 2 Understand the Business Processes
Business Intelligence must be implemented to support re-engineered business processes and target specific business issues. Business issues may include managing construction and engineering crews, allocating material, siting substations and buildings, attracting and retaining profitable customers, managing company property, and billing jointly-owned facilities and foreign attachments. The IT department must engage key users and future owners of the application to accurately and completely define the business process to be targeted.

Cost Of Service Example
The cost and investment to provide service to a customer is comprised of many factors:

Cost of Energy is the cost the utility incurs to produce or purchase the electricity. Although this factor may be readily available on the customer bill or in public bulletins, the real cost of energy depends on time of usage, demand, and load characteristics.
Energy Losses are associated with the transmission and distribution of a commodity. These losses are calculated using load flow algorithms and are dependent on conductor size, type, configuration, voltage, and load for electric transmission and distribution systems.
Facility Asset Value is the customer’s share of all the assets required to serve the customer from the generating station to the meter. These assets include conductors, structures, devices, and even not so obvious costs such as purchased Rights-of-Way. Determining the customer’s share may be further complicated by asset depreciation, multiple circuit and network configuration, and incomplete data.
Facility Maintenance has many meanings: painting steel structures and pad-mounted equipment; controlling vegetation along Rights-of-Way; and inspecting facilities for clearance obstructions and safety.
Service Reliability is a measure of power outages and interruptions. Service Reliability can be interpreted as a cost for making repairs and loss of revenue when deciding investment in facility improvement and rehabilitation.
Taxes and Franchise Fees add costs to doing business in certain political boundaries.
Human and Support Investment are investments in the utility’s local and central offices to support energy delivery. Trucks, buildings, people, and technologies all contribute to the cost of providing service to a customer. Usually, utilities spread these “soft” costs uniformly across the customer base. But it may not cost the same to support rural and congested areas.