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Best practices for implementing a BI strategy with SAS

Implementing a Business Intelligence strategy can be a daunting and challenging task. SAS has introduced many concepts to us by bringing a comprehensive BI solution to the market. While some of those topics are not new, they can certainly make us think more than before, which is a very good thing. Many companies go ahead with the installation and configuration of the SAS BI platform with very little planning, only to ask themselves many questions afterwards, questions that should have been answered early on. This paper describes the best practices for all phases of a Business Intelligence strategy implementation using the SAS platform. It will cover what needs to be considered during the planning phase such as architecture, security and optimization as well as introduce the different tools available for data collection and reporting and what it means in terms of changes to move from SAS Foundation to the SAS BI platform. INTRODUCTION Your organization just created a new project team, the Business Intelligence Group, whose task is going to implement a BI solution from a vendor to improve business processes, reduce maintenance cost, give a clearer view to executives of historical data and possibly make predictions using analytics. Now as the lead of this new initiative, you are faced with many decisions to make and you are probably asking yourself many questions. One question you may even have is: “am I asking myself the right questions?” This paper will guide you by going through the steps necessary for a successful implementation. We will skip here the vendor selection process; we assume and hope you have made the right decision to go with the SAS BI platform! PLANNING The implementation of a BI solution can be broken down into three main phases: the planning activities, the actual installation and configuration of the software, and the administration of the software including monitoring usage and training users. The planning phase is the most important of all for a successful implementation. You will need to select the right bundle of tools for your organization, define an architecture for your environment that is optimal for all activities and scalable to accommodate data and business growth, plan for security including deciding on an authentication system as well as plan ahead the different users and groups to create in a way that is not going to be a burden for the SAS administrator to maintain your environment secure. There are also planning steps you can take for the installation, configuration, administration and optimization of the software. Other planning activities such as planning for user training, documentation ... are the responsibilities of the BI Program Manager and are out of the scope of this paper. If you are moving from version 8 of the SAS software, you might also need to plan the migration process for the SAS data, programs and applications. This is addressed directly in the migration section. Let’s discuss each of those items in more details. SOFTWARE SELECTION Selecting the right tools for your SAS BI environment is an activity that will take place with your SAS representative or a partner who can assist you to make decisions based on your business needs as well as your internal competencies and corporate standards. The best approach for this process is to get a good understanding of the SAS BI tools and their capabilities. SAS has done a great job at developing different interfaces for specific audiences. Based on your business requirements, you should identify the different audiences of the BI environment and select which tools they will use based on their needs and/or skills. This is also the best time to research the SAS Open Metadata Architecture and the SAS Foundation Services. If your organization has specific needs that can’t be served by one of the SAS BI tools, SAS provides an architecture that developers can build on to create applications that are fully integrated in your BI environment. BI Forum SAS Global Forum 2007