In ‚The concept of Business Intelligence for ALL’ The concept of Business Intelligence for ALL (part 1 of 3) I explained the virtual platform, the content and the roll-out. In The concept of Business Intelligence for ALL (part 2 of 3) I highlighted the need to offer something special as part of the community. In our case this is the eLearning solution ‘Speak BI’. So what is missing?
The television broadcasting service became a common achievement in the middle of the last century. All over the world wise men did foresee that in the near future people will not meet anymore, stay in their flats and become a hermit. So fortunately humankind still prefers the personal contact. What does that mean for the social media age? Is it satisfying to be connected with your smartphone and pad to communities, blogs and news-feeds? The answer is obvious – it’s not!
You can see a convention, an exhibition or other events hosted by a virtual community every week. We all know the SAP events SAPPHIRE NOW and TechEd. I was highly impressed to hear that my favorite photo rumors community organized a real-life meeting in Amsterdam.
What does this mean for a corporate community, in our case the BI enthusiasts within SAP? Are these IT specialists satisfied to have a well maintained community platform in a state-of-the-art tool? The answer is easy to give – they are not! Heike Mohr, Sigrid Vetter and I did some of the roll-out events together and one of the first questions we received was: When do you plan to organize a community meeting?
The ‘BI Experience Day’ is the third component of the Business Intelligence for ALL concept and a very important one. On the other hand it is also the most difficult one. Real-life events in an international company create the need for travel and an enhanced preparation effort. The result is worth the effort and I am very happy to have such a great support at SAP to make that happen.
These are the main components of the BI Experience Day event:
- Keynotes about the key BI initiatives within the company, as well as the latest and greatest BI release infos. - What are the most important reporting projects at the moment, what will be rolled-out in the next weeks and months? What can you expect from the new products and releases?
- Infosession to explain the organizational setup for BI Governance. – Do you have a BI Panel, a BI Center of Excellence, or a BI Competency Center in your company? Do all colleagues understand how the portfolio process works? Do they know how to request a new BI report or data enhancements? Don’t miss to explain this again and again!
- Demos from the local IT BI teams and business Power Users. – Do you know the local colleagues who build the BI reports and maintain the platforms? Ask them to come on stage and to present the great work they do.
- Promote the BI community. – At the end of this event everybody should know the virtual BI community platform and see the benefits to stay connected via social media. For this you can show some posters, have a ‘how to write a blog’ info session, announce a community contest … or whatever fit’s to your corporate culture.
We have been in Walldorf, Newtown Square and Paris with the BI Experience Day this year and looking forward to host the same in Vancouver end of August. Here are some photos from the events this year:
Do you have or plan to have something like this as part of your BI community?
Best regards,
Matthias Wild
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