Mistake 1. Not putting a strong interdisciplinary team together.
It is impossible to put together an analytics platform without understanding the needs of the customers who will use it. Sounds simple, right? Who wouldn’t do that? You’d be surprised how many analytics projects are wrapped up by IT because “they think” they know the customer needs. Not assembling the right team is clearly the biggest mistake companies make. Many times what is on your mind (and if you’re an IT person willing to admit it) is that you are considering converting all those favorite company reports. Your goal should not be that. Your goal is to create a system—human engineered with customers, financial people, IT folks, analysts, and others—that give people new and exciting ways to look at information. It should give you new insights. New competitive information. If you don’t get the right team put together, you’ll find someone longing for the good old days and their old dusty reports. Or worse yet, still finding ways to generate those old dusty reports.
Mistake 2. Not having the right talent to design, build, run and update your analytics system.
It is undeniable that there is now high demand for business analytics specialists. There are not a lot of them out there that really know what to do unless they’ve been burned a few times and have survived and then built successful BA systems. This is reflected by the fact you see so many analytics vendors offer, or often recommend, third-party consulting and training to help the organization develop their business analytic skills. Work hard to build a three-way partnership between the vendor, your own team, and an implementation partner. If you develop those relationships, risk of failure goes way down.