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    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy

    Today’s “Gen Y” work force, which embraces “bring your own device” (BYOD), including tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices, is forcing organizations to put into place comprehensive mobile business intelligence (BI) strategies. While the enterprise mobility team will be the primary drivers in terms of choosing the right mobile strategy, there are very specific items related to BI that organizations must carefully consider. It’s crucial that the BI strategy and mobile BI apps work alongside the existing enterprise mobility strategy, complementing it and supporting it. A lot has been written and discussed about the mobility side of the equation, but not on the BI-specific needs that enable mobility. This slideshow features nine crucial considerations, identified by Kumar Ramamurthy, global practice head and chief technologist, DW BI/Information Management Practice at Virtusa, that enterprises must keep in mind when creating a mobile BI strategy.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 1

    Click through for nine considerations that must be taken into account when establishing a mobile BI strategy, as identified by Kumar Ramamurthy, global practice head and chief technologist, DW BI/Information Management Practice at Virtusa.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 2

    Decide whether you want to use the mobility framework provided by your current BI vendor or use a reporting-vendor-agnostic one. Creating a custom BI mobility framework in-house is also an option. The decision regarding your mobility framework will be different based on the size, structure and needs of your organization.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 3

    BYOD is a growing phenomenon that is greatly impacting how businesses are run. It’s important to think about how BYOD will affect your BI applications. Depending on your objectives, you may want to consider simplifying the BYOD paradigm, and limit BI applications to a mobile OS platform.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 4

    Make sure mobile BI apps are not just an extension of existing content, but instead are targeted at a specific audience and serve a very specific business function.  Before deploying a mobile BI strategy, make sure you have a solid business case for doing so.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 5

    Don’t shy away from creating very highly aggregated data marts for mobile BI apps when it’s necessary. However, don’t try to make existing data marts work if it’s too much of  a stretch. This will vary from organization to organization.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 6

    Consider creating more BI apps with very specific business functions instead of trying to force your current BI apps to do things they are not really capable of doing. The more specialized an app, the better.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 7

    Mobile BI apps are expected to be low latency apps, thus it’s important to avoid dynamic derivations and transformations.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 8

    Mobile BI apps will largely fall in the lightweight, pervasive analysis group. If they don’t, think twice about these apps and what they are really accomplishing for you.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 9

    Ensure that existing traditional BI security roles and privileges are carried over to mobile BI apps and ensure that a new authorization mechanism is not invented. Given the BYOD craze, this is more important than ever.

    Nine Considerations for Enterprises Establishing a Mobile BI Strategy - slide 10

    Instead of focusing on the novelty associated with new apps (in this case, mobile BI apps), really drill down to their functionality. The whole purpose is to streamline business processes for users who are on the go. Can your mobile BI apps truly do this? If not, what improvements need to be made?

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