Organisations need to approach BI initiatives from a strategic, non-technical standpoint, despite the claims of many vendors that their solutions can solve all a firm’s problems, analyst Betsy Burton explained at Gartner's BI summit yesterday.

“Understanding the business strategy, then the metrics that drive that strategy, then the people that drive that strategy is key to successful BI,” she added. “The technology is pretty far down the list.”

To give BI initiatives the best chance of success, organisations were urged to create BI competency centres (Biccs) – steering committees comprising key IT staff and business users.

Members from the IT side should include an enterprise architect to look at " the broader BI picture", integration and data quality specialists and an information architect to look at the specific systems, explained analyst Andreas Bitterer in his opening keynote.

“Most winners of our BI excellence awards had this organisational backbone in place to drive home BI, because BI won’t happen by itself,” he said. “This type of governance structure with teeth can really make a difference and have an influence on what is bought.”

Michael Dziekan, global programme director of Biccs at BI specialist Cognos, said that these centres can promote a "consistent set of BI skills and deployments", but what works varies from organisation to organisation as Biccs often require cultural changes to achieve their goals.

He added that Cognos offers best practice guidance and consulting to help organisations set up competency centres and implement BI strategically.

Elsewhere, there was good news for IT buyers as Gartner’s Dan Summer predicted increasing price pressures on the vendor side, with traditional BI technology such as ad-hoc querying and reporting tools becoming commoditised.

“It is becoming a competitive marketplace so users are in a favourable position going forward in terms of BI tools,” he added.