BI 2.0 - Process Centric

I was struck by the following quote when I was reading James Taylor's channel on the B-Eye network:

use business intelligence to make more timely decisions, monitor and optimize daily business processes, and to deploy business intelligence to a broader user audience

(http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/index.php?cid=9027)

This is a great direction for what BI 2.0 could be.  We must consider the overall business process when we are designing solutions, rather than just the reporting or analytical requirements.  Without providing this full view we run the risk of having sub-processes optimized in such a way that the overall process efficiency suffers.  Say we optimize cost per unit from our suppliers to buy bulk, yet we don't account for the warehouse space required to store it.

As James and his colleague Neil Raden focus on, managing decisions is key to the next level of enterprise performance.  As you analyze the overall business process, the decisions points will become readily apparent, thus the analytical requirements.

Process --> Decision --> Analytics

One way to think of BI 2.0...

Mark

Balancing your BI Strategy

For those of you that lead Business Intelligence teams or programs, you likely have encountered a big dilemma...  How can we move forward with a Business Intelligence strategy when there is such a big demand for information today?  In most organizations the demand for information far outstrips the resources available.  Information providers in an organization are consumed with resolving repeatable data quality issues, delivering endless cuts of information, and then delivering it again next month.

If we added up all the resources and time taken to keep pace with this flow, we would quickly see a lot of money being spent without delivering a lot of sustainable value.  I've seen this struggle manifest itself a number of times, and have found that it is possible to do both.  Not easy to balance, but possible.  There are 3 areas of focus that enable this:

• Sell Business Value
• Separate Resources
• Deliver Incrementally

Sell Business Value

Due to the nature of Business Intelligence solutions, it is important to communicate the value of investing in long-term, sustainable solutions.  These business benefits can include a quicker turnaround on requests, more self service information, and higher data quality.  Find the benefits that fit your organization, and communicate to your key stakeholders.  You need to show what value you can deliver to their organization, and to the bottom line.

Separate Resources

As you communicate the value of strategic BI solutions to your stakeholders, also identify the need to dedicate resources to building these solutions.  Align on the number of resources that will be dedicated to building strategic solutions vs. resources dedicated to tactical response.  It is important to identify the impact of these decisions to the operational capacity that will now be available.

As you focus resources on building strategic solutions, ensure that communication tools and knowledge sharing exist between both sides of the organization, strategic and tactical.  Resources supporting tactical requirements have comprehensive knowledge of information requirements and can be a big asset in driving user adoption of the new solutions.

Deliver Incrementally

To quickly prove the value of this approach, you must deliver incremental solutions that deliver direct value to the organization.  Delivering using an agile approach will allow you to maintain your momentum and build a community around using BI tools.  Having architecture talent and good design processes will ensure that the incremental solutions build into a larger, enterprise view.

As part of your BI program or competency centre, communication and engagement with your user community is vital to deliver solutions that provide the maximum amount of value.  Finding a balance between operational support and strategic delivery will help you achieve the goals of your BI program.

Wordle of this Blog

Check this out!

The New Breed of Data Warehouse Appliance

Saw a story from Wednesday on an announcement made at Oracle Open World this week on the new HP / Oracle Data Warehouse Appliance offerings: 

http://www.cio.com/article/451166/Ellison_Pitches_High_Speed_Data_Warehouse_Server

We are starting to see more of these hybrid models coming out, where the definition of the Data Warehouse Appliance is blurring.  Traditionally, vendors in this space offer software and hardware solutions bundled together (i.e. Teradata).  We have seen offerings in the past year and a half where storage only solutions are being sold, and in other cases just some software supercharging below the database level.  In these solutions, you keep your DBMS (Oracle, MS, etc) the same, the software integrates at a low level in the DBMS software architecture.  It is like dropping a V8 in your compact car, your controls stay the same, but your have a tad more power...8)

How can BI get agile?

We are hearing a lot about how Agile software development techniques deliver more value quicker to the end user. The market and competition is changing faster every day, software development must be able to change with it. In our world today, we can't afford to wait for results from a traditional waterfall approach, when what we deliver will not meet current requirements.

Anyone that has been exposed to agile methodologies sees why this is such a powerful approach. I have to ask myself... Why don't we see more BI projects leveraging agile? Agile has been more prevalent and quickly adopted in the SOA / App / User Interface areas than in the data side of the world.

If we think back on the history of BI projects, we are not too far from the time when we had a failure rate of 50%! Why did they fail? Long duration, high complexity, high cost, and not delivering what the business needed, when they needed it. Sounds like a recipe for Agile to me!

I challenge you to shake off the dust and find how you can deliver in new and innovative ways. The excuse that "We don't have that data in the warehouse" is simply not acceptable in today's world. We need to be able to gather requirements, profile data, data model, build ETL routines, build reports / dashboards / visualizations, and deploy to production in the space of 2 weeks. Or why not 1 week?

Here is some reading:

Agile Data - DW Best Practices

Agile Manifesto

Follow up article to it Just Has to Work

I was catching up on my reading, and ran across the below article that had a similar view as my post on "It Just Has to Work".  Tom Hudock at Business Intelligence for Business People has a great post about a similar concept.

Now imagine what BI would be like if you could simply stitch your information together? Pull your customers. Drag sales volumes. Drop products into an information pot. Then BI does the rest. You then navigate the answers. Repeat with new information when ever you need to.

http://biforbusinesspeople.blogspot.com/2008/08/stitch-your-information-together.html

It Just Has to Work

Have you ever had the experience where you are hunting within your favourite BI portal for how to do such a simple thing like sending a link to a report to your business analyst? Have you ever wanted to scream at your monitor that "It shouldn't be this hard!!!"?

Welcome to the lack of attention to design that blights many BI portal implementations!

If we take a lesson from Google, we see the opportunity to focus on core functionality and to not over-engineer our BI implementations. The one frustrating thing I noticed when I started using Google's online tools was that I couldn't find out what the application was capable of without the standard menu bar we are used to in traditional desktop applications. Now I am a died in the wool IT geek, so I am definitely the exception in this case. Most users just want to do the basics and find all the options overwhelming.

Another point on designing for simplicity is that over time I found the Google suite does have advanced functionality. The key is that I didn't have the option to launch the piece of functionality until I needed it. The application was aware of my context, and showed me what I needed when I needed it. Thankfully we are starting to see more attention to design in software, Microsoft has started the quest for a simpler design with the ribbon bar in Office 2007.

This applies to BI in 2 ways, first the design from the vendor, and then the design of your information architecture. We need to demand from our vendors that they pay close attention to their user interface design, to understand how users interact with the software. and customize the interface accordingly. To continue the widespread adoption of BI information in the enterprise, it is critical that we design for the basic user, but still provide the functionality for the power user. When we place our own organization's information architecture on top of our BI platforms we need to ensure we continue this attention to design, so that we can make the information easier and more intuitively to navigate.

Keep it as simple as possible, and your key measures for use of your BI portal will leap off the chart!

Mark

P.S. We all have stats on our BI portal usage don't we? ;)

The Community Rules

I get a lot of value from reading other's blogs / articles and posting my thoughts to this blog. I would jump at the opportunity to give back to the virtual BI community on topics that interest you folks.

If you have any topics / questions you would like me to address, please let me know by commenting on this post.

Mark

Where the Business meets BI

My education and early professional career was deeply rooted in the IT world. We worried about how to keep the database running efficiently, and the best way to build a reporting portal (in the old days we built ASP pages for every single report we developed). As my career matured over the years it became apparent to me that I had to understand the business side of the equation to be truly effective. This brings to mind one of the challenges we all face as leaders of Business Intelligence initiatives, where can we find the right people?

We have the distinct need within Business Intelligence to fully understand what problem the business is trying to solve, and then to understand what data is available to solve the problem. I've heard many great ideas from the business that would add a lot of value to the organization, but the data is simply not available or is of questionable quality. This is where the role of the Business Intelligence Analyst comes into play. For the purposes of this post, the BI Analyst is the person that gathers requirements from the business and then works with the IT teams to deliver the information. (I've seen about 6 different roles described when talking about a Analyst role on a BI team).

A black belt BI Analyst has 2 distinct areas of expertise:

1. Business knowledge - Deep understanding of the business processes and models is necessary to properly "interpret" what the users are looking for.
2. Data knowledge - An understanding of not only the data structures that are available, but how the business processes interact with the source systems which eventually filter into the data we have available to BI.

This blend of skills and expertise requires a very specific type of person. If I was to describe the qualities of a BI Analyst, the following comes to mind:

• Hyper-analytical - Able to apply critical thinking skills to get to the heart of the problem
• Diplomatic - Being able to guide the business in the right direction without telling them their idea won't work...8)
• Passionate - To truly get to the heart of a problem requires tenancity and buy-in to the organization's goals

The BI Analyst is a critical component of any BI initiative regardless where in the organization this role sits. Without the proper attention to requirements and desired outcomes, a project as complicated as a typical BI initiative is very likely to fail or to fall short of our client's expectations. One of the best sources for a BI Analyst, is within the business units we serve. You likely have someone working in the business that has the right type of analytical mind set to be a "black belt"!

Mark

Will the BI portal last?

Almost all vendors have been moving to a consolidated web portal to expose BI assets to end users. I have to question the validity of making our users come to a portal when they clearly need to integrate intelligence into other aspects of their computer use. Is there a need to change the paradigm of "come and get" it BI?

I think to some extent there is a need to change how we think about building BI applications. We tend to extract out just the information requirements from our end users and neglect to capture their overall business process in the picture. If we look at this bigger picture, we will see opportunities to potentially automate decisions and to make the Business Intelligence technology more transparent in the process.

Today's BI platforms have capabilities to integrate directly within office applications, and through a service oriented architecture can expose any type of BI asset to any other application or service. There are even capabilities to expose reports as RSS feeds, that can even deliver content such as a fully rendered reports directly to the users reader software of choice. Let's use these capabilities to delivery more effective solutions and make the end user experience simpler.

We are hearing the catch phrase "pervasive BI" in the industry more and more. As people get busier and busier in their working lives, we need to provide them with the right amount of data to make the right decision at the right time. This is the promise of pervasive BI, take the strategy out of the board room and bring it to the front lines.

Yes, we will likely always have some type of BI portal to provide access to reports and other content. Let's not lose sight of other ways for our end users to interact with corporate information. By taking their overall process into account, we can integrate the required information in the most effective way for the organization.

The Next Step in a BI Vision

In my post on Creating a Positive Future, I discussed the importance of understanding Business Intelligence requirements from the perspective of your end users.  Once you understand the user experience you need to provide, you are able to ensure that your delivery on this vision meets expectations.

Ok, so now you know what your users are looking for.  Great!  Let's jump in and start building the solution!

Not so fast...  We need to prepare the organization for this massive shift towards an intelligent, fact-based decision making organization.

In a number of my earlier posts I have discussed the Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) as a key component to ensure Business Intelligence projects and resources are aligned to business priorities.  As we spread our wings with Business Intelligence tools it is absolutely critical that we have the underlying processes in place to support both the developers and users of the technology.  Without the appropriate organizational and process support we will not be successful realizing the benefits of Business Intelligence.

There are a number of books available that provide a good overview of a BICC.  One that I have found useful is the "Business Intelligence Competency Center: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive Advantage" written by a group of SAS staffers.  It is written vendor neutral, with just a little marketing pitch...8)  I would also encourage you to reach out to your Business Intelligence platform vendors and solution partners, as they will likely have experience launching a competency centre and may have their own methodologies you can borrow from.  It can be invaluable to have a neutral 3rd party help you with this process, so that you can leverage their experience.  That is if you can afford it!

Stay tuned for more thoughts about the BICC over the next couple of months.

I Dream of Data

For those of you that aren't certified "data geeks", you would probably not understand dreaming of data.  For some of us this love affair is new, and for some of us this has been a long standing obsession.

I clearly remember the first time I got the data bug.  It was an entry level database programming course and the lab assignment was to build and execute SQL scripts (inserts, deletes, updates, selects) against a provided data model using an Oracle (v5 I think) database.  It just seemed so natural to examine the data model and the problem and just pick what you wanted and join tables to build "grids" of data.  The career path in IT was set from the 2nd year in university!

Throughout my career, I have always been fascinated by manipulating data to gain insight into what is happening in the business of my organizations.  This has fostered a deep appreciation for the value of Business Intelligence, but on a larger scale an appreciation for how overall data management is critical to the success of an organization.  The Business Intelligence discipline must be supported by other components of an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) strategy such as Master Data Management (MDM), Data Governance, Data Architecture, and Data Quality Management to provide maximum value to an organization.  To forge ahead without engaging the rest of your IT department in treating data as an asset is a recipe for frustrated teams and ineffective solutions.

So when I fall asleep, I dream of a perfect environment where all pieces of an Enterprise Information Management strategy are in place.  Sometimes I feel like I am drawn to a big light at the end of a long corridor filled with data.  When I finally get to the end I see beautiful visualizations of information presented by my local Business Intelligence portal, harnessing all the inherent value in my beautifully managed data sources.  This is a big dream, but what dream worth pursuing is easy?

Good night, sleep tight!

Ensuring BI Projects don't Fail

Presentation from Timo Elliott, Business Objects.  Great slides!

Why Business Intelligence Projects Fail -- And What To Do About It

Mark

Translating Back

Interesting article on how BI applications have to be traced back through the Systems Development Life Cycle to become business information again.  Here is a diagram from the article:

http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/index.php?cid=7566

Mark

Article on Pushing the BI Limits

This is a link to a great presentation by Timo Elliot a Senior Director with Business Objects. This is one of the best presentations I have seen on pushing BI to the limit!

http://www.timoelliott.com/blog/2008/06/delivering_results_with_busine.html

Mark

Squeezing the value out of what you have

Ran across this interesting post about how you can replace just the pieces of your mainframe application that require the most change, and doing it with an external business rules management system (BRMS).

http://smartenoughsystems.com/wp/2008/05/28/making-meals-from-your-mainframe-leftovers/

If you think about this, you can apply it to the BI spaces as well.  I can think of a couple places where this would apply.

1. Data marts, if you build your data marts properly, they are much less costly to enhance than to replace.  Rather than spinning up another data mart to get the slice of data you are looking for, you could leverage an existing data mart and add the data required to it.  This may require some retooling of the front end reports / dashboards if the existing data structure changes, but this is much less costly than having to build, support and store another data mart.
2. Tools, if your toolset doesn't support your current requirements, don't lose heart and buy yet another tool.  Work with your senior technical folks to come up with a way to extend the platform, there may be exposed services that can be recombined into something new.  Also, reach out to your vendor, explain your requirements and you would be amazed at what they can dig up from other customers.  Lobby your vendor to include new functionality in their next release.  The whole idea of crowd-sourcing is picking up steam, so the majority of vendors are working hard to include customer requests in their products.

Do less with more!

Mark

Don't Let Budgets Hold You Back

Just read an article from the Data Warehousing Institute on how to move forward with data warehousing / business intelligence initiatives when you have limited funding and resources available to you.  The idea is to use these techniques to provide visible business wins that should translate into additional funding being available for your BI program.

This is actually a 3 part article that looks at the problem from 3 perspectives (click to see article):

• Technology & Tools - How to leverage what you already have / expanding on existing vendor relationships.
• People - The typical roles required on a data warehousing project and how to combine them
• Project Selection - Steer around projects that require significant resources and have high complexity, instead go for the quick wins or low hanging fruits.

Good read for anyone in the field, we don't need a 10 pound sledgehammer to nail a picture to the wall!

Mark

BI's Place in the IT Portfolio

Good morning, ran across an interesting article on where Business Intelligence fits within an overall IT portfolio.  The below is an interesting picture of this:

Nice to see this on top of the chain isn't it?  8)  Here is the link:

http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/index.php?cid=7498

Creating a Positive Future

If you have spent any time on the Internet researching a topic like Business Intelligence / Knowledge Management, it can be very overwhelming when you consider all the pieces that need to be implemented to have your organization on the leading edge in this field.  This is not just a technology evolution, you also must consider the people and process components to implement a successful Business Intelligence program.  Especially in today's business world, an organization has to find a balance between keeping the current operations running to respond to the latest market opportunity, and building strategic capabilities to support the future and provide competitive advantage.

This is a daunting task, so where to begin?  If you have done any reading on the power of positive thinking you may have run across references to "Creating a Positive Future".  The idea is that if you can en-vision what you would like things look like in the future, then you can work backwards to get there.  Think of it as a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach.

Your first step is to approach this from the experience you want your clients to have.  You must start by talking to your users to understand what business pain points you can solve for them.  Now if you are in a situation where they don't currently have a lot of BI capabilities, you will likely here a lot about what you are not providing now.  That is ok, you need to understand these pain points to ensure you cover them off in your future state.  In an organization more mature in leveraging information, you will hopefully hear about some great new opportunities that BI technology can help with.

Start by working from a what is possible perspective.  Don't burden yourself with the current limitations of people, funding or technology as this will in turn limit your vision.  Build a vision based on your experiences, research on what other companies are doing, but most importantly spend time with your clients to ensure you fully understand what they are looking for.

If you focus on what is possible, instead of what you aren't doing today you can build a positive future for the implementation of BI in your organization.  Watch out for future posts on the next steps to develop your BI roadmap once you have this vision.

P.S.  This is my first post using Windows Live Writer to post to Blogger.com.  Works great!  A big thank you to my colleague Frank Vandongen for suggesting it.

Turning Data into Information is Just the Beginning

Final day for me at the Semantic Technology conference in San Jose. I ended this trip with a renewed appreciation for the bigger picture of knowledge management to create and leverage true Intelligence for an organization. In some organizations we are so focused on turning raw data into usable information, we sometimes lose sight of how we can continue to add value to our information assets to turn them into a true competitive advantage.

The following picture shows the full story on the "Intelligence Pyramid" that will add exponentially more value to an organization. I won't take credit for this pyramid, sometimes referred to the "Wisdom Pyramid", but I will share my personal recreation of it.



Lets walk through these 4 stages starting at the bottom, and provide some additional context:

• Data - This can be described as the raw data that would typically support a company's operational processes. For all you ETL buffs, the "Source System". - "What is happening?"


• Information - Transformed information that is not in IT terms, but in business terms and is consumable by the business for reporting and analytical needs. - "What does it mean?"


• Knowledge - Taking the Information we have prepared in the previous step and enriching it with relationships and correlations that start to "tell the story" of what an organization's data contains. - "What do we already know and why?"


• Intelligence - The holy grail, we have leveraged all the previous stages to put all this data to work to develop action plans to resolve the business problem or challenge. - "What do we do?"

This is the true power of data! This goal can not be accomplished by traditional BI tools and techniques alone. We need to add a mix of other technologies that are better at representing relationships and data (i.e. semantic technology), and most importantly to bring together the right people to look at all this data from their different perspectives. With the right mix, we can deliver value to the organization that will pay back the investment in data many, many times over.

Mark