Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 3
August 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 2, I discussed the value of Structuring-creating a shared vision and building an atmosphere of engagement and energy for the BI initiative. The most important aspect of Structuring is that it incorporates and defines the entire BI ecosystem (culture, goals, people, process, technology, information) that people want to be a part of and contribute to. The next key to improving your success is improving your Understanding of the ecosystem.
The U in Success
Understanding
Another good investment is taking the time to build relationships with and among the BI development team and stakeholders. Actively involving others, with a working knowledge of the BI ecosystem, in planning and design issues is critical to building institutional commitment and designing the right solution. Research shows that the bigger the issue, the more likely we are to suck it up to ourselves. While this may seem like the wise course, think about the message it sends. Either that your people aren’t capable of handling these issues or that you don’t trust them. Another implication is that they don’t gain the experience and skills they would need to eventually handle tough issues. So, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most importantly it prevents you and the BI initiative from utilizing self organizing teams-one of the other keys to BI success.
It’ll be easier for people to get behind you and support the BI initiative if they feel some direct connection to who you are and what you’re about. This doesn’t need to be personal information. What you need to concentrate on is sharing information about (a) how you see the team living up to the vision; (b) improving the depth of understanding of the BI ecosystem; (c) sharing some of the obstacles the team faces; and (d) building trust and soliciting their input. Where feasible, let them in on new developments and provide context that will help them understand the necessity for the change. In short, create the narrative of what’s happening in the larger institution and create an atmosphere of trust and open communication. If you can do this then you have an opportunity to utilize “Self-Organizing” teams. Self-Organizing teams (a) assign tasks to each other; (b) they coordinate and review each other’s work artifacts; (c) they collaborate on project activities; (d) they make project-related decisions (together); and (e) they take on another team member’s tasks when needed. Additionally, working in this way is (a) much faster; (b) communicating and coordinating activities among all the team members is more efficient and less error-prone; and (c) greatly improves synergy and knowledge transfer among team members. These are all critical factors for improving you BI success.
Even if you aren’t ready to unleash a self-organizing team, I would recommend creating a recurring forum where a workable number of employees, say six to ten, can interact personally. In addition to hearing your thoughts, they could ask questions about the institution and provide feedback about any impediments in their part of the BI solution to achieving the vision.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 2
August 13, 2010 | 1 Comment
This is part 2 on my thoughts on Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative. In my previous post, I stated that BI success will be improved if you can tap the creativity and commitment of your entire institution and fully engage the BI team. The remainder of this series will explore some thoughts on strategies that may help you do just that.
The ” S” in Success
Structuring and Setting the Stage
A powerful way to get and keep your stakeholders and BI team aligned is to define, and garner complete buy-in to the Nature of the BI initiative. The Nature of the BI initiative is an enrolling vision for the initiative; one that goes beyond defining what currently exists to creating a picture of what it can become and how it will improve the success of the institution. Additionally, you need different granular levels of the vision. You need to have an enterprise-wide vision to get and maintain the executive sponsorship, but you also need to paint a more detailed picture for your BI team and individual projects. Involving as many of your key stakeholders and BI development team members as possible in the visioning will create engagement and energy around the deliverables. Just remember, that everyone involved must have some skin in the game. The three key constituencies for business intelligence that you must address include the executive sponsors of your BI initiative, the principal users of the BI tools, and consumers who will benefit from it.
Defining the Nature of the BI initiative and visions is simply a picture of a desired future state. I recommend staring a discussion using the following questions:
- What will the institution look like if our BI program and projects are accomplished?
- What will be happening within our institution?
- What will we have to do to establish the “Culture of Evidence”
- What will our institutional colleagues be saying about us?
- What will be our call to arms and message be?
- How will we feel?
The most important thing is that it defines the entire ecosystem (culture, goals, people, process, technology, information) that people want to be a part of and contribute to.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative
August 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
In my previous post, Business Intelligence Initiatives Get an “A” for Effort and a “C” for Results, the respondents indicated that the major reasons for the lack of business intelligence (BI) success were institutional and not technical. If you’re a manager, director, vice president or even the president of your institution, I have a simple question for you. Who is responsible for the success of your institution? I pretty sure that your answer is the same as mine, we all are – after all, I can’t do it myself!” Good answer. Unfortunately, research shows that people in a managerial or leadership role regularly take on too much responsibility for the success of their areas, and this predictable behavior has its consequences. Specifically, leaders often feel burdened, exhausted and overwhelmed. Additionally, the leadership for BI initiatives normally falls to an existing successful executive or manger that has BI success added to their existing plate of responsibilities. But, what most institutions fail to understand is that the previous successful behavior of these individuals may be limiting the success of their new BI team and initiative.
Barry Oshry, a leading theorist in human systems theory identifies the behavior of “sucking up responsibility” as the predictable response to the complexity and responsibility inherent in the “Top” space and that this behavior isn’t an explicit choice but a reflexive response. However, this response may be detrimental to the success of your pervasive BI initiative.
Thoughts on improving your BI SUCCESS
No matter how skilled and experienced the leader, an institutions’ BI success will be improved if you can tap the creativity and commitment of your entire institution and BI team. In the next blog posts I will explore some strategies that may help you do just that, but first a note of caution. I’m sure we’ve all heard the familiar refrain, “Don’t ask me; I just work here.” This comment identifies an individual that is uninformed and belies an attitude of non-accountability. Ultimately, you can’t empower others; each individual must make the choice between being truly engaged and challenged in their work lives and being passive and lackadaisical. But that doesn’t let you, as a leader, off the hook. It is in your best interest and the interest of the institution to create the conditions that enable others to take responsibility and to succeed with your BI initiative.
References
- Oshry, Barry Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Institutional Life, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007.
Dashboards “Out-of-the-Box?” Pop Goes the Weasel!
August 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
You should think twice whenever you hear vendor marketing claims that their Business Intelligence or Dashboard solutions are “out of the box.” What does this really mean? How can “out of the box” solutions really address the comprehensive and unique reporting or analytic needs of your organization? If you don’t ask some probing questions you might be in for an implementation surprise. Last week I attended a higher education conference and this issue came to the forefront as clients asked their vendor legitimate, pointed questions during a dashboard solution presentation. The veneer of the scripted demo and marketing message was quickly shattered.
Compare, for example, this SunGard Higher Education press release and Datatel’s product web page , from two of the largest solution providers in Higher Education, each promoting their similar Advancement Dashboards solutions. Both companies message using the phrase “out of the box” or “pre-configured” and focus on the time savings of the data being already integrated and the fundraising measures being already defined. But how do these solutions really handle the exact requirements of the hundreds and hundreds of clients between them? Datatel’s product page includes a screen shot that can be used to illustrate a few of the questions that one should ask to get a better picture of what is involved in an implementation:
- What is the time frame of the data displayed? As of right now or of a point in time? Or both?
- What dimension or categorical code values define the KPIs so they aggregate correctly?
- Where do the goals come from? How do you set the ranges for the speedometer/thermometer?
- How do you change a dashboard to show different analytics or reports?
- How do I manage security and access so people only see data appropriate for them?
The reality is these solutions are only templates that understand the source data model and how it is organized. That’s helpful, but not nearly the whole picture. You first have to fill in a lot of blanks before the dashboards will display anything. You need to engage in a process with the end-user stakeholders to determine the answers to the above questions (and more.) For example, the time frames for the queries need to be set to match your fundraising planning and strategy cycle. Your campaign code values are going to be different than any other institution. Your goals are unique and the target values are not likely stored in the ERP or in any database to automatically display the progress. The responsibilities of staff in your Advancement office will imply unique information needs that won’t always match nicely to the user roles defined in the solutions. Most of this involves configuring dozens and dozens of query filters, reporting tool settings and security options. But more importantly the “out of the box” data model will not be sufficient to support your institution’s unique analytic requirements. This will require customization. Understanding more about what it takes to extend the data model is essential.
The bottom line is you need to approach the implementation not as a quick fix tool, but as an iterative technology and business user partnership that probes into the real information and presentation requirements. The resulting business rules can then be appropriately encapsulated behind the scenes in the BI tool itself. Having come from the product marketing side at a higher education vendor, I know where this messaging comes from and why. It’s an attempt to simplify and make a BI implementation manageable and palatable to the buyer. They’re trying to sell a product that isn’t really a product. On the surface it looks like a good solution and demos well, but the devil is in the details. It is a combination of technology and business analysis. Having deployed numerous solutions like this, it’s not as simple as it seems. It takes a good methodology combined with strong technology and business skill sets to get right. Know what you’re getting into and what flexibility is available in your solution of choice and reap the benefits of BI!
Higher Education CIO BI Pulse Survey
July 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Part of ASR’s educational practices’ mission is to help our clients and the higher education business intelligence (BI) community stay informed of the latest advances in business analytics, trends in the BI marketplace, and better practices. To that end, ASR Analytics is conducting a brief BI Pulse survey of educational institutions to assess how they are progressing on their BI initiatives. The resulting report will provide a high level view of BI practices and provide institutions a unique opportunity to benchmark their accomplishments.
As a former higher education CIO, I valued the input of my academy colleagues and respected their opinion because it was a source of accurate and relevant information. By completing this survey you will be providing your colleagues with the latest information on how members of the academy are cultivating their BI initiatives.
ASR would like to invite our CIO academy readers to please take the survey by clicking the following link: CIO BI Pulse Survey. Your participation is a vital part of the report development process, and serves as the foundation for an annual survey that will allow you to benchmark progress year-over-year. If your institution currently has a BI initiative, we would appreciate your feedback in this 5-minute survey. Please submit your response no later than Friday, July 30.
We would like to thank you in advance for taking the time to complete the BI Pulse survey. Your feedback is important to us. In appreciation for your time, we will provide you with a complimentary benchmark report as soon as it is published. Your individual responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will only be published in aggregate. If you have any questions regarding this survey, please contact me at james.riha@asranalytics.com.
We look forward to hearing from you, and greatly appreciate your time and participation.
Sincerely,
James Riha, PhD
Director, ASR Analytics
Business Intelligence Initiatives Get an “A” for Effort and a “C” for Results
July 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
There is almost universal agreement that the lack of appropriate, accurate and timely information is part of the reason why organizations and even entire nations got themselves into the recent economic mess. Many analysts also agree that business intelligence (BI), the process that transforms data into intelligence, now has the opportunity to help accelerate the economic recovery and aid these organizations and nations in dealing with the new global business complexities. According to a recent Ness BI Market Pulse Survey, BI initiatives continue to be front and center on most organizational business and IT agendas. The problem they found is that BI achievements are falling short of expected outcomes. For instance, according to the report, BI solutions have done a pretty good job of providing a view into the past (hindsight) such as access to planning and financial data. But they have been less successful in providing current performance information (insight) to improve decision-making or information on future conditions (foresight) such as future customer demand.
So what are organizations really doing with business intelligence and are they being successful?
According to the “The Ness Technologies Market Pulse Study on Business Intelligence” (BI), conducted in the fourth quarter of 2009 and published May 2010, BI initiatives just aren’t delivering the results that executives were expecting. The study indicates that results are lagging expected outcomes in 14 of 16 categories as depicted below.
©2010 Ness Global Industries
The largest and most frightening gap is in business agility and planning. Respondents indicate the reason for this discrepancy is that they have run into a number of key challenges. Not surprising, is that the most significant challenges are not technical ones. The top 5 challenges, in order of importance are: (1) lack of alignment with organizational strategy (over 50%); (2) lack of working partnership between business and IT (40%); (3) resistance to change (38%) ; (4) lack of executive sponsorship; and (5) lack of communication by the BI leadership team. This is supported by the fact that less than one-half of the survey respondents believe that those responsible for BI initiatives are in regular contact and coordinate plans (49%).
The two top technical issues include problems with the integration of data and persistence of data silos. Specifically, many organizations do not have a plan and have not resolved issues to integrate their isolated vertical data structures that are the cornerstone for establishing a centralized repository for the “Single Version of the Truth”. Respondents also listed the lack of a strong data governance initiative as contributing to this last issue.
But despite these results, it looks like organizations are committed to the potential payoff of BI. Major North American organizations report an increase in there BI fiscal year 2010 budgets and they anticipate that this allocation will increase in fiscal year 2011 as well.
The planned actions that organizations plan to take or investigate include the following:
Organizational Initiatives
- Ensure that BI is aligned with the organization’s strategy
- Appoint an executive to “own” the BI program, communicate regularly with stakeholders, and assemble a seasoned team, from both Business and IT groups, with the skills to get the job done.
- Set clear objectives and develop an overall BI roadmap that concisely defines what data is needed and how it should be delivered.
- Implement the program in short, phased initiatives that quickly deliver ROI to stakeholders
Technical Initiatives
- Data Silos and integration
- Data Governance
Next-Generation BI Toolset
- Predictive analytics
- In-memory processing
- Software as a service (SaaS)
The technical and next-Generation Initiatives are also consistent with the findings published in Information Week (August 29, 2009) and CIO Magazine (February 2010).
BI Pulse Survey
Would you like to learn how members of the academy are doing with their BI initiative?
Next week, ASR will be sending out a survey to take the BI pulse of the higher education community. By completing the survey (5 minutes) you will be providing your colleagues with the latest information on how members of the academy are cultivating their BI initiatives. We look forward to your cooperation.
Frustrated with IT But Still Wanting a BI Solution?
July 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The volume of structured data, contained in transaction systems generated by organizations, is at an all time high and will continue to increase. This structured data, however, now needs to be combined with the unstructured data that represents the majority of corporate data and the new social network data. More importantly, knowledge workers and decision makers want this data accessible and made available for analysis. Additionally, much of the unstructured data is already is in the hands of the departmental knowledge workers, but they lack the tools to use it.
Business Intelligence Platform selection has traditionally required the approval of two groups at once, Information Technology (IT) and the departmental knowledge workers, which has always made purchasing and implementing a business intelligence (BI) platform a tricky thing to do. Anyone reading this can probably relate to the tension you’ve observed between your IT department and departmental end-users. Trying to get consensus and agreement on a new platform, typically dead in the middle, takes time and normally leads to some sort of compromise. But the new economic conditions are forcing IT and knowledge workers to look at different approaches for BI.
The new economic realities are driving CIO’s to look at lower cost solutions that provide the additional analytical capabilities demanded by knowledge workers. See my last post for additional information. But the knowledge workers can no longer wait and their increasing frustration appears to be fueling a growing bifurcation with central IT over the nature and future of BI. Specifically, IT led/managed BI versus departmental led/managed BI. Pressured by the new economic realities, the need to cut costs, the need for more information and analytics, and the need to quickly demonstrate business value is pushing the knowledge workers to look past central IT to address their unmet needs. The perceived benefits of improved analysis and decision making are so compelling that the knowledge workers are making the choice towards SaaS/Cloud, despite the risk of creating new fragmented silos of applications and tools.
What makes SaaS/Cloud so compelling?
SaaS/Cloud BI’s key selling points, the ones that are getting the knowledge workers to open their wallets include: (a) the ability to get a BI solution with an almost total lack of IT involvement; (b) little or no upfront cap-ex expenditures for the solution; and (c) op-ex based subscription model that allows you to pay-as-you-go (subscription fee per month instead of a large annual license fee).
Is the future of BI in the Cloud? I‘d like to hear your comments.
I would like to remind our readers that this blog is not just about ASR, nor is it about any specific vendor , infrastructure or solution– it’s a forum for “us” to express thoughts and ideas about the nature and state of business intelligence (BI). I say “us” because a blog is only a one-sided conversation unless there is input from you. Keep the comments coming and make this a repository for industry awareness and better practices. Also, feel free to ask questions or let me know if there are special topics that are interest to the ASR community, and we will try to find the answers for you.
CIO’s’ Top 5 Technology and Business Priorities for 2010
July 8, 2010 | 1 Comment
Recently, Gartner released its 2010 survey of chief information officers (CIO) priorities. The survey of 1,560 CIO’s notes that “2009 was the most challenging year for CIO’s in the corporate and public sectors as they faced multiple budget cuts, delayed spending and increased demand for services with reduced resources”. Gartner also notes that “CIO’s have suffered through a difficult budget tightening period, with budgets essentially cut back to 2005 levels”, but Gartner predicts that budgets will stabilize or grow slightly this year.
Listed below are the top five technology and business priorities for 2010 in order of importance.
Top 5 Technology Priorities
- Virtualization
- Cloud computing
- Web 2.0
- Networking, voice and data communications
- Business intelligence
Top 5 Business Priorities
- Business process improvement
- Reducing enterprise costs
- Increasing the use of information/analytics
- Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
- Attracting and retaining new customers
Collectively, the respondents indicate that there main focus is on business process improvement and increased use of information. Specifically, the use of business intelligence (BI) solutions, cloud computing and virtualization technologies. Additionally, the findings indicate that business expectations and CIO strategies appear to be in alignment.
Traditionally, technologies like virtualization and cloud computing have been used to enable organizations to get out from under a front-loaded heavy capital investment. Paradoxically, Business Intelligence solutions have traditionally required a front-loaded heavy capital investment (CAPEX) that can initially limit the agility and flexibility of both IT and the business. Additionally, given the cutbacks in organizational budgets, the only new funds available for IT investment and process improvement come from reductions in organizational costs, which are typically operational budgets (OPEX).
Gartner also notes that CIO’s are prioritizing “technologies that can be implemented quickly and without significant upfront expense, instead of investing millions of dollars to get millions in benefits, with these technologies, up front investments are measured in thousands of dollars to get those same benefits.”
Should CIO’s and the business leaders be looking at BI as a Service to resolve the paradox?
What are your thoughts?
What’s the difference between BI and Analytics?
June 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Perhaps there is no other industry with more buzzwords than the Business Intelligence (BI) “industry.” As a result, there are frequently semantic arguments over what is meant by specific terminology employed by the tool vendors, industry analysts, and consulting firms in the business. The most recent semantic battle pits the term or phrase “BI” against the term “Analytics.” With Analytics in our name, I thought it wise to weigh-in on this minor industry dust-up.
Ultimately I agree with Boris Evelson at Forrester, analytics is essentially a subset of business intelligence:
I think the effort of trying to differentiate analytics from BI is a vendor-invented hype, since many BI vendors are running out of ways to differentiate themselves… I also disagree with the “old BI = bad”, “new analytics = good” premise that I see in many analysts’ papers. You and I know that you can’t build analytics (OLAP, advanced analytics, etc.) without basic ETL, DW, MDM, etc. So nothing’s really changed as far as I am concerned: we are still fighting the same battles – silos, data quality, etc.
Fundamentally, BI refers to all methods that use data to help decision-makers and end-users gain a greater insight to their business and make better decisions. Advanced analytics (e.g. OLAP, Predictive Modeling, etc.) play a significant role in this capacity, but are only a part of the overall approach.
The Top 200 World Universities of 2009
October 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Top 10 or 100 lists of universities or colleges are the type of thing people in higher education love to hate and hate to love. Times Higher Education from the U.K. recently published its list of the Top 200 World Universities for 2009. Of course there is no shortage of American universities on the list and the usual cadre of big names are all comfortably near the top.
What always strikes me about these things is how they always vary from year to year, yet I wonder how much has changed at the institutions themselves during this time. Take the top 20 – most of which are from the U.S. and U.K. – is there really a major difference in the quality of the education between them? You have to wonder how much effort has been expended at some of these institutions in order to move one or two places on the list – just to edge out their rival.
Another striking aspect of these lists is how some institutions seem to swing wildly up or down by as many as 20 or 30 places in a given year. I have a hard time considering what changed at such an institution in so little time to warrant such a movement in ranking. In fact, I’d argue that the pace of change in higher education simply is not fast enough for the results of any change that may have been implemented to be felt in that short of a time.
To the extent that such lists spur both institutions and people to strive for excellence, than I suppose they are a good thing. However, I know quite a few institutions that do not make it onto such lists that nonetheless provide students with a myriad of opportunity and high-quality educations – including community colleges.
The top 20 of the Top 200 World Universities:
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| 1 | 1 | Harvard University | US | 100 | 100 | 98 | 100 | 85 | 78 | 100.0 |
| 2 | 3 | University of Cambridge | UK | 100 | 100 | 100 | 89 | 98 | 96 | 99.6 |
| 3 | 2 | Yale University | US | 100 | 99 | 100 | 94 | 85 | 77 | 99.1 |
| 4 | 7 | University College London | UK | 98 | 99 | 100 | 90 | 96 | 99 | 99.0 |
| 5= | 6 | Imperial College London | UK | 100 | 100 | 100 | 80 | 98 | 100 | 97.8 |
| 5= | 4 | University of Oxford | UK | 100 | 100 | 100 | 80 | 96 | 97 | 97.8 |
| 7 | 8 | University of Chicago | US | 100 | 99 | 97 | 88 | 77 | 83 | 96.8 |
| 8 | 12 | Princeton University | US | 100 | 96 | 82 | 100 | 89 | 81 | 96.6 |
| 9 | 9 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | US | 100 | 100 | 89 | 100 | 31 | 95 | 96.1 |
| 10 | 5 | California Institute of Technology | US | 99 | 72 | 87 | 100 | 100 | 89 | 95.9 |
| 11 | 10 | Columbia University | US | 100 | 99 | 97 | 92 | 28 | 89 | 95.6 |
| 12 | 11 | University of Pennsylvania | US | 96 | 99 | 85 | 98 | 82 | 60 | 94.2 |
| 13 | 13= | Johns Hopkins University | US | 98 | 79 | 100 | 99 | 28 | 71 | 94.1 |
| 14 | 13= | Duke University | US | 95 | 97 | 100 | 93 | 29 | 62 | 92.9 |
| 15 | 15 | Cornell University | US | 100 | 99 | 85 | 94 | 28 | 73 | 92.5 |
| 16 | 17 | Stanford University | US | 100 | 100 | 71 | 100 | 25 | 96 | 92.2 |
| 17 | 16 | Australian National University | Australia | 100 | 91 | 75 | 74 | 99 | 92 | 90.5 |
| 18 | 20 | McGill University | Canada | 100 | 97 | 92 | 61 | 67 | 95 | 90.4 |
| 19 | 18 | University of Michigan | US | 99 | 99 | 85 | 81 | 57 | 52 | 89.9 |
| 20= | 23 | University of Edinburgh | UK | 97 | 99 | 84 | 65 | 93 | 86 | 89.3 |
| 20= | 24 | ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) | Switzerland | 97 | 80 | 55 | 99 | 100 | 94 | 89.3 |