Ready to Roll
October 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In the model train hobby I enjoy during my spare time, this means “take it out of the package, put it on the tracks and it is ready to go!” There’s no assembly, painting, adjusting, setup, muss or fuss. Unfortunately, getting a business intelligence solution ready for production isn’t quite so easy.
Lately, I’ve been working on a solution delivery scheduled for the end of this month. Here are a few key things we’ve been tracking with this client to ensure a smooth and successful rollout. Some may seem obvious, but it is easy to forget little details:
- Get the complete list of users who need access. Along with this list, it is important to have planned their access and security credentials. When considering groups and who should have access to what, make sure to assess both the data they should see, as well as the functionality they should be allowed to use in the BI platform.
- Test using actual user credentials setup as defined in the access plan. Everything can look like it is working great when logged in as the administrator or developer, but as we found out, simple things can be overlooked like the ability to change predefined queries or overwrite a standard report.
- Ensure there is adequate licensing. Understand the type and concurrency of the license scheme you have. Often the first couple of days will see a lot of activity from the curious users. If they have trouble logging in because of limited licensing, you may have a hard time coaxing them back to the BI system again.
- Prepare a quick start or users’s guide. As much as you might think “it’s all intuitive”, for many users new to BI, it’s not so obvious. List explicity the steps they need to take and use screen shots of the actual system with actual data so they know they are doing things correctly. There can be a lot of useful tips and tricks for navigating around reports and analyses they’ll appreciate too. It helps build confidence and buy-in to using the system.
- Validate the reports and analytics one last time. What worked a week ago or a month ago might not necessarily work today. Like the security and access plan, the report design can sometimes be affected by little things like a changover in a month or business cycle. A back end data source may not be updated as it should have been and no alert was in place to raise the flag. New data may not fit the original formatting if boundary values weren’t well understood. There are many possibilities to keep an eye on. While it is unlikley all issues will be caught, one last review is a good idea.
I am looking forward to the end of the month to see how well things go. Things should be ready to roll!
Dashboards in Minutes?
September 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Previously, I posted on a couple of higher education vendors touting their “out of the box” dashboards. Here’s another example of messaging that should make every BI project lead or CIO cringe. “Data to Dashboards in Minutes” is the byline for the Pentaho Agile BI Tour that started recently. It sounds appealing: a half day workshop to help you “deliver successful BI solutions to users more quickly and at significantly lower cost.”
But what part of the dashboard deployment process are they talking about? I doubt the half day seminar with hands on demo includes the challenging, up front, and most important part of the process. That is, to answer questions surrounding data governance, ownership, quality and integration. I also suspect it sidesteps the contentious debate that occurs during most dashboard design and deployment efforts on what metrics, goals and visual presentation should be made for the various user personas who will access the them. In my experience, every user wants their own view and metric definitions of what matters for their job responsibilities. Dashboards are notoriously difficult to create with the right level of detail and interactivity, except at the very highest levels of summary. And, those are often the least useful for real decision making.
So, I am curious as to how comprehensive the Agile BI Methodology is with respect to the people and process side of the BI equation. Ignoring this key aspect and touting ”dashboards in minutes” or “out of the box” really does a disservice to everyone involved–the end user, IT, professional services, and BI vendor communities because it sets a false expectation of what is possible. It doesn’t tell the whole story of what resources are required to get the organization where it wants to go. That leaves BI professional service companies like ASR having to do more education on the realities that go beyond just the BI technologies. The limiting factor is often the organization’s own ability to deal with the internal transformations needed to understand and manage with data.
That is the big nut to crack.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 4
September 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 3, I discussed the value of increasing your understanding of the BI ecosystem and how it can enable the use of self-organizing teams. The next key to improving your BI success is maintaining the commitment of key constituents, improving your institutional communication around the BI initiative and setting the stage for your BI development teams’ success.
The C’s in Success
Communication
In my experience, there’s usually a poor communication strategy behind any really good idea that doesn’t quite get off the ground. Too often BI leaders tend to focus too long on the larger business case (ROI, institutional benefits, etc) and fizzle out on building the personal commitment, the “hearts and minds” part. What is required is continuous and focused communication with key constituents before, during and after the launch. In my experience, the success of an institutional wide BI initiative is as dependent on your political success as it is on your technical success.
To keep the institutional BI visibility high and retain the commitment of the key constituents take a cue from the masters: politicians. Political campaign platforms are based on the three C principles: (1) Crisp and Clear; (2) Context Centric; and (3) Consistent and Consistently. Every stump speech, every sound bite, every public conversation and every written message needs to be rigorously “on message,” All the BI sponsors and members of the BI development team need to follow the three C’s principles.
1. Crisp and Clear
How do you describe the BI initiative and what value will the BI initiative have for the person you are talking to? Let’s go back to that tried-and-true technique–the elevator pitch. Can you clearly describe the goal/value of the BI initiative in 30 seconds or less? When you talk to someone about the BI initiative does your description hold that person’s attention? Or do their eyes glaze over or wander across the room?
Being crisp is about informing people about the value, what you plan to accomplish for them, in as few words as possible, and using that same crisp message in written materials.
Take this Test
Find a friend who is the least likely to understand your BI initiative, and test your “message crispness” on them. Tell them what you are doing with BI in two or three sentences. Avoid industry jargon and technical terms that only people in the BI field will understand. Then ask them to repeat what they think you are doing back to you. If they don’t come back with the right answer, the message isn’t crisp and clear.
2. Context Centric for each Stakeholder type
You need to communicate the role they play and the value proposition to each Stakeholder type (executives, BI developers, end-users, etc). You need to inform stakeholders about what you are doing, why you are doing it, their role in the BI initiative and the value it has for them. People need convincing as to why they should spend their time and limited resources with you. Your story should focus on how they benefit from the BI initiative (communicated from a “what’s in it for them?” perspective).
3. Consistent and Consistently
Once you’ve nailed down your crisp message, and you’re telling your story from your stakeholder’s perspective, make sure you tell it consistently in your conversations, e-mails, in print materials, via etc.
Nothing is more disconcerting to stakeholders than hearing one story from one communications channel or individual and then hearing or reading a different version of the story from someone else or someplace else. They don’t know which version to believe. Reestablish who you are and what you are doing with every stakeholder interaction. Reinforce your story as often as possible.
In the next post we’ll explore some additional C’s to you BI development teams’ success.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 3
August 27, 2010 | 1 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 | 2 Comments
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.