October 28, 2008
BI Solutions, BI Strategy
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I just finished commenting on a rollicking debate about BI – The Great Debate: Business Intelligence but suggest you click over to read all the comments, as they covered off many of the reasons that I wrote The Logical Organization.
I congratulate all on a great debate. All contributors made valid points, albeit from different perspectives. As a corporate performance consultant for 20 years I have developed an in-depth understand of technology and am often charged with vendor selection.
I acknowledge Nigel’s statement that we all agree that “when it is implemented well, business intelligence technology can and does stimulate better management and innovation”. I also agree that more focus needs to be on “how technology solves business issues” rather than how well the IO can manage queries. Nigel caps the major challenge that most BI vendors and business managers don’t recognise – “not enough businesspeople understand what the technology can do”. It’s very much a matter of they don’t know what they don’t know!
BI impacts processes and decision making in often revolutionary ways for many businesses. This aspect is rarely highlighted in BI vendor marketing presentations. They talk about better decision making – but do not state why or how. Having better data is not the answer. Using better data and embedding that use in every day processes is how decisions will become data driven.
I agree with Nigel that BI has been IT-led. This has largely been by necessity. Executives today that sign off on technology investments don’t have the time or desire to understand how technology works. But in failing to do so, they fail to recognise the significant value BI can have in the organization.
BI and performance management matter in ANY size company and decision making must be supported by facts, not individual recollections of what happened last time we tried that.
I don’t read that Nigel suggests that BI is not suited to SME, rather he rightly emphases the real truth that all business owners and managers [not just SME] “must make the effort to learn how they can adapt the available BI tools to their business needs”
Tony adds to this dilemma by pointing out one possible reason for this – that many BI vendors fall short in communicating the value of BI tools to the business – they tend to concentrate on regaling the many benefits of the BI features in terms of how they easily fit into the IT infrastructure and the performance power of the engines – Business people don’t give a hoot about any of this. They want to know only three things – how it makes me more money, how it saves me money, and how it will keep me out of jail!
As Paul says “Managers across all organisations of ALL sizes have the identical issues” But in saying this, business managers need to take more responsibility about IT as a critical business capability and get more savvy and knowledgeable about business technology in general. If they don’t understand how BI technology works – how can one expect them to trust and rely upon it to support their most pressing business decisions. They won’t do this if BI is seen as part of BI. I advocate BI as a separate function that provides capability across the business – just as IT or finance support aspects of all functions. In this way it provides a strategic and operational bridge between IT and the business. The more BI gets ‘operationized’ the more its value is released.
As Bob states one of the prime reasons that so many businesses “go to the wall each year is due to the lack of financial information”. But I would add that its not just financial information that is needed – but market information and operational performance information. Too much emphasis is given to financial reporting – when it is purely an outcome of good decisions around product development, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing etc etc. The closer to the source of the driver of performance the information can be monitored – the more likely any damaging flow on effect can be contained.
I got so frustrated by all these issues that I decided to do something to help resolve these problems so have recently published a comprehensive guide [“The Logical Organization”] covering all these important points – what BI does and what business managers need to know about the technology, but written in a way they understand. BI is about executing business strategy, business ownership of data as a valued asset, data quality governance, business process automation, evidence based decision making, personal performance management, effective planning and governance – and a whole raft of business competencies. Collectively, we all need to include more about these items in our communications about BI and move away from the tech speak that scares most managers away, and sends the rest to sleep.
It’s not about technology – it’s about accepting that the operational framework businesses need today is vastly different from 10-15 years ago and that BI needs to be integrated [using BI technology] at every critical point of performance. And that applies to any function, in any business [small – medium and large], and in any industry.
The Logic Evangelist
October 17, 2008
BI Infrastructure, BI Market, Cloud Computing, IT Strategy
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Gartner has released its Top Tech list for 2009, and BI sits at #9. This years top strategic technology is very much based at the infrastructure, rather than the application level with Virtualization, cloud computing, computing fabric, web-oriented architecture and unified communications. This has somewhat overpowered the strategic value of BI, but is significant to BI in that it focuses attention to the underlying capability that BI requires to perform at its best.
To be included on Gartners list, the technology must possess more than just inherent features and funcitonality. It must be capable of being applied across multiple platforms and have real value to business.
Virtualization – is transforming corporate IT infrastructure at both the server and desktop level.
Cloud Computing - is the buzz phrase in IT today, so it is no wonder that it hit the strategic list at number two. Cloud computing will have a signficant impact on the way technology is deployed in organizations and will add support to SaaS models in all application fields.
Comuting Fabrics – at number 3, [#8 in 2008] server technology ‘Computing Fabrics’ combines server technology resources to enable them to be dispensed with their underlying pools of small, medium and large servers. Blade servers have some computing fabric capability – being able to move memory and processor capability.
Following the top three are:
4. Web-oriented Architecture – impacting the SOA model for services delivery, this architecture uses Web standards, identifiers, formats and protocols.
5. Enterprise Mashups - up from #6, applies the wizardary of contentmashups to allow users to employ public APIs to quickly combine various services and capabilities; extending the flexibility business users have to combine data inside and outside the enterprise.
6. Specialized Systems - new to the list, includes all those specialized appliances for Java, data warehousing and other processes. Not quite sure where this one will end as it is a dumping ground for all the less significant technologies, that when applied together become significant.
7. Social Software and Social Networking – up from #10, these tools extend collaboration efforts across organizations.
8. Unified Communications – aligned to number 7 above, and down from the second spot last year, Gartner anticipates a major consolidation of communications vendors through unified communications.
9. Business intelligence – new to the list, although surprising it hasn’t made it in the past. However, the reality of BI has dawned with the increase in computing power making BI tools more effective and efficient. The focus on BI has moved from core analytics as a distinct function to operational BI, embedded into business processes supporting automated decision making and exception management.
10. Green IT – the top contender in 2008 has lost ground to the bottom spot but has not diminished in importance. Sustainability is now woven into the fabric of IT strategy and as such is no longer seen as a separate capability but an inherent requirement of all corporate operations and technology.
October 16, 2008
BI Solutions
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Over the next few weeks I will be attending presentations from several BI Vendors updating the industry on the latest advancements in their solutions.
After the mass consolidation of the BI vendor market in 2007, the industry has been somewhat nervous as to how the larger parent companies would impact their new third party BI vendor subsidiaries. On the solution front, it seems that so far is more than so good.
At the Cognos 8 presentation this morning, under its new IBM flag, we were treated to a new level of user configuration, further releasing such tasks from the job sheets of IT. Whislt this may send shivers down the spines of many business managers fearful that further configuration features equates directly to more complication, it seems that in fact the opposite is true. Not only has Cognos expanded the user tool set, but it has further simplified the configuration with helpful wizards and user added notes.
Note facilities are great negotiation platforms upon which to build collaboration in BI. For instance, if we take the most horrendous part of any BI implementation – data quality, the tools provide for data stewards in each part of the business to take ownership of their data set and for local definitions of meta data definitions to be added to the standard business value library. Much of the territorial infighting over the adoption of one single business term for say “revenue” is that legacy systems with less flexibility in nomenclature still use alternative terminology such as “gross income” or just “income”. The tool allows for each part of the business to flag such values and add their local definition, to help their departmental users to feel more confident in what data they are reading.
This is just one example of the understanding of difficulties in BI implementation that have been carefully considered by Cognos in expanding its software capability. Read more about Cognos 8 BI here.
October 14, 2008
BI Theory
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Prominent business research company Ventana Reseach has launched a new area of research and benchmarks to focus on the need for business intelligence.
In a recent newsletter, Ventana confirms that it is responding to the “significant changes in our business and economic environment” and that “the pace of change seems itself to be speeding up” and acknowledged that the business environment is characterised by “longer-cycle changes – shifts in strategic issues that include an increasing shortage of talent, the aging workforce, pressure to green your business, global supply chain challenges caused by factors economic and political, and of course the incessant pressure to do more with less. Navigating these challenges has never been more complex and useful guidance never harder to come by”.
Recognising that information is power, they have created a new ‘educational center’ to help businesses become more informed about BI and performance management.
Business Imperatives
Business Intelligence
