The BIG Blog

Business Intelligence Back to Top of CIO Mind

A recent survey by PC World shows that Business Intelligence [BI] is once again ‘top of mind’ for CIO’s. After slipping down to the number 2 spot below virtualization it seems BI has bubbled back up to the surface. Whilst the survey editorial acknowledges that this may be purely because most server virtualization has now been completed, it also alludes to the lack of ROI on BI programs being the cause for the drop.

Personally, I see virtualization and MDM programs as part of the BI strategy in making good quality data available at high performance levels. Rather than being separate, competing initiatives, they are merely projects along the BI continuum.

However, I do believe that insufficient thought is given to education in BI strategy and dashboard design. Both of these factors lead to significantly lower value outcomes for investment in BI.

A couple of resources to help remedy that:

• BI Strategy Guide
• Effective Dashboard Design

For those of you earlier in the BI intiative and need a full guide across all elements of BI, including strategy, data, software selection, and how best to use BI tools in your business, then The Logical Organization is the full strategic guide for you.

What are your thoughts on how well BI projects are performing? Please add your comment below.

BI Helps Overcome Fear of Failure

Fear of Failure is often cited as the reason for not extending ones reach in both personal and business feats. In the case of an employee, the fear of failure is really little more than fear of criticism or blame – they personally don’t take a financial hit if the product is wrong or the launch campaign isn’t as effective as planned. So how does BI help? BI puts the analytics, the rationale and logic behind a decision out there for everyone to see – everyone to accept – and everyone to share the blame. It takes the onus of decision making off a single person and spreads it across the business. It provides a fact-based, rather than person-based foundation for decisions.

Getting away from the blame game, gets your business away from the lame game, and gets it competing with more focus, more knowledge and more confidence. It opens your business to becoming more remarkable. Staying safe, playing within the lines is not the way to grow a business – growth requires risk, calculated risk. The very best outcome will be one that most people love and some people hate, but at least you are pushing the barriers and getting noticed. Getting noticed today is a major goal of any business – getting noticed profitably is the ultimate agenda.

Playing safe and staying the same as your competitors doesn’t get you noticed, and doesn’t get you ahead of the pack. As businesses start to stretch out again following the recessionary shrink, caution will be a common call. Only those with the tools to analyse their options in a rapid manner, thus avoiding paralysis by analysis, will lead the charge in the post recessionary wave.

It’s your choice to ride the wave, or wave goodbye. It’s your choice to go it alone or lean on BI.

Choosing the Right Format to Display Your KPI

In determining the best format for displaying a KPI on a dashboard you need to understand your data – its format and the profile of performance.

There are three types of data display:

1. Raw – is purely a snapshot of what has happened in the past reporting period. This is suited to performance that is chunky [occurs without predictable frequency] and has high variability in data value. This KPI type is typically presented using bar graphs.
2. Change – Often we are not interested in the actual value; we only want to know the percentage change. This might be an indication of growth rate. Using an above:below graph, with the horizontal axis set at 0; positive values above the line, and negative change values below.
3. Trend – the most telling type of KPI graph is the line graph. This shows the trend of performance and is a greater indicator of whether action is needed than either raw or change representations.

The Perils of Self Service BI

Self-service BI is becoming the holy grail of business intelligence in its big promise to break the reliance of business users on IT to create their reports. With self-service BI, business users get the information they need, when they want it, how they want it. However, its not quite as simple as it sounds. For most business users, the BI tools are too difficult to use.

So what’s the solution – in-business power users. Power users are technically savvy business analysts that work within business teams to provide reporting. Adding BI to their suite of tools will replace a lot of very shaky complex pivot tables, and provide a much more insightful set of outcomes.

The big win is getting report production out of IT – away from IT deadlines and out of the hands of those who have no added business value into the process. Business power users are in touch with the business on a daily basis, as such they have more insight into the types of problems that the business needs to solve and the insight [data] needed to help make decisions around solving that problem. Read the rest…

BICC – Value or Vault?

As a Strategic Performance Consultant doing a lot of work in the BI arena I am often asked about the real value of Business Intelligence Competency Centers [BICC]. Many businesses struggle to see the benefits in the early days of BI, regarding the BICC as a compliance discipline that is likely to act as a bottleneck, swallowing up their projects, dampening enthusiasm and frustrating progress.

As BICCs have started to emerge more frequently in the last few years, there is little in the way of long term case studies to sway the sceptics, so what I suggest must be taken with an element of good faith. A properly structured BICC can do more to progress your BI Roadmap than any other element of the BI Program. It is not just a standardisation body – it also acts as the Evangelist for business intelligence throughout the business. One of the first tasks of the BICC is to identify the best opportunities for BI. This requires educated assessment – something many business units have not had the advantage of achieving in their already overloaded schedules. The BICC can act either formally, or informally to guide business groups in assessing the benefits of incorporating BI and help them become more aware of how BI is used – beyond better reporting!. Read the rest…

CIO Focus Moving From Information To Recommendation

Most CIOs will agree that data or information isn’t in short supply. But businesses don’t need more information – they need decisions about what action to take next. They need Business Intelligence capability to convert their information into recommendations. And that means the ability to analyze discrete pieces of information and use them to gain a competitive edge.

It all sounds simple, but for many employees, BI is just a more complex way to getting reports. Most have not been educated in the principles of business intelligence, and how to integrate it with their processes and their people. Read the rest…

Agility, Alignment and Analytics

Looking to boost your perspective on BI or dig deeper into the latest hot topics in business intelligence, then take a look at the agenda for the upcoming TDWI BI Executive Summit in San Diego, August 16-18th 2010.

The theme for this years summit is Agility, Alignment and Analytics, covering hot topics including:

• Agile BI
• Text analytics
• Analytic databases
• Distributed BI organizations
• Radical BI
• BI competency centers
• Advanced visualization

Early bird discount ends July 16, so check out the agenda now.

NOTE: I have no affiliate relationship with TDWI for this event – I just think they do a great job at providing a comprehensive view of business intelligence.

What Drives the Best BI TCO?

New Releases in The Logical Organization Management Insight Series

I am really excited to announce the release of two new additions to the TLO Management Insight Series:

• Leading With SPI
• Getting to Cloud

Leading with SPI – Driving Productivity and Profit using Strategic Performance Improvement

Leading with SPI provides a detailed, step-by-step guide to driving better strategic definition and more effective and efficient strategic execution. Using the powers of business intelligence, the key decisions of the business are focused around those points where real improvement can be made. SPI transforms the outlook of business leaders from a backward facing measurement system using traditional lagging indicators, to a more future focused KPI based performance improvement capability that delivers more opportunities to improve and move ahead of competition.

SPI starts with deconstruction of measurable strategic objectives to help focus the business on what’s most important, and by following a simple process, identifies the questions that must be answered at each key decision point.

The KPI used to measure performance are grouped around these key decision points, ensuring that what must be done, gets measured. And, gets focused upon!

Find out more about Leading with SPI by clicking here.

Getting to Cloud – Discovering New Business Opportunities with Cloud Computing

Cloud is the missing power base that underpins data warehouses and advanced analytics. So many businesses are either prevented from implementing BI solutions or stall early into the project through the lack of processing power or clean data quality management. Cloud provides the opportunity to leverage the significant benefits of BI, without reliance on outdated, overloaded IT infrastructures.

Cloud computing is so much more than a power base for BI – with its foundation in virtualization technology, it is the platform that will transform the competitive base of business. No longer will small businesses be constrained in competing against their larger competitors through lack of IT resources. Cloud remedies that.

Cloud also impacts the IT reseller market – rather than disintermediation of resellers, Cloud offers an expanse of new service and product opportunities that were previously beyond the technical or financial scope.

Getting to Cloud looks at the questions both buyers and sellers need to be asking themselves right NOW. It provides detailed ROI case analysis and savings data for use in business cases…and so much more.

Find out more about Getting to Cloud by clicking here

4 Key Questions About Business Intelligence

Sometimes, in amongst all the hype and confusion of new technologies it pays to revisit the basic questions…..in this case we are looking at business intelligence [BI]….

What is BI?

• Why do I need BI?
• What BI tools do I need for what purpose?
• How do I select a BI solution?
• What is the best way to implement BI?

I will answer each of these questions in following blogs

What is BI?

Business intelligence is a capability, supported by a software suite that provides insight into your business and its operating environment to support more productive and more profitable decisions. It helps to filter out personal biases and irrelevant past experiences to isolate the most meaningful data that relates directly to the decisions you need to make for today and the future of your business. BI differs from standard reporting in that reporting adopts an historical perspective to show what has happened in the past. It does not tell you why it happened, or whether it may happen in the same way again in the future.

Why do I need BI?

A business is designed to move forward, not backward. Using backward facing information to drive a forward facing business doesn’t make sense and can lead to massive mistakes through incorrect assumptions, and decisions made for political rather than logical reasons.

BI removes human frailty from decision making as much as possible, allowing for evidence-based decisions to drive your business. This alone helps to cleanse your business of personal ego patching, destructive hierarchical power-plays and overzealous enthusiasm driving you into activities that do not support your productivity and profitability goals.

BI significantly reduces decision risk and helps you streamline both your operational and marketing activities to those that produce the most value for the least resources expended.