January 24, 2011
BI Infrastructure, BI Program, BI Strategy
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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…
January 20, 2011
BI Market, BI Solutions, Cognos, Microsoft, Microstrategy, SAS
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Since the BI Vendor shakedown a few years back where a raft of mergers saw the Big 3 [IBM, Oracle and SAP] take hold of the majority of the market, the BI Vendor assessment grid has been somewhat predictable. Things actually got a little bit boring there for a while, as these mega vendors worked through how to apply their in-house talent to make the best of breed third tier BI solutions even better. Fast forward to 2010 and we started to see things get stirred up a little more. Whilst the Big 3 were busy trying to out-do each other with maintaining BI Solution independence, yet merge it more successfully with their respective ERP solutions, a few other major contenders have pushed through the market from below.
Without doubt SAS Institute was always a close contender, and of more recent time Information Builders held a respectable position, MicroStrategy was building solid support for its elegant BI user interface and Microsoft managed to maintain a reasonable market position based more on its partner and vendor channel strength, rather than anything stunning about its applications.
In the recent (Q4, 2010) Forrester Wave vendor assessment, all of these four vendors are now seen as BI Solution leaders.
IBI, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy have solid implementation success with BI platforms.
IBI’s WebFOCUS reporting platform [predictive analytic, data quality, master data management, and light data visualization capabilities] together with its iWay data integration connectors provide a near full stack solution.
Microsoft has improved its solution recently with the launch of SQL Server 2008 R2, with a much improved version 3 ReportBuilder tool support for Excel and improved event processing. Whilst I continue to maintain that Excel is not a suitable BI tool – the solution does offer a midground option for those not yet financially committed to a full BI investment. The other obvious benefit of using a Microsoft solution is the integration and interoperability with the popular SharePoint portal. However it is not that difficult to integrate a third part BI solution into a portal. The other element of Microsoft is in Master Data Management [MDM] with its simple to implement Master Data Services platform working well in a BizTalk environment to offer a full Service-Oriented model for improvement in data quality management, orchestration and data governance.
I don’t quite share Forresters overall seeming ‘equality’ between this group of BI vendor solutions. Whilst each are still struggling to differentiate their products at a technical level, business users still struggle to get to grips with the user interfaces, and dashboard design is still very lacking in supporting good design principles and the more effective graphical elements. However, progress is refreshingly swift overall, considering the complexity of the overall solution. I just wish there would be one application level solution that had all the components I wanted.
I am looking forward to the IBM event in a couple of weeks to see the new Cognos 10 release. I have always been a supporter of Cognos, so enjoy catching up with the latest demos – I’ll post my findings following.
January 19, 2011
BI Infrastructure, BI Strategy
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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…
July 16, 2010
Microstrategy, Mobile BI
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The use of BI on mobile expands the value and usability of hefty investment in business intelligence. Mobile BI empowers executives, workforce, suppliers, and business partners with actionable information anywhere, anytime. This has proven to reduce decision-making time, streamlines business processes and enhance collaboration.
With the more recent powerful ap-phones and tablets that support GPS and large touch screens, it is now easier than ever to query vast volumes of data quickly and precisely. The previous limitations of “small screen devices” and low processing power have been largely overcome. Enterprise reports and BI dashboards are now readily available to the iPhone and iPad – and such technologies will rapidly expand the business intelligence market.
MicroStrategy Mobile is a logical extension of business intelligence and is engineered to support higher demand for improved speed and scalability of mobile BI applications. Microstrategy claims implementation takes only a few days, with applications assembled in a point-and-click fashion and no coding required. iPhone and iPad-optimized displays and controls are readily deployable across multiple applications.
MicroStrategy Mobile infrastructure supports new mobile app, leaving application developers to focus on creating the user experience. Using a metadata-driven design approach enables rapid, point-and-click portability of reports between platforms, including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, web browsers, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows.
For more on Microstrategy Business Intelligence
July 8, 2010
BI Theory
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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.
June 30, 2010
Analyst Reports, BI Program, BI Strategy
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I always look forward to the reports on BI from the Aberdeen Group to get a global perspective of how BI projects are being deployed and how well users are engaging with BI tools. The latest April 2010 report focused on TCO, in particular the cost per BI user. According to the report, during the previous 12 months, the average total expenditure per BI User*:
- Best in Class – $357
- Industry Average – $968
- Laggard $ 3,321
So just what is behind this significant variance in expenditure, what is it that best in class are doing at a lesser cost than other BI initiatives. According to other findings in the report Best in class BI teams:
- Had a clearly defined BI strategy – including a strategy for BI data management
- Had standard processes for gathering end user BI requirements
- Were 2.9 times more likely to formally develop BI knowledge and skills amongst users
- Were 1.8 times more likely to track BI project costs to budget
- Were 1.7 times more likely to automate the creation of reports.
The overall message is that BI TCO is not only about the technology. It is largely impacted by the transformational efforts made to define a BI strategy, manage BI project roadmap iterations, and to educate users on how to extract more value from their BI tools.
* The TCO View of Business Intelligence – How to Get the Most Bang for Your Analytical Buck. Michael Lock. April 2010.
You can find copies of this report on the aberdeen.com website.
June 17, 2010
BI Market, BI Solutions, Cloud BI
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Four open-source and proprietary vendors have forged a new partnership resulting in a cloud-based BI stack.
- Jaspersoft - open-source BI
- Talend - data-integration
- Vertica - analytics database
- RightScale - management software for cloud-based application deployments
Whilst the contractual relationship between the vendors may be tight, unfortunately the same cannot be said for customers. Customers need to form contractual agreements with each vendor. Each vendor will also be responsible for supporting their own technology. To ease the pain, the group has created a seamless sales that supports a ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing model inherent in cloud computing.
Such an offering will not only attract smaller enterprises; departments in larger enterprises frustrated at the lengthy delay of BI deployment and the complex Capex business case sign off will find value in such a one-stop infrastructure to advance their use of data from spreadsheets and canned reports into an operational BI application. The stack will also provide an ideal ‘sandbox’ for enterprise IT teams wishing to experiment with BI analytics.
March 20, 2010
BI Program, BI Strategy, BI Theory, Cloud BI, Cloud Computing, CPM
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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
March 13, 2010
Analytics
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There is much debate over exactly what analytics is. A major proportion of this debate is purely semantics, as technical persons struggle to relate technology in business terms. In reality, the business doesn’t really care what it is called – they care about what it does. Analytics goes beyond traditional reporting and data mining – it passes by the what happened and where, and gets right to the why it happened. Using this insight, analytics and modeling tools can help predict the most likely outcomes of various future scenarios.
Reporting and data mining are a great place to start if you are just emerging on your Business Intelligence roadmap, but it is Analytics that will really drive your business to new competitive heights.
Find out more:
Advanced Analytics
Difference between Standard Analytics and Advanced Analytics
March 11, 2010
Analyst Reports, Cloud Computing, Pentaho
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Support for open source software has grown significantly over the past five years. Recently, Forrester Analyst Jeffrey Hammond claimed that open-source technology is now “a de facto standard” for IT, with many companies hoping to save $30K-$40K per server in 2010 by switching to open-source.
Open source solutions are bubbling to the top of many types of applications. Open Source BI solutions, lead by Pentaho offer the cost and flexibility advantages previously lacking in many packaged commercial solutions.
So just how will this model play out? Will applications become commoditized with revenue models moving from software to services? Will the Cloud help to drive this change?
Share your thoughts on this, I am interested to know what you think.
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