NKY Women’s Initiative
January 29, 2010
Thanks to Suzanne Lorch for providing me with some pictures from the event! If you missed, check out the Chamber website for their next event.
- Jodie
Tomorrow’s Forecast
January 29, 2010
I am always looking for different ways to describe what LÛCRUM does. Sure there is the standard response of “LÛCRUM helps companies to turn data into useful and actionable information,” but that can be tough to visualize. Sometimes it helps to use more vivid and familiar examples of things to explain the services we offer. Think of the weather. If all of the important weather components were just structured data in table or spreadsheet, it might look like this:
So sure, I could find what I was looking for…”what’s the temp at 9AM?” It takes a pair of readers a few seconds, but it’s there. There are so many other data points, however. Is it getting warmer or colder? Is it going to rain today? Certainly the other data points are there that would help me to make the decision – relative humidity, cloud cover, wind speed – but I may need to consult the company metadata to understand what it all means and if those numbers mean it will be getting hotter or colder. THIS IS DATA. Your org has it…you’ve got to make sense of it.
What LÛCRUM does, is make this DATA meaningful. We like to call it Business Intelligence or Data Visualization. Simply stated, we take all of those data points and help you to make better business decisions (or in this case, help you to decide if you should wear a coat or bring your umbrella).
THIS IS BI!
THIS
IS
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE!!
Taking lots of data and making it meaningful…yeah, that’ s what LÛCRUM does.
- Jodie
NKY Women’s Initiative
January 28, 2010
Today I joined 399 other local women at the SOLD OUT Kickoff event for the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Women’s Initiative. What an experience! LUCRUM’s own Suzanne Lorch is the Chair of the Women’s Initiative. In the last year, she and 50 other women who live/work/conduct business in NKY decided that the focus of the group should be “to help women Connect…Grow…Achieve”.
The programming over the coming months will include a monthly Happy Hour, mentoring programs and roundtable discussions. Additionally, they are establishing an on-line directory for their members which will include other women’s groups and organizations with similar missions.
The Keynote Speaker today was Maribeth Rahe, CEO & President of Fort Washington Investment Advisiors, Inc. She provided the group with her wisdom on how to succeed in business. She provided the group with these 13 pearls of wisdom:
The Rule of 13
- Be strong, not weak.
- Always be willing to do what is right for your company, your clients, your colleagues, and your community.
- Learn from experience – both yours and that of others.
- Be open minded, flexible, and change-oriented.
- Never settle for the status quo or anything expedient.
- Learn to trust your instincts.
- Earn your stripes, daily.
- Measure your performance.
- Support your team personally and professionally.
- Be encouraging, not negative.
- Celebrate success.
- Say “Thank you”.
- Think before your speak or act.
Thanks to Suzanne and Maribeth and all of the other wonderful contributors to the event. Hope to see you at the next one!
- Jodie
Do you really want an iPad
January 27, 2010
iPad
I wrote a post earlier today prior to seeing the official “unveiling” of the iPad. After watching 10 minutes of the broadcast, I trashed that version. Here is what I saw in the iPad…
1. It’s a iPhone on steroids. All of the things I love about my iPhone are here.
2. It’s cool…yeah, I mean it…cool.
3. It replaces the newspaper…with a newspaper. You wanna read the NY Times? They’ll have an app for that. With a crystal clear 9″ x 7″ screen it will be better than the newspaper. I sure hope my Cincinnati Enquirer gets on board with this! Here’s a few more specs for you: http://www.pcworld.com/article/187870/ipad_specs_what_apple_announced_and_what_we_still_dont_know.html
4. For business apps, like mail, I can type longer messages with the larger keyboard. My fingers won’t get tired from the one key at a time keystrokes. This will be great when out of the office. I’ve often waited to get back to the office to respond to a mail message that I say when I was out, simply because my response would take to long on the little keyboard. Even blog posts could be written on the iPad.
5. Small & lightweight – THIS is the device to take with you on your next trip out of town!
So it has no hard drive…so what! With Google docs, I don’t need one. If I keep my files on SharePoint, I can use Lucrum’s own iPhone app – Attache to access those docs. (Hey Steve – the SDK is already available for the iPad…can you work on that Attache app??)
Wow! So excited! Wonder how long I’ll be able to keep from buying one of these??
- Jodie
Hello 7755 Montgomery Road
January 26, 2010
Our new building
For those of you that read my blog last week Farewell to 312 Plum Street, you will be happy to know that Eric made it safely to 7755 Montgomery Road. Now we begin the daunting task of unpacking, reorganizing, hanging (pictures), and navigating our new landscape. Hope to see you soon!
Matt has a lot of unpacking to do!
The Future of Business Intelligence
January 25, 2010
January 2010 Cover
Have you heard of Technology First? Technology First is a Dayton, Ohio based industry-led, industry-driven trade association dedicated to:
- Proactively Representing IT in the Region
- Increasing understanding of Technology First and its value
- Recognizing and promoting our membership
- Highlighting niche technology companies
Technology First looks to strengthen technology thought leadership by inspiring innovation, focusing on new ideas and best practices, presenting leading edge industry information that is both strategic to business and technical folks. They also look to inspire volunteer leadership by encouraging stronger member participation which involves more working committees and develops programming to best meet industry needs. Additionally, they look to engage in conversations with technology community by leveraging interactive social media.
I was asked to prepare an article on the Future of Business Intelligence. Imagine my surprise when that article was selected as their cover story this month! Click here to read. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Have a great week!
- Jodie
Farewell 312 Plum Street
January 22, 2010
Today the folks at LÛCRUM are closing the doors to 312 Plum Street forever. *sniff* It’s hard to believe that this day is here. LÛCRUM moved in in January 1997. I joined LÛCRUM in July 1998. There are a lot of memories here. I can almost recall every coffee stain, oops marker stains on our white board and worn spots on the chairs. EWWWWW!
Look at that “Admin” cube! I remember when I joined LÛCRUM we actually had someone answer the phones for us. Does any company do that anymore? (On an alternate tangent…I hate those phone systems that require you to say your option…just let me press a darn number!).
Anyway, we’re packing up 13 years of memories, dirt, proposals, old shirts, coffee pots, books (anyone need a slightly used Crystal Reports v5 book?), cables, monitors, obsolete servers, chairs, tables and…
PEOPLE!!!!
So, where are we taking all of these things? We’re heading north to Kenwood. Next week, you can find us at 7755 Montgomery Road Suite 160. I have to say, I am soooooooooooo very excited. In addition to heading to Kenwood, we are also sending a lot of people to become virtual employees. That brings a new host of challenges. GoToMeeting, conference calls, home office organization…wow!
Things will be different for sure on Monday. But one thing is certain, we’re still focused on data and we still believe in making data visual and easy-to-understand for all!
See you in Kenwood!
If I Had A Hammer…
January 14, 2010
If I had a hammer…
No not the song… There is a story that the IT people like to tell, not sure if it is true but I love it so well…sorry Jimmy B. It goes something like this.
A manufacturing company with a complex assembly line had a machine break down on them. The machine was critical in the production of their products, yet try as they might to fix it themselves, they just could not keep it running 24×7. Pridefully, the plant manager didn’t want to admit that his team couldn’t solve the problem, but he knew that soon enough the company’s product yield would be impacted and someone way above his pay grade would notice. Time to call an expert.
The following week, the expert arrives at the plant. The plant manager escorted him to the offending machine. The expert set down his briefcase and began to ask a few questions of the plant manager and the line supervisor. He then walked around the machine, climbed up the maintenance ladder looking around. Climbing back down the ladder, he asked the line supervisor if he had a hammer. The supervisor looked at him sideways and said, “well, uh, yea, I got one.” So the supervisor went to his toolbox, retrieved a well worn ball-peen hammer and handed it to the expert. The expert climbed back up the maintenance ladder and leaned over the side of the ladder to reach the broken machine. He swing the hammer down sharply with a loud “bang”. Instantly, the machine began to whir, the indicator panel on the side of the machine lit up with all green lights and production was running again!
The plant manager and line supervisor thanked the expert for his help to which the expert replied that he’d send his invoice for services later that week.
The invoice arrived on the plant manager’s desk and when he opened it the invoice contained a single line item for services.
- Repair of Machine…………………………………………………………………………………………………….$10,000.00
The plant manager was not happy. He thought to himself, “How in the world can that guy charge me ten grand for swinging a hammer?” He immediately called the expert and asked him for a detailed invoice. The expert told him he’d send out another invoice immediately. Two days later the invoice arrived. The plant manager tore open the envelope. The invoice read:
- Use of Hammer………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……….$1.00
- Knowing where to strike hammer………………………………………………………………………………$9,999.00
Isn’t this story much like business today when it comes to knowledge? Many companies are now measuring their enterprise data storage in petabytes. Yet with all that data, they still struggle to answer questions such as—Who’s my most profitable customer? Or, Who’s my most in-need customer? Or, which customer is likely to leave for my competition? How can I increase my business? Where should I focus my efforts? The answers are very likely embedded deep in the data stores of the company but the decision makers can’t get the answers they need, when they need them, how they need them, and how to apply the answers. And therefore they aren’t getting the knowledge they need. They have the “hammers” but they aren’t helping. Enter Business Intelligence. Sure, BI has been around for a long time, but it’s evolving just as today’s businesses are. In today’s world, you need more than data. You need more than information. What you need is knowledge. The fluid, meaningful, applicable evolution of data that allows you to “fix your broken machine”. BI is your answer to unlocking the knowledge you need.
If you’re asking yourself important questions to which you have no answers, might be time to call the expert.
10 Signs of Business Intelligence Partnerships in Your Organization
January 14, 2010
In today’s corporate and institutional IT world, much has been done to create “partnerships” between IT and the User Community more often known as the Business. The users are the people that are responsible for keeping revenue coming in, expenses predictable, and ultimately, bringing in a profit to fuel the company onwards. There’s many articles published in business and IT journals as to the positive benefits the organization receives when there’s alignment within a Business Intelligence initiative. So, you’d think that we’ve already dissected and solved this problem and it’s now in the history books.
Not so. Dilbert is alive, healthy, and very much well fortified in the “partnership” between IT and Business.
Here’s 10 Telltales from a person that has both a IT and Business professional’s perspective that you really do have a Business Intelligence partnership.
- Lunch. OK, I’m writing this waiting for one of my manager’s to bring me a “sack lunch” turkey sandwich. But I’m serious. Lunch. When’s the last time you have been to lunch with your business user? When has he or she picked up the tab for that lunch? Communications is the key to any Business Intelligence initiative since the information requirements are dependent on the external business environment most of the time and, in today’s marketplace, the environment is constantly changing. Frequency and intimacy of conversation not only about last weekend’s loss of your favorite playoff team but more so what’s going on in business last week that is going to affect the kind of questions you are looking to “ask your data?”
- Mea Culpa. Saying that you made a mistake…Rework, reloads, unsuccessful night refreshes…operating a business intelligence environment is not easy work. There’s a lot of moving parts to a mature BI platform along with updates, patches, network traffic and internet dependencies and the like. There’s got to be daily production huddle sessions, weekly project enhancement meetings, quarterly capital, budget and funding meetings, and annual business strategy alignment sessions. All of these meetings have to be tightly integrated between IT and the Business in order for the Business Intelligence platform to prosper.
- Monitoring & measuring. “What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed” as the modified saying goes. A mutually-agreed measurement and operational reporting system needs to be applied to any Business Intelligence initiative. At least, the successful ones. The partnership has proactively agreed to “what constitutes acceptable” in advance so that both parties can provide a seamless report card.
- Social measurements, too. Not only do we want to measure “system performance” and other traditional IT operational metrics, one also wants to consider the social aspects of the platform. Is everyone timely and present at the respective meetings? Was everyone prepared with their part for the meeting? Are the “partnership duties” getting deprioritized (this especially happens in the business side since the business operationally will pull the business people directly into business problems and not IT problems.
- Cradle-to-grave Documentation. Documentation doesn’t mean to just put the information into a project plan when building the BI platform and then shove it into a drawer. Rather, documentation of the business questions that are asked every day, week, month, quarter depending on the business problems involved. The business is changing, thus, driving heuristic questioning. Having an active collaborative environment to document these is extremely important to sustain the platform.
- Executive sponsorship by both IT and the Business. Even though most of the activity is well beneath the executive offices, the business questions being analyzed and solved are most likely directly related to the profitability and the overall strategy and performance of the business. So, do they go to lunch? Do they understand that there’s a Business Intelligence Partnership? Smile.
- Show me the money! Funding. How budgets get spread between IT and the Business can actually be the fundamental reason why a Business Intelligence initiative succeeds or fails!!! There’s a lot to be said about the CIO that can navigate through today’s budget world. How a CIO leverages both capital appropriations and current expense for Business Intelligence requires the involvement of the Business. You see, building the environment with hardware and software and consulting services can all follow GAAP principles for accounting. Where the difficulty lies is how to separate the operational overhead of running the BI platform along with the constant stream of enhancements. If one doesn’t budget for the enhancements, the platform ends up slowly (or quickly in today’s economy) becoming antiquated.
- A partnership of Innovation. Most of what IT does is not innovation itself. They use innovative technology; although once deployed, it is an operational system that is supposed to run and run and run. IT professionals are paid to execute, operate, and make budget….and most of the time at the lowest common denominator when it comes to operational availability and budget. BI platforms are rich with innovation through new technology, of course, but more so through Heuristic Questioning about the business problems at hand that day. Innovation comes through leveraging data and asking “Why?” and “What if?” The BI partnership must have an innovation DNA in order to truly leverage the data to its greatest value.
- Survived a reorganization or three? When, not if, the company/organization reorganizes, the Business and IT organization can change slightly or dramatically. I have seen many a healthy BI partnership get destroyed over new org charts. When you reorganize, the IT and Business leadership must have a Partner Summit of sorts in order to protect the operational care, feeding and ongoing plans of the Business Intelligence environment.
- Internal public relations. I was with the famous Peter Drucker at the 1996 Cognos Convention out in San Diego and had a chance to ask him some questions. Why can’t we get everyone to want to have their data in one location so we can get rid of all of these disparate spreadsheets? “In the old days, man fought with swords, daggers, clubs, and ultimately, guns. We are carnivores and that will remain. Today, we fight with information. We hide it, disguise it, hoard it, and mislead with it. It’s our contemporary personal weapon of force.” Based on some of the latest stories coming off of Wall Street, the CDO crisis, the Mortgage lending crisis, and the insider trader diabolical, and certainly the many Ponzi schemes that have ruined many a retirement savings plan, I have to agree with what Dr. Drucker said. At the same time, I truly believe in the good of mankind, if the IT and Business groups have strong leadership, an active business strategy, and a general knowledge that if the team is rowing all at once you can accomplish more than if you are not, then the general support of a Business Intelligence platform will be a positive enabler for the company’s well-being.
There are probably 10 more ideas supporting a Business Intelligence Partnership with IT and the Business. I hope that these Telltales stimulate you to advance your partnership! Good Luck!
Building the BI Solution for Small IT Shops
January 8, 2010
Next Wednesday, I get an opportunity to speak with several CIOs of companies with small to mid-size IT shops (less than 20 people in IT). These CIOs have the unique challenge of maintaining day-to-day operations for their companies while balancing the demands of bringing new technologies to their organizations that will help them to gain competitive advantage. WHAT A CHALLENGE THESE FOLKS HAVE!! The same guy that keeps Exchange running is also finding ways to minimize IT spend and figuring out how to integrate a hand-held device into the shop floor, or into a salespersons hand.
My topic for next Wednesday is BI…Business Intelligence. More specifically, how do you bring data to users who may not be asking using staff that is already stretched to the limit? As I’ve discussed in prior posts, most find BI to be a big challenge that is expensive to implement and often times fails to deliver what was promised. This week I saw a small IT shop that tried to solve the data problem “quick and dirty”. They had the right concepts and brought the right tools to the party, but they were missing the final piece…making the data make sense to the user community. Essentially once the data had been aggregated it was “dumped” on the end users. They had data but it still wasn’t providing any insight.
So how do you bring BI in a cost effective, meaningful way to an organization? I look at it this way:
- Identify the end need. What do the users want to see when this is finished?
- Identify the available data. What’s available today that will help solve #1 above?
- Identify the gaps. Can the gap data “wait”? Or do we need it before we can make meaning out of #1?
- Deliver…deliver…deliver (repeat). If the users have a weekly meeting where they will review this data, they should have one new element (minimum) each week until all are presented. This gains buy in and confirms that everyone understands the end game.
This method works for both small and large organizations. It takes discipline and time, an on-going dialog between the developer and user, and most importantly a developer that understands the business challenges and can bring ideas to help solve those challenges.
- Happy Building!