Better BI on Bigger Data
September 1, 2010
“Can we do BI without a significant infrastructure effort?”
What’s the most common BI tool? Microsoft EXCEL! If you are considering a DW initiative, you are likely encountering resistance from your hard-core, Excel based, analysts. Taking away Excel from them means that they will have less flexibility and spend more time waiting on changes. I’m guessing that they may not be on board with your vision.
1010Data is a zero-footprint, browser based data warehousing product. It has an Excel like feel, but it can handle billions of rows of data (not thousands like Excel). It’s fast, flexible and requires no infrastructure support from IT (if you are in IT, my guess is that you may have already stopped reading this article). The system is not an OLAP system, it requires no design, and not even indexing strategies – but it’s so fast!!
This is a new paradigm shift: from ETL to ELTAR – extract, load and transform as required. Hmmm….cleansing and summarization at query run time; views are used for data governance.
Don’t think it’s true? Dollar General is using the platform and was up and running in 5 weeks to 115 users with a 100% ROI.
What could you do for your customers if you could have their DW up in just a few weeks instead of a few months??
- Jodie
Data Mining – We want it Now!
September 1, 2010
“We are drowning in information but starving for knowledge.”
What do you really understand about data mining? Dr. Candace Gunnarsson was formerly a professor of statistics at Xavier University. Her view of data mining is all about getting information out of the systems you have today and predicting future results. Her view is also about needing a DW modeled in a way that makes the mining experience easier and more meaningful.
Her view is that there is prescriptive (automated) data mining and descriptive data mining. I think most people think of data mining to be an automated process. Truly, the manual exploration must happen first. What do I think the drivers should be? If it’s predicting a purchase, I need to understand you as a customer. What magazines do you read? How old are you? Male/female? How often do you come to my store? All of these become data points in an algorithm that will lead to prescriptive data mining. If I can predict that you will make a purchase, I then need to be able to test my theory and provide results back to my model. Data Mining is Avery iterative process.
To have truly effective data mining, you need to have a multi-disciplinary team. Be sure to bring in your IT, Marketing, Finance, and operations-focused team members. They will all have different views of your customers and will understand their transactional data better than anyone else. Use all of these views to create a better view.
BIG Question – can you start data mining before you have your data organized in a DW?
I’d be interested in hearing your data mining stories.
- Jodie
The Science of Visual Analytics
September 1, 2010
Today LUCRUM hosted our second BI Symposium. Once again, it was well attended and we had some great speakers! I’m hoping that this becomes a regular event. If you have yet to attend, I encourage you to come to our next event (to be scheduled).
Our first speaker was Mr. Stuart Woodward, President OD OcuCue. (http://ocucue.com/) OcuCue is an interesting start-up that’s all focused on data visualization. I always love listening to visual experts. There is such a science to visual design. It’s about understanding the psychology of how users think and perceive what they see. If you are creating a dashboard, you have to design it in the way people think – we read from left to right, heavy color should be at the lower left hand side, etc.
“Good design has two key elements. Graphical elegance is often found in the simplicity of design and complexity of data.” – Edward Tufte
Mr. Woodward’s company creates meaningful dashboards that are icon based. They go beyond speedometers and graphs and actually create a customized dashboards with icons that are meaningful to the company using them. One example that he showed was for a hospital. There are some rooms that can only take female patients or only male patients. To show bed availability, their dashboard has a pink pillow or a blue pillow to represent which rooms are available. Hmmm…never thought of that!
How are you presenting data to your users? Are you simplifying the message? Setting up the information from left to right? Are your colors meaningful? (ie Red should mean bad, green is good)
OK…gotta run and listen to the next speaker!
- Jodie
Making Information Available
August 9, 2010
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve not been blogging with the same gusto as of late. Ah the life of a Consultant. 
I have been working with a local financial institution creating financial models this summer. (It leaves me with little time for blogging.) I did happen to stop by our 7755 Montgomery Road office today and checked my mailbox. In it was this month’s Information Management mag. I was immediately drawn to this month’s Snapshot: Making Information Available. Here’s some stats for you to consider:
61% of respondents are less than satisfied with their current process of creating information applications and are only lukewarm about their current information application technology. Here are their complaints:
- It takes too long to assemble and deploy applications.
- It is too difficult to assemble and view information into a simple view.
- There are not enough capabilities to integreate and normalize information from disparate applications.
WOW! I ask all of you fellow BI folks out there…what are you doing to solve this problem??? Why is it with all of the tools available today, our users are finding it too difficult to use them!! What are WE doing wrong?
As I mentioned, I am working with a customer on Financial Models this summer. I am fortunate to work with some SUPER SMART people in this group. They have come up with the most ingenious ways of getting their data out of old clunky systems. They can create some of the most INSANE Excel formulas to manipulate data! Their Excel sheets are visually appealing and get data to their management in a timely manner. I’ve had some spreadsheets that have taken me days to figure out the Excel formulas (and I’m a guru!). They are awaiting IT to “build them a DW” to make their lives easier. Here’s to hoping that it can deliver on their expectations! Here’s what I would do to ensure that it does:
1. Use an iterative methodology to build the DW. Recreate existing Excel reports from the DW as you go.
2. Implement a user-friendly reporting tool that allows them to create their own reporting. Give ‘em lots of drag and drop functionality and make sure it can Export to Excel.
3. Create a request process that allows the DW to change with the Business. Creating a process that queues up the work for months and months does not help the business user to create the financial package that’s needed at the end of the month.
4. Keep the model flexible. Doing this will ensure that you can always add a new organziation, hierarchy or measurement.
5. Build cubes! These users are smart cookies and they aren’t afraid of a Pivot Table. Give them the flexibility and performance of a cube and let them start to uncover their data.
Hmmm…what’s missing from my list? What would you add?
Happy building!
- Jodie
On Not Reinventing the Wheel, Part 1: Take Your SharePoint Data With You
July 22, 2010
At some point in every project, I’m usually confronted with the question – should we build or should we buy? The pendulum of thought on this topic swings back and forth. As a consultant that regularly advises clients on these kinds of questions, my current read is that the mindset has moved toward the “buy” side on some key fronts. The trends underlying this, and their impact on both business and technology, are complex and evolving.
Another way to frame the discussion is, “Has someone already solved that problem?” When the answer is yes, the existing solutions deserve a good look. In my experience, a combination of both buy and build often turns out to be the right answer.
Let’s take the issue of getting more out of all that data that has been loaded into your company’s Microsoft SharePoint-based collaboration site. Someone (probably many someones) has spent lots of time getting thousands of documents, contact lists, project plans, and other kinds of essential data into this amazingly versatile tool. And if your portal has been well-designed, you probably find it an invaluable resource while you’re using your laptop or desktop at the office.
As soon as you try to get this information out using your mobile device, let’s say using your iPhone, it becomes a different story. Even if you manage to navigate to the right place, the functional richness of the interface is not ideal when you move into the realm of finger touches and gestures .
So what to do? Build a new, mobile version of your SharePoint site (probably a tough sell given the current economy)? Or has someone already solved this problem?
As it turns out, the creators of SharePoint provided a shortcut to get to stored data directly. This method uses web services – in human terms we might call it the “just give me the data, please ” service – to make the data available without the need to navigate through a web page. It’s up to the application you’re using to determine how the data should look and be presented.
But until recently, not many people had solved the other part of the problem – taking the SharePoint web services and building an iPhone app to make it useable on a mobile device.
A screen shot from Attache, the SharePoint client for iPhone, developed by LUCRUM.
One of our talented staff members, a big SharePoint fan, was also excited about the idea, and he knew how to use SharePoint’s built in web services to get data out. So he wrote an app for that!
When he put two technologies together (buy + build), it increased the value of the data we already had, by making it more portable and our staff more productive. Kudos to him for seeing the opportunity and going for it!
A growing number of developers have followed this lead to build iPhone apps that put all of your SharePoint data at your fingertips. There are several choices now available in the Apple App Store, including (in alphabetical order):
- Attache: SharePoint Client (LUCRUM)
- iShare (Spyk Software)
- iSharePhone (Webstate)
- iSP-Browser (iSP Apps)
- Moshare (Moprise)
- SharePlus Office Mobile Client (SouthLabs)
- Sharetica (Celltica)
I’ll expand further on some of the topics touched on here in later posts, including more thoughts on the “build vs. buy” decision, the changing dynamics in data visualization, and how business intelligence solutions on mobile devices are impacting the way we work.
-Eric
Using Business Intelligence to Drive your own Recovery.
June 29, 2010
eWeek published a video describing the value of using Business Intelligence to find and exploit market and revenue opportunities. Great point, and very well worth the 6:49 it takes to view it. Many organizations are using BI to understand some of the basic historical results of their business. It’s the next level of organization who begins to answer questions like the below using their BI toolset:
- What are my customer’s buying is a basic question, but moreover, what products do they buy together?
- Which products do they buy when times are tough?
- What did they buy during the last recovery?
- What aren’t they buying, and what should I recommend they buy?
All great questions, and clearly a value add of a strong BI platform.
eWeek – Using-Business-Intelligence-to-Find-Your-Economic-Recovery
LUCRUM powers the new Cleveland Museum of Art website
May 24, 2010
This snapshot shows the new home page for the Cleveland Museum of Art, featuring personalized content, exhibitions information, and highlighted objects from the collection.
It’s a treat when we have the opportunity to publicly showcase work from our portfolio. This week, we invite you to view the results of our most recent assignment with the Cleveland Museum of Art and their new website.
This event marks the successful completion of a two year effort to set a new standard for how museums engage with their visitors. The engagement has followed the LUCRUM iStream methodology – starting with our high-value Stakeholder Alignment Session, though a process of analysis, collaboration, transformation, and now launch – to result in this groundbreaking experience. The website was developed in partnership with the museum staff and award-winning Pentagram Design, based in New York.
One of the most compelling features of the new website is enhanced access to the museum’s encyclopedic collection of over 40,000 objects - many of these iconic works of art are now accessible online, as well as woven into the pages of the site. The objects become part of the fabric of the experience. Large images and a wide range of search options make it easy to wander for hours in the online collection – I encourage you to give it a try!
The redesigned collections browser offers visual access to over 40,000 objects in the Museum's collection.
You’ll not find a single security guard with arms crossed, daring you to approach for a close-up look. Interaction is encouraged, and you are invited to add comments to their favorite objects or tag them with key words so that they are easier for others to find.
The new site also paves the way for more in the way of multimedia features, to provide diverse perspectives on individual works of art and offer behind-the-scenes views of areas within the museum that are not accessible to the general public.
In planning the experience, the design and development teams examined the best online practices of retail and consumer product brands. Social media is heavily integrated into each page of the new site as well, with an option to share content with various online services or add events to a personal calendar. Links are also supplied to the museum’s own Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts.
The simplicity of the navigation was also a key to improving the overall experience for site users. Everything on the site is as close to the homepage as possible, which eliminates the kind of multiple clicks and top-down hierarchical navigation found on a lot of websites. An expanded calendar provides day-by-day views of all activities at the museum, with direct links to more information about the events or to the online box office.
LUCRUM engineered the site using a number of advanced technologies and design innovations. And while the end experience is highly visual and is delivered in an engaging, interactive way, the some of the real marvels are “under the hood.” Think about it – the key to the site’s richness is in the data that it makes available, and the way in which you can engage with that data to find “hidden meaning” and value that was not immeditately obvious.
Sound familiar? The same data strategies and fundamental approaches we use in our business intelligence assignments apply here too. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking more about how we applied these principles and how they lead to successful technology projects. In the meantime, take a moment to enjoy the website, and let us know what you think!
-Eric
Visualization: Rules for BI
May 13, 2010
“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
- W. Edwards Deming
At our BI Symposium on May 6, 2010, Jeff Shaffer provided us with great insight on how the way we present our data can be just as important as what we present. Jeff is not a big fan of pie charts. In fact he has 4 rules:
- Don’t use pie charts.
- If you use pie charts, be careful in chosing the number of items you chart.
- If you use pie charts, be sure they are “centered at noon”.
- If you use pie charts, make sure that they sum to 100%
Jeff shared lots of bad charts, lots of REALLY BAD charts and summed it up with some great looking dashboards. I encourage you to check out his presentation!
- Jodie
Creating the BI Roadmap
May 12, 2010
Last Thursday, May 6, 2010 at our BI Symposium, we brought together 4 BI Leaders to discuss BI success and failure and share their ideas for making BI Better. Steve Hangen and Dennis Brown shared their story with us. Steve and Dennis have brought BI to WinWholesale using the Microsoft tools that they already had on-site. Using MS SharePoint, SQL Server and Reporting Services, Steve and Dennis have created an easy-to-use system that brought $2M of margin improvement in the first 3 months of the tools’ release.
We were Tweeting during the event. Here are the nuggets of info we learned from Steve and Dennis:
Not all of their slides could be shared due to the confidential nature of some of the dashboards, but here is the rest of their presentation.
Enjoy!
- Jodie
Simplicity and Transparency
May 11, 2010
Last Thursday we had a great turnout for our first ever BI Symposium. Our host was the NKU METS Center. If you never been, you should check it out! It’s a wonderful facility! It’s truly state-of-the-art!
Our first speaker of the day was Dr. David Holcomb. David really set the tone well with his presentation on Simplicity and Transparency. Do you think of data as an asset? If so, treat it like the rest of your assets:
- Acquire it
- Prepare it
- Deploy it
- Manage it
So many times, we skip (or underfund) the “manage” step or at worse, skip all 4 steps and keep the data hidden from the organization.
David’s presentation can be found below. Enjoy!
– Jodie
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