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
BI Syposium TOMORROW!
May 5, 2010
We hope to see you tomorrow at our event. If you go and use Twitter, please use #BISymp2010 to mark the event in your posts.
Headed to our event? Click on the Marker below and enter your address to get directions.
3861 Olympic Boulevard
Erlanger, KY 41018
Join us on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the NKU METS Center for a half-day symposium of collaborative learning, focused on business intelligence. The Business Intelligence Symposium brings together regional business & IT executives to learn how their peers have been implementing data analytics, business intelligence solutions and Dashboarding. The emphasis of the symposium is to share ideas, stories, experiences, and business cards. Case studies, along with live demonstrations will be presented. Breakfast and lunch will be provided in a collaborative environment that facilitates peer networking and BI discussions for an enhanced learning experience.
Agenda:
7:30am – 8:00am Registration and Breakfast
8:00am – 9:00am - Director, Data Management, Western Union
Simplicity and Transparency – How to do Effective Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (Presentation)
9:00am -9:45am Mr. Steve Hangen – CIO, WinWholesale
BI Roadmap – A Project, a Journey, a Culture (Presentation and Demo)
9:45am -10:00am Coffee Break & Conversations
10:00am – 10:45am Mr. John R. Ward – Director, Health Systems Integration, TriHealth
The New Era of Healthcare Clinical Information Systems Unstructured Data – Internal/External
10:45am –11:30am Mr. Jeff Shaffer - Vice President of Legal Operations, Unifund
Visualization – Running a business with Dashboards and Scorecards (Presentation and live Demo)
11:30am – 1:00pm Lunch /Panel Discussion led by Dr. David Holcomb and guest speakers
For more information please call Sheila at (513) 241-5949 x.215
Twitter Updates for 2010-04-01
April 1, 2010
- Join us as we demo the new @TARGIT BI Suite 2K9. Today!! http://bit.ly/dCsQrc #
- I think the tech classroom could be embraced by HS and Jr. High kids too. RT @ZDNetBlogs an iPad for every student http://zd.net/a7y0Ah #
- The iPad is coming on Saturday. Are you getting one?? #apple #ipad #
- #FAIL :When the title of the article gets you interested to read, but the writer of the article just can't hold your attention??? #
Twitter Updates for 2010-03-31
March 31, 2010
- #FAIL RT @ZDNetBlogs iPad OS licensing agreement unveils hidden cost of ownership http://zd.net/achAgl #Apple #
- Really? This is news? RT @iTWire Babies learn by listening to words http://bit.ly/avVEkB #
- Want dual screens too pls. Rt @SocialMediaRule Folding Laptop…Will Make You Crave for a Bigger Keyboard: http://tinyurl.com/yh8v6dr #
- Join us as we demo the new @TARGIT BI Suite 2K9. Tomorrow!! http://bit.ly/dCsQrc #
- Left my glasses at home today. Please don't send me anything to read.
#
Twitter Updates for 2010-03-30
March 30, 2010
- Could your 'gut' be a new BI dimension? %Title% | http://tinyurl.com/yerjzg8 #
- Using OLAP to Improve Organizational Effectiveness – Part 3 http://bit.ly/aIKDhq #
- Lucrum's approach to Business Intelligence? iStream. http://bit.ly/akzUnE #
Trusting Your Gut
March 29, 2010
In a recent McKinsey Article, “Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?”, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein debate the power and perils of intuition for senior executives. Being in the business of business intelligence, I was at first shocked at the premise that there would be a time to trust your gut. After all, I’ve been telling execs for years that data, not intuition, should be the premise for making key business decisions. *Breathe* They agree.
What I found most interesting was that while they gave credibility to the strength of one’s intuition, they cautioned not to be seduced by overconfidence. They noted that most executives are promoted because of the confidence that they project which makes them more likely to be leaders in the first place. This confidence can cause others to trust the intuition of an exec because the exec believes they they themself are right. Hmmm…interesting point.
I think in my next BI engagement I’ll be adding a new dimension to the cube: Exec Intuition. We can plot that as a 1 (yes) or a 2 (no) and then analyze how often their intution is correct.
– Jodie
Twitter Updates for 2010-03-27
March 27, 2010
- It seems that lately everyone (on my list) is just posting links, but not dialogue. What happened to the conversation? #Imguilty2 #
Twitter Updates for 2010-03-26
March 26, 2010
- RT @CIOOnline IT Careers: Can You Survive Unemployment? http://shar.es/mgUhU via @sharethis #
- *interesting* strategy? RT @TechRepublic CEO exercises controversial recruitment strategy: Low advertised pay http://tek.io/dCtKs4 #
- I like it! How do we get that? RT @HubSpot Twitter Starts Launching Contributors Feature to Users http://bit.ly/ayZgFh #
- Seems like a lot. RT @wired Is $18/month too much to read the Wall Street Journal on an iPad? http://bit.ly/aKpriS #
Alignment, Iteration and Business Intelligence
March 25, 2010
For most of the last two decades, LÛCRUM has participated in creating over 100 solutions for some of the most prominent organizations in business and education. In 1998, LÛCRUM published its first full Business Intelligence Methodology, iStream. The word “stream” was used to symbolize the continuous aspect of the software development lifecycle versus traditional “waterfall” SDLC’s. This post is intended to conceptually explain how LÛCRUM’s iStream is a differentiated and unique approach to the development of successful Enterprise Business Intelligence Solutions. After years of focus on the delivery of Data oriented projects, LÛCRUM has continued to refine its methodology, leveraging the continuous learning from each new engagement to benefit the next, and to enrich the iStream process itself.
The first and probably most important non-technical differentiated aspect of iStream is the concept of Alignment. Many consulting organizations and internal IT organizations have some type of design or planning step often called “Envisioning” as an initial step in their development process. This is for good reason: understanding the customer’s end goal or picture of success is critical to the success of the project. At the same time, this does not procedurally support the fact that many individuals are involved in determining the success of a project, and further, in most cases these individuals are not in detailed agreement in regards to what that success looks like, or how it is defined. Alignment takes this into account, and is a prescribed process to ensure a common understanding of the success criteria by the key stakeholders involved in any enterprise project, including department heads and/or the Information Technology department. This includes a focus on ensuring that a miscommunication cannot occur where language is not specific enough, for example in clarifying the accepted definition of the term “Sales” in a company. To explore this a bit, is “Sales” the number of transactions? The dollar volume closed? Over what timeframe? By what channel? (sales people, resellers, distributors, telesales, etc.) As simple as this concept may sound – misunderstandings or assumptions in areas as simple as this are generally a key reason for project failure. In this area, LÛCRUM is unique and differentiated in its development approach.
Another key differentiation of LÛCRUM’s approach, particularly as it relates to Business Intelligence, is in the concept of the iteration of a project. The iStream methodology allows for iteration in the development of the end result, particularly through the recognition that many pieces may make up the whole. For example, related to Business Intelligence; we may begin by working with an individual decision maker, say the VP of Marketing. In working with this person we may offer to them the YourView Instant Analytics solution, allowing them to rapidly see their information in a new way through the combination of several different reports or sources into a single view. Per the YourView solution, this can take place in a matter of days; however by definition it follows the iStream process – however abbreviated – as it is focused on only a single user. When that VP is prepared to create a complete solution for the Marketing department, the initial work now functions as a pilot/proof of concept rolling into the Alignment, Discover and Architect components of iStream for the larger YourView 360 (Data Mart) project. In this fashion, we are “iterating” our development of the data mart through one or more “Instant Analytics” projects. Both projects follow iStream; however the smaller engagements feed into the larger. When that organization is prepared to roll out an Enterprise Data Warehouse – the same holds true, the work that had been completed at the Data Mart level for the Marketing department will now be employed in the Alignment, Discover and Architect phases of the Enterprise Data Warehouse project. In this fashion the work that we accomplish at any level of the Business Intelligence Solution chain is applicable for the next, and all would be accomplished using iStream.
While the items above are not descriptive of the entirety of iStream, nor of the entire list of benefits of the LÛCRUM approach, they are absolutely two of the components of iStream which differentiate it from the plethora of SDLC approaches available in the market, and another aspect of what makes LÛCRUM a unique Business Intelligence Consultancy.