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Using Business Intelligence to Drive your own Recovery.

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

Creating the BI Roadmap

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

Business Intelligence Symposium Save the date!

LUCRUM Inc. is proud to announce The Business Intelligence Symposium being held on May 6th 2010 at the Northern Kentucky University METS Center http://www.themetscenter.com/center/default.aspx located near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport.  Check back for more details over the coming weeks.

Instant Business Intelligence

Have you ever wanted to combine data from your accounting systems, your customer relationship management systems, your ERP systems, or data sitting in the cloud (such as salesforce.com)? Are you tired of getting a different story regarding the “state of your business” from each one of these systems?

You might be thinking to yourself, “Yes, but it’s too difficult to get access to each system and pull the data together.” Or “Oh, I have to get our corporate IT department involved and I don’t have time to wrestle with the “process.”

You need to make critical business decisions fast and need an easier way?

YourView – The Vision
LUCRUM has a deep history working with data.  We had a vision to create a product that helps bring data together through an easy and intuitive application. As we started looking at the problem from a different angle, we found that the solution is less about data and more about combining data to help answer “top-of-mind” business questions. Imagine viewing on one report your forecasted sales data and customer purchase history. You can start answering question like: 

• What is my expected versus realized revenue gap?
• Are my sales reps properly aligned?
• In what industries are my biggest customers?
• What else could I be selling them?
• What are my realized margins per sales person?

 The answers to your questions maybe sitting right on your own computer. It could be in a report or in the various Excel spreadsheets you use everyday. If you can access the data, then YourView can help you gain a better understanding.

Solution
YourView allows data to be combined from multiple data sources using a very simple application like Microsoft Excel. Most line of business applications allow data to be sourced to Excel through a reporting or export feature. In addition, YourView allows you to source data directly from cloud services (salesforce.com). Once the data is inside YourView, each different source can be combined together into a single view utilizing a common business entity such as customer name. Combining the data is performed through YourView’s simple Business Entity Mapper feature. The data is then loaded into a relational data mart, which can be used to seek answer to the “top-of-mind” questions about your business.

 Specifications
YourView is a Microsoft Windows desktop application, which allows multiple data sources to be loaded, categorized and mapped, and then loaded into a Microsoft SQL Server database. Data is modeled using the Business Entity Mapper, which defines the business categories and measures. YourView will create a physical database and will load the data into the database. YourView utilizes LUCRUM’s dynamic data loader toolkit (DDLT) as the ELT (Extraction, Loading, and Transformation) engine.

 Features:

• Load data from Microsoft Excel 2003
• Connect directly to salesforce.com and pull data into YourView (requires an authorized SFDC account with API access)
• Edit the imported data directly inside YourView
• Classify data as business dimensions (categories) and facts (measures)
• Converts data into SQL Server Types: varchar, nvarchar, decimal, integer, and bit
• Performs data validation to help find and determine data integrity problems
• Creates a physical database and loads the data based on the model generated from the Business Entity Mapper

 Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows XP SP3/Vista/Windows 7
• Microsoft.NET 3.5 SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Standard Edition or Express Edition
• 1 GHz Processor or Higher
• 400 MB RAM
• 10MB of Hard Disk Space for product installation – additional disk space is required for the YourView deployed data mart

Using OLAP to Improve Organizational Effectiveness – Part 3

This is the third and final post in my series on using OLAP tools to improve the effectiveness of organizations.  In Part 1 I discussed some background concepts and terminology.  In Part 2, I talked about some specific examples of how OLAP can have an impact in this area.  In this post, I’ll talk about a specific application: utilizing OLAP software to provide improved performance feedback to employees.

OLAP and Performance Feedback

Improvements to organizational effectiveness can also be realized by utilizing OLAP tools to provide performance feedback to individual employees.  Improved performance feedback will help employees achieve group and individual performance objectives.  Increased attainment of these individual and group performance objectives will, with proper alignment of these objectives and organizational objectives, improve organizational effectiveness.

There are several advantages to providing performance feedback with an OLAP tool.  If the situation is right, feedback can be provided:

• At an individual level
• On a larger sample of employee activity
• Quickly
• In a meaningful manner.

Common Problems with Performance Feedback

Organizations often make attempts to improve the provision of feedback to employees.  Newsletters with departmental performance numbers, posters in gathering places displaying performance charts, and managerial reports with quantitative measures of performance are all attempts to improve the distribution of feedback to employees throughout the organization.  One problem with such efforts is that they are usually not provided at an individual level.  Feedback on departmental, team, or group performance is certainly helpful but depending on the size of the group, its effect will be limited.  Individual performance feedback has its own problem in that it is often time prohibitive to provide extensive individual performance feedback.  The result is often weekly or monthly group performance feedback with individual feedback coming only during annual or quarterly reviews.

Individual performance reviews often suffer from another problem: small sample sizes for review.  If an insurance company is reviewing the performance of claims adjusters using manually prepared data, it may be impossible to review more than a small sample of the adjuster’s work over what is typically a long review period.  Small samples may, of course, result in a flawed appraisal of an employee’s overall performance.

The elapsed time between events reviewed and performance appraisals is also a problem with traditional feedback provision.  Consider the timing of typical reviews: an employee makes a mistake in handling a situation in January, the incident turns up in a sample taken in May, and a review is finally conducted in June.  If a review had been conducted immediately following the incident, the chance of the employee repeating the mistake will obviously be lower.

Traditional feedback provision often suffers from poor presentation of the message.  An interview conducted by a busy manager attempting to perform a number of appraisals in addition to other work may not be optimally effective.

Performance Feedback Improvements with OLAP

Utilizing an OLAP tool may remedy some of the traditional problems with employee feedback.  Imagine again the situation of an insurance company reviewing the performance of claims adjusters.  As a solution to the problems listed above, an OLAP cube could be developed and made available to adjusters on a daily basis.  Adjusters could be presented with individual performance feedback delivered via the web.  They could see at a glance how their activity the previous day compared to group averages and organizational objectives.  Exceptions could be noted immediately by the individual employee, rather than organizational objectives.  Exceptions could be noted immediately by the individual employee, rather than a manager, and quickly corrected.  Feedback could be provided on all activity from the previous day or week rather than on a small, dated sample.  Finally, feedback could be presented in easy to understand charts which, in addition, roll-up to display departmental and organizational performance as well.

Improved performance feedback gives employees the ability to monitor their own performance and to take corrective action quickly.  By improving the ability of individual employees to meet their performance objectives, the ability of the organization to meet its objectives and fulfill its mission is improved as well.

Conclusion

OLAP technology can improve organizational effectiveness by:

• Improving management’s knowledge of progress on objectives
• Improving employee coordination on efforts to achieve these objectives
• Communicating the link between employee effort and performance
• Communicating the link between employee performance and reward
• Improving employee performance feedback.

Although OLAP tools can provide assistance in these areas, their impact is obviously limited by factors specific to each organization.  An OLAP tool cannot compensate for poor development of objectives, poor performance reward systems, or any of the other organizational factors discussed.  Utilizing an OLAP tool as I’ve described in this series with no attention given to the underlying systems it is trying to address will, at best, have no effect.

In an organization that has clearly defined its objectives and has implemented well-designed reward systems, utilizing an OLAP tool as we’ve discussed can offer a tremendous payoff.  The ability to provide employees with improved performance feedback and to demonstrate the link between individual performance and organizational performance is extremely valuable.  By helping an organization align individual goals with corporate goals, an OLAP tool can help an organization become more effective.

Using OLAP to Improve Organizational Effectiveness – Part 2

This is the second in my series of 3 posts on using OLAP tools to improve the effectiveness of organizations.  In Part 1 I discussed some background concepts and terminology.  In this part, we’ll talk about some specific examples of how OLAP can have an impact in this area.

OLAP’s Impact on Organizational Effectiveness

How can an OLAP tool help improve an organization’s performance as measured against its objectives?  Answering this question requires a greater understanding of how strategies and tactics are implemented within organizations.  I’ll use a model of organizational effectiveness developed by Michael Beer to illustrate the implementation of strategies and tactics.

The picture below shows a simplified version of a model of organizational effectiveness developed by Michael Beer (Note on Organizational Effectiveness, 10).  Business goals and strategy influence and are influenced by top management.  Management determines and implements the proper organizational design to achieve the organization’s goals.  The design of the organization, in turn, influences human resources attributes of the organization.  Finally, these HR attributes directly impact organizational effectiveness.

This simplified version of Michael Beer’s model is presented again below.  Added to the model though, is the position of an OLAP tool in improving organizational effectiveness.  OLAP technology exerts its influence on organizational effectiveness in three sections of the model:

• Management
• The Measurement and Reward Systems aspects of Organizational Design
• The Coordination aspects of Human Resources.

While the impact of OLAP technology in each of the areas above is slightly different, each is related and shares a common trait: improvement in communication.  Utilizing OLAP tools to improve communication requires a broad audience for their utilization.  OLAP tools are traditionally utilized by analysts and managers.  In this model, front-line employees become critical users of the tool as well.  The wide-scale availability of web-based OLAP tools makes such organization-wide implementations cost-effective.

Mmmmm…cheesecake

I was sending a text message to my BFF Rose the other day.  She was suggesting the Cheesecake Factory for a celebratory lunch.  I wanted to respond in a way that let her know that my eyes were spinning as if I were in a cheesecake-induced, coma-like state and being led to my cheesecake master.  My response was intended to be “Mmmmmm….cheesecake”.  Thanks to my trusty iPhone auto-correct, the response came through as “Hmmmmm…cheesecake”.  Clearly a HUGE difference!  This response sent the message that I was thinking through the cheesecake option, though I had not yet settled on an opinion.  The only response that would’ve been worse was had it auto-corrected to “Ummmm…cheesecake”, which would imply, “Really?  You are thinking cheesecake?”

The whole cheesecake, text message snafu led me to think – HOW DEEP IS YOUR METADATA??  Consider the following:

• Mmmmm = Yummy
• Hmmmm = Thinking
• Ummmm = Thinking

In your organization, how many variants do you have to the word Revenue?  It’s really the same thing:

• Invoiced Revenue = Stuff we sent a bill for
• Sales Revenue = Value of an order
• Recognized Revenue = $$ added to the financial statements

As you start to build your data warehouse, you may run into the same issue.  How do you keep it all straight?  Certainly in a word document or in your requirements document you’ve created the definition.  But how accessible are those documents at the conclusion of the project?  How are they distributed to the end-users?  Are they in a user manual somewhere?  How often is that manual consulted?  When new reports are being created or new project teams are being established, are these documents reviewed at the beginning of the new effort?  If there is a conflict in the definition, whom should be called to resolve the dispute?  Sounding familiar??

LUCRUM partners with a great local company, Balanced Insight.  Balanced Insight makes a product called Consensusthat allows you to track your metadata, organize it, and build data structures to support it.  Imagine if you could produce a picture to show your customer how data is related.  This picture allows them to confirm that “you’ve got it!”.

Consensus also allows you to see how the terms are defined and interconnected.  Using a tool like Consensus allows you to set priorities and target the items that may “break” if a system is converted or taken off-line.  I can’t imagine gathering requirements without using this tool!!

I don’t know if it will save my next iPhone auto-correct issue, but it sure would be helpful.

-  Jodie

New Partner: TARGIT!

Have you heard of TARGIT?  TARGIT is a suite of BI Tools geared toward getting you to BI “in the fewest clicks”.  LUCRUM has always been a big believer in doing BI..Faster!  This suite of tools is a great tool in our toolbox.  We encourage you to learn more:  http://www.targit.com/Products/TARGIT_Suite.aspx

Using OLAP to Improve Organizational Effectiveness – Part 1

OLAP tools have been widely available for years and are in use in a large number of organizations.  They are typically deployed as speedy, easy-to-navigate reporting tools.  With a little creativity though, this class of software can also be utilized in a very different manner.

As organizations struggle to communicate their objectives to employees and to align the activities of those employees with the objectives of the organization, they can get help from these same OLAP products.  OLAP software can help by providing the capability to:

1. Improve management’s knowledge of progress on objectives
2. Improve employee coordination on efforts to achieve objectives
3. Communicate the link between employee effort and performance
4. Communicate the link between employee performance and reward
5. Improve employee performance feedback.

In this series of three posts, I’ll talk about the role OLAP tools can play in each of the areas above.  But first, I’m going to start out with an introduction to the concept of Organizational Effectiveness.  This introduction will give us a structure to frame the rest of the discussion.

I am not going to spend any time defining OLAP.  If you’re interested, check here and here for some background and definitions.

Organizational Effectiveness Defined

Effectiveness is defined as simply having the intended outcome.  In an organizational context, the intended outcome is the goal of the organization which is usually expressed in a mission statement.  The Hierarchical Definition of Strategy provides a framework for defining and explaining these concepts and I am going to use it extensively in these posts.

Hierarchical Definition of Strategy

Explaining organizational effectiveness requires a discussion of business strategy and the Hierarchical Definition of Strategy provides a simple framework for this discussion.  The Hierarchical Definition of Strategy is built on the concepts of Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics (Barney, 10).  I’ve drawn a simple figure below to help explain this model:

An organization develops its objectives based on its mission while strategies and tactics provide specific details regarding the attainment of these objectives.  In the Hierarchical model, the effectiveness of the organization can be determined by simply comparing actual performance to objectives.  Michael Beer summarizes organizational effectiveness in this manner:

“An effective organization is one capable of implementing its strategy … A strategy is implemented effectively when people and groups in the organization work in a motivated, skilled, and coordinated manner on the appropriate tasks.” (Note on Organizational Effectiveness, 10)

In other words, the effectiveness of the organization is determined by its ability to achieve its objectives.

Hierarchical Definition of Strategy – Example

An example will help to clarify these concepts and make them a little more concrete.  Dell Inc.’s Mission Statement is:

“Dell’s mission is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve.”

The high level nature of the statement, though necessary, makes it difficult for individual employees to apply it to their daily efforts.  At the next level of the strategy hierarchy, Dell management has likely developed Objectives that will lead to the achievement of this mission.  For instance, we can imagine that Dell has defined an objective to “Provide customer support with a customer approval rating of over 90%.”  This supports their mission of “…delivering the best customer experience…” and provides employees with a tangible performance target.

The final two levels of the hierarchy are related to execution.  Strategy is a means to accomplish an individual objective.  Continuing with our imaginary Dell example, the strategy developed might be “Deliver the fastest, most accurate technical support in the industry.”  This supports their objective in the sense that a firm delivering the fastest and most accurate technical support would very likely receive high approval ratings from customers.  Tactics are execution oriented and exist at the lowest level of detail.  In the Dell example, a tactic may be a requirement that all customer support personnel complete a certain set of technical and communication skill classes.

In the example developed above, Dell’s organizational effectiveness can be determined by comparing actual appraisals of their support services with their objective of a 90% approval rating.

Next Post…

Now that we’ve laid out some concepts and terms, we can move on to the heart of the discussion.  In Part 2, I’ll dive into the details and talk about how utilization of an OLAP tool can help an organization become more effective.

Predictive Analytics & Healthcare

As a follow up regarding my post yesterday on Predictive Analytics, I wanted to bring attention to an article that Wired Magazine had last November on a predictive concept for “Modeling Human Drug Trials – Without the Human.” Using similar concepts, as well as rules which were indeed put in place by PHD’s, these folks replicated human trials which had taken 7 years of study – in about an hour.  Yup, hit run on the computer, and an hour later the results popped up – which according to the article hit 2 of the 4 markers studied perfectly, the 3rd within an approved margin of error, and the 4th was just below the accepted margin of error.  Ok, the computer model took 2 months to setup, and 1 hour to run, but running this model in 2 months and 1 hour, compared with the actual trial which involved thousands of people, millions of dollars, and 7 years?  WOW, very very powerful, controverisal for sure, but very powerful.   Here’s the link for your reading pleasure. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/ff_archimedes/…

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