Good enough?
March 16, 2010
When is good enough, well, good enough? I suppose that depends, one old argument says that close only works in horseshoes and hand grenades. Can it work with decision making? How about decision support systems? Is good enough the manually created spreadsheets that over 90% of organizations use for decision support? I would argue that while it’s not good enough, most business decision makers work that way.
To get at the data that most executives feel they need to make accurate decisions, many turn to the manual modification of existing reports, or the creation of their own “Pet” spreadsheet they use almost daily, or certainly many times a week.
In an update to a report cited last spring on this site, a September, 2009 Dartmouth University study suggests that the error rates in formulas on spreadsheets in their study were only .087% of all formulas they audited. HOWEVER, these were in cases where the formula produced the WRONG RESULT, and actually resulted in 87% OF THE SPREADSHEETS REVIEWED having errors in which the spreadsheet then produced the wrong result.
How good is good enough? What if you could reproduce the “Pet” spreadsheet in a true Business Intelligence solution which would ensure that the data and results in the sheet were as solid as the data in your transactional systems in the first place? How much does the wrong data or the wrong decision cost you, or your company? I would argue that “good enough” might just be good enough, if you could ensure that the data was accurate, and mitigated the possibility of error, while increasing the timeliness of the information to the decision maker. We have deployed such systems in a couple weeks’ time leveraging tools like SharePoint, Excel, and other software products that our customers already owned, and quickly delivered a system to our customer where we dramatically increased the accuracy of their information. These solutions form the basis of our iterative approach to Business Intelligence.
CEO Tweets Resignation
February 4, 2010
@OpenJonathan Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
That’s the last Tweet from Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s former CEO. It was preceeded by his final blog just 1 week earlier. http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/where_life_takes_me_next
In the time of Social Media, how we get the news is not nearly as riveting as how FAST we get news. Via Facebook you get birth announcements, wedding invitations, divorce annoucements…via LinkedIn yo usee job changes and now via Twitter – resignations. All real time. Faster than you can spill the announcement to your immediate family, you can notify hundreds/thousands (or in Jonathan Schwartz’s 9107 people).
If you are a company, how do you manage this flow of communication? More importantly how do you exploit this communication and how do you track the effectiveness? I think that the next generation of BI will track social media impact to financial results and/or to customer satisfaction. Imagine if you could track the ROI of your marketing efforts! If a Marketer’s MBO could include # of tweets per day and % increase of profit and truly be tied together!! Ah…dreamy
CEO Dashboard of the future
Good luck Jonathan!
- Jodie
- Writers note: when I started writing this at 4:51PM, @openJonathan had 9107 followers. 22 minutes later (5:13PM, he now has 9,151). A quirky, unexpected message gets a following…quickly!
I Should Have Called LÛCRUM – Episode 2
December 16, 2009
Well episode 1 was so much fun that I decided to create another episode of “I Should Have Called LÛCRUM” In this episode we explore the problems that manually created spread sheets can create for organizations through the magic of animation. Of course if you want to read more about the topic, you can read this post by LÛCRUM managing partner Jody Detzel. I hope you enjoy the video, and that it tells you a little more about what we do at LÛCRUM.
If your organization is using manually created spreadsheets to manage important company data or if you are having trouble getting accurate, actionable, complete and timely information, you should contact LÛCRUM. We specialize in helping our Clients to maximize the value of their data, and we would be delighted to help you.
I Should Have Called LÛCRUM
December 16, 2009
Last night my brother in law introduced me to a really cool site called xtranormal.com where you can very easily make animated videos – for free. I wanted to test it out, and thought “why not have fun with some of the problems we solve at LÛCRUM?” So I stayed up past my bedtime and played. The end result – Episode 1 of “I should have called LÛCRUM.” Not sure if there will be an episode 2.
Does this seem like a familiar scenario? Do you ever have difficulty getting the important information you need in time to meet your needs? Do you find yourself having to request and schedule reports, which take days or even weeks to actually arrive? Do you wish that you could immediately generate the information you need from your data without the “help” of others? If so, you should think about contacting LÛCRUM. In the time it takes to get those reports the current way, we could build you a data mart with dashboards, alerts, reports, and more – enabling you to make fact based decisions about the future of your business. At LÛCRUM, we help customers to maximize the value of their data – and sometimes we even make silly cartoons to show people how we do it.
The Difference
February 26, 2009
How happy are your customers with your service? How profitable is your business? How many new customers did your latest promotion attract? What is most important to the 20% of your customers that drive 80% of your revenue? What if you could know all this and more right now, in real time?
Information such as this might likely drive decisions as to how you would manage the future of your business. Information such as this would help you identify the most important problems facing your business, and then to solve them accordingly.
The source of information like this probably exists within your company right now, most like in the raw state known as data. Like to a vein of gold lurking underneath the grassy surface of the earth, you could be siting on top of a mountain of wealth and not even know it. That wealth is not always readily apparent, and often, like ore, requires some refinement before value can be realized. Sometimes it must be cleansed. Sometimes external elements must be added. At the end of the process, you have something whose value to the world is obvious.
Why doesn’t everyone have great information? First you just need to know what to look for. Next you need to know where to look for it. Finally you need to know what to do once you find it. Once all of this is accomplished you can ply this asset for tremendous and previously unrealized value.
Data can live in file folders, spread sheets, data bases, email messages, web sites, etc… It surrounds us. This abundant natural resource, if mined properly, refined thoughtfully, and shaped intentionally can yield information and knowledge whose value is literally as good as gold.
This information could be the difference from having an effective service recovery problem that addresses customer concerns in real time or having countless unhappy customers telling 3,000 of their closest friends on the web how you failed to deliver. Information and action could make the difference.
This information could be the difference between pulling the plug on that seemingly unpopular product line, or realizing that the unprofitable product actually helps to sell the profitable one because it is bought in tandem. Information and action could make the difference.
This information could be the difference between guessing as to the financial health of your business or knowing with certainty if some cancer exists within your business – if not caught early will result in the death of your firm. Information and action could make the difference.
Good information, and what you choose to do with it, can make all the difference in the world.
Measuring Success
April 16, 2008
So what does it mean to measure? Webster’s says to measure is “the act or process of ascertaining the extent, dimensions, or quantity of something; any standard of comparison, estimation, or judgment.”
One of the first lessons I learned during my career at P&G was “You get what you measure!” In other words, unless you’re tracking the activities that drive your business, you won’t know how you’re doing. Is the business healthy or not? In LÛCRUM’s Delivery Organization we’ve been focused on measuring a several key areas of our business over the last year. I’ll focus on 2 key measures – consultant utilization and engagement health.
Consultant utilization is key to our business health since our revenue is dependent on billable hours with a client. If we’re not billing hours, we’re simply not making money. Like any business, if we’re not making money, we won’t be in business very long. Not surprising, our goal is for all hours spent with a client to be billable. While there are times it’s necessary to provide ‘free’ effort, we obviously want to monitor that and ensure it’s in check. We also measure how many hours our consultants spend ‘selling.’ While selling is primarily a Business Development role, a consultant’s technical and business experience can be valuable in making a successful sales call.
Another area where consultant’s time will be spent is “developing the practice”. It’s important for us as a company to develop as individuals and to contribute to the development of the organization. Our contribution to the company might be working on an internal project or serving on a company committee. But one of coolest things I found when I joined LÛCRUM was the concept of “Geek Speak” and “Brain Brews” – technical and business training offered several times a month at lunch or after the business day. We’re each encouraged to attend as well as present to the organization. Yes, I’ve digressed from the topic of measures, but these sessions are really great!
So back to topic….On a weekly basis, the Senior Management team and the Delivery leadership spend time reviewing the overall utilization as well as drilling down to the portfolio and individual. We’ve learned a lot about how our time is spent and it’s helping drive business decision!
The other key area where I spend my time as the Quality Manager is tracking our engagement health. Key is to monitor the next ‘deliverable’ and through the use of conditional formatted ‘traffic lights’, monitor for those yellow and red light! It’s not rocket science, we’re currently doing this through an excel dashboard but it’s allowing us to see the current engagements in one view and ask ourselves questions about what’s going well or what needs attention.
While I’ve mentioned Senior Management and the Delivery leaders regarding the review of our measures, it important everyone knows and understands our Delivery measures. We recently made the information available to everyone through our Delivery Sharepoint site. This site provides weekly or monthly measure in dashboard format. In addition to utilization and engagement health, we also provide visibility to the revenue vs goal, bench, training, recruiting and years of service.
We’ve come a long way in the last year and the journey of Quality Management continues. Stay tuned…….