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Predictive Analytics & Healthcare

February 12, 2010

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/…

Written by JodyDetzel · Filed Under Business & Leadership, Business Intelligence, LUCRUM News | 3 Comments 

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.

  1. 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:

  1. Use of Hammer………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……….$1.00
  2. 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.

Written by John Gump · Filed Under Technology | 2 Comments 

The Phrase Business Intelligence

January 5, 2010

I first came across the word “Business Intelligence” at the 1999 Cognos meeting in Toronto when their CEO announced the “new IT category” as part of the leadership strategy.   Their marketing gurus must not have done a manual search or focus group since there wasn’t any indication that anyone really knew why it’s called “business intelligence.”  Let’s look at the historical words in this category of making data more meaningful.  Throughout my 29-year career, Information Technology Professionals have tended to over-complicate what they are trying to accomplish by coming up with descriptive labels that tend to remind me of a NASA space mission.   Back in the Eighties, we called it Decision Support Systems (“DSS”).  In the early Nineties, it was referred to as Executive Information Systems (“EIS”).  Then, with the explosion of relational data base technology, the new movement became coined as various tangible models:   Data Warehousing, Data Marts, Closets, Data Mining, and the like.

From an IT perspective, there are a lot of differences between these definitions throughout the years.  At the same time, how do they really differ from a business executive viewpoint?   Are the decisions in business being made today differ significantly from decisions that were made yesterday?  Does the thinking process differ from an analytical viewpoint?  Does having more data mean that you can make better decisions?  Are decision-makers better off with all of the data that is available?   How does the business executive think about “business intelligence” from an information viewpoint?

Here’s a three-part “Maslow’s Triangle” layered model to think about Business Intelligence from a business perspective.

1.  How’s Business?

First, at the base of the triangle, you have to ask “How’s Business?”   This layer really emphasizes “time over periods” of transactions.    Traditionally, this area is termed “transactional reporting” and simply put, is giving the user their numerical tabulation of data at the end of a period.   What would a business person define as “Best in Class” in this area?   Give me my reports as near-time as possible for the period that I am looking at and be able to sub-category my different business lines, product lines, financial divisions, etc.  Most of the data could be described as the data from “double-entry bookkeeping systems.”  With today’s ERP-style systems, this kind of information is fairly accessible as long as you are dependent on internal data only.   Some data feeds may be external feeds or internal non-structured data sources that still have the same timeframe.  Examples would include “customer satisfaction” data, quality data, and other operational inputs.

For example:

“What is the revenue over the last quarter?”

“How many X was sold in the last week?”

“What is the profit for the month?”

2.  Why?

The next layer up the triangle is simply put “Why?”   Why did the business’ Eastern Region have a 5% increase in sales year over year?  Why did we miss our numbers in the last week of the quarter?  Why did our market share grow in our mature product line in the last 2 quarters?

3.  What If?

The last layer of the triangle is “What If?”   If one can receive their business results from “How’s Business” and then is able to determine “Why” the business performed in this fashion, the “What If?” pinnacle of the triangle will provide a roadmap for the decision-maker to model their potential decisions that they have in mind.

For example, if one knows their financial performance and also sees where the business over-achieved and where it under-achieved, it is able to move resources of the business (management & money) to the area of need.  Whether the strategy is to provide more or less resource is up to the person involved.   The numbers themselves are not going to make the decision.

So, then is “Business Intelligence” an oversold phrase in the world of Information Technology? A “Qualified Yes” and a “Qualified No.”   The challenge today is that the tools actually work and work well if the approach taken is right.   At the same time, recent publications and noted experts all agree that the road to Business Intelligence is cluttered with a lot of failed attempts, a lot of capital spend that isn’t going to be realized from an investment viewpoint, and a lot of disenfranchised users.

I’ll write about this dilemma in my next blog.

Written by John Bostick · Filed Under Business Intelligence | 2 Comments 

The VLOOKUP Hookup

December 22, 2009

Companies invest large amounts of money, time, and other resources acquiring and implementing reporting and analysis software.  I’ve seen organizations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in projects and fail to realize a decent return on their investments.  The point of this series of posts is to educate you about the reporting and analysis capabilities of a tool your organization probably already owns: Microsoft Excel.

In this series of posts, I will discuss a number of these capabilities and will give some concrete examples of how to utilize them.

I will be using Excel 2007 for these examples.  Much of this functionality is also available in Excel 2005, it’s just not as easy to use and does not have some of the more advanced features.

Getting the Data
The first step in any effort is to get some data into Excel.  We’ll start out using a simple static list.  You probably already use lists like this regularly.  If you don’t utilize Excel in this way today, think of the reports that you work with from the various systems that you run your organization with.  In most cases, you could probably either copy andhttp://thefuturevalueofbusiness.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=745&message=6 paste or import these reports into Excel to get some data to work with.

In future posts, we’ll cover a much more powerful method of acquiring data by connecting to external databases from within Excel.  For now though, we’ll stick with this simple example.

I’ll be working with the sample database that comes with Microsoft’s SQL Server database software.  This sample database contains information about a fictitious company called Adventure Works.  Below, you can see that I have an extract of order information that I’ve pasted into Excel.

This is the most common manner in which people utilize Excel for reporting purposes: simple lists of data pasted or imported from other sources.  In most situations, this data comes from existing reports or queries.  My example above is a very simple query…you can see that we don’t even have names or descriptions for most of the data.  For example, Column F is showing us the Product ID instead of the Product Name.

The best way to solve this problem is to have the author of the report or query modify it to include the Product Name in addition to the Product ID.  Let’s imagine that this is not a realistic option though; there is a way that we can solve this problem using an extremely powerful Excel formula called VLOOKUP.

Using VLOOKUP

To expand on our situation above, let’s imagine that I have a second worksheet in my Excel workbook.  I have an image of this second sheet below.

The Product ID in column A corresponds to the Product ID in column F on the Orders List.  We are going to use VLOOKUP to take the Product ID in the orders list and lookup the Product Name in the product list.

To make the formulas a little more understandable, I am going to rename the Sheet with the order list “Orders” and I am going to rename the Sheet with the products list “Products”.

On the “Orders” sheet, let’s insert a column immediately to the right of the Product ID.  We’ll label it “Product Desc” in Row 1.  In Row 2, we’ll enter the VLOOKUP formula:

=VLOOKUP(F2,Products!A:B,2,FALSE)

The parameters (the information between the parentheses) tell Excel how to lookup the value we want:

  • The first parameter, “F2”, tells Excel what value we are performing the lookup for.  In this case, we are looking up the Product ID.
  • The second parameter, “Products!A:B”, tells Excel where to go to do the lookup.  Here I selected the first 2 entire columns on the “Products” sheet.
  • The third parameter, “2”, tells Excel to bring back the data in column 2 from the lookup list when it finds a match for the value from cell F2.  I know that’s a confusing sentence at best, but it will make sense in a moment.
  • The last parameter, “FALSE”, tells Excel that we want it to return only an exact match for the value we are looking for.  If Excel cannot find an exact match for the Product ID, it will return an error indicator.

The Results
Now, let’s take a look at the results of our formula.  The screenshot below shows what I have now.

This screenshot shows a few rows from the “Products” sheet:

Hopefully you can see how VLOOKUP works now.  Excel took the value in F2 in the “Orders” sheet, 776.  It went to the first column of the range we gave it; that range was Columns A and B of the “Products” sheet.  It scanned through that range until it found a match for 776.  It then took the value in the 2nd column of the range, column B, in the same row and returned the value in that cell (“Mountain-100 Black, 42”).

One thing I didn’t make clear before that I want to point out now.  VLOOKUP is always going to look in the first column of the lookup range for the matching value.  In our example, the lookup range was columns A and B of the “Products” sheet, so Excel looked in column A for the matching value.  There is no way to tell the formula to look anywhere other than the first column; so you either need to cut and paste the columns to get the right one first, or just change the reference so the lookup column is first.

To complete our list, we can just fill down the VLOOKUP formula in column G to the bottom of our orders list.  Now we can analyze our order data with actual Product Names instead of just Product IDs.

Summary
VLOOKUP is useful in many other situations…you can probably imagine a few other uses for it yourself.  It is very handy to use it as we did in this example though.  Even though we could have accomplished the same goal by having someone in IT modify the query or report, now you can be a little more self sufficient with your reporting needs.

In my next post, I’ll cover a few more features like filtering and date manipulation.  Ultimately, we’ll move on to Pivot Tables and External Queries which provide very powerful mechanisms for analyzing data and can compete with some features offered in expensive reporting software.

Written by TedWimmel · Filed Under Business Intelligence, Technology | 2 Comments 

Sprechen sie…IT?

December 17, 2009

Tonight I was at a local grocer (that’s headquartered in Michigan).  I was at the “No Limit Self-checkout” at around 9:45 PM.  (I have a BUNCH of kids so I shop after bedtime…)  Anyway…while I was there, they began to shut down ALL of the checkout lines except for the 12 items or less lanes.  They explained to those in line that it was time for “change over” and that the lanes would be open just as soon as they were finished.  Um…huh??  It’s 9:45PM.  I want to go home.  I don’t care why my line just got shut down…what are my other options?  “Change Over” means nothing to me.  I just want to check out.

The whole experience reminded me of what it’s like to be in the operational side of the business requesting services from IT. Think about the SNL sketch with Nick Burns the Help Desk guy.  He speaks a language that his customers don’t understand and then treats them like they are stupid for not getting it.  The customers eyes glaze over thinking, “so…um…ok… how will you fix my problem?”

Is your IT department speaking your language?  If not, then how will they ever help you to solve your business problems?  Chances are they don’t understand you either.  Bridging the gap takes a skilled interpreter who can understand both.  Your best BI architects do this and don’t try to explain ETL, Dimensional Models or ODS to you…cuz really…do you care how it works if it answers your questions and helps to make sense of your data.

Written by Jodie Heflin · Filed Under Business Intelligence, Technology | 6 Comments 

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.

Written by davidebowman · Filed Under Business & Leadership | 5 Comments 

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.

Written by davidebowman · Filed Under Business & Leadership | 14 Comments 

We Do BI Faster… Part 2

December 8, 2009

It’s been my experience that BI projects fail when the technical team fails to understand the urgency that exists with their customers.  Failure also comes in the form of not delivering what was needed to answer the business questions or delivering in a format that doesn’t fit into the day-to-day way that the Customer does his/her job.

My son’s day-to-day life is impacted by data points.  One of my sons has Type 1 Diabetes.  It’s a pain to manage.  There are numbers EVERY day!!!  Right now he is tied to a Continuous Glucose Sensor and an insulin pump.  (When I say tied…I’m not kidding…it’s really attached…by a 23” tube…24×7.)  We receive data points every 5 minutes.  On his pump, I can see a display that tells me what his BG is right now.  It allows me to make decisions right now.  What it does not tell me is how past decisions have impacted the current BG.  It doesn’t tell me how actions I take now will impact future BG.  I use my “gut” to determine what to do when his BG is high and requires insulin or low and requires some sugar.  There are some pre-programmed “rules” that help me to make my decisions (e.g. it takes 1 unit of insulin to drop his BG 90 “points”).  Displaying these data points on my son’s pump is great if he’s the only one making decisions.  However, his dad, me, our doctor, my son’s teachers…all of us need to see the data to make the right decisions.  More importantly, we need to see the historical data to understand the impact of past decisions.  A tool does exist from his pump company that allows me to upload the data and view pretty graphs in PDF reports.  But the data keeps changing…every 5 minutes…Isn’t the same true in business?

At a grocer…a shopper decides to buy Crest toothpaste and not Colgate (no offense to Colgate…but I’m in a P&G town).  The shopper does this despite being sent oodles of coupons for Colgate.  What does that data point tell me?  Should I stop sending Colgate coupons to that shopper?  If I start sending Crest coupons can I guarantee that the shopper will come back the next time they need Crest?  Where will that decision get made?  Where should the BI tool be?

At a utility company…right now, I get my bill at the end of the month and I pay it.  I’ve set my thermostat back to 67 in the Winter and 74 in the Summer.  I’ve seen a decrease in my bill over the last 12 months since I started doing this.  But last night was COLD!!!  I was so cold that I couldn’t sleep.  What’s the impact of turning up my thermostat to 72 while I sleep?  If the utility company decides to build me a BI app that sits on my PC and prints for me really pretty graphs, it does me no good when I’m lying in bed and want to make a decision on if it’s worth it to turn up the heat.

For a sales guy/gal…I enter all of my contact info in Salesforce.com.  I have to send out my forecast to my boss, typically in Excel.  Should the IT team give me Business Objects for me to see my past customer sales?  What about Cognos?

When I design BI solutions, I try to make sure that the solution is delivered in a tool that I need and that makes sense to me.  I don’t want my customers to require training just to look at their data.  The tool should be easy for me, cuz analyzing the data is HARD!!!  What are you giving your customers for data analysis?  Is it a tool that’s easy for you to build?  Or easy for them to see the data in the format that they need?

Written by Jodie Heflin · Filed Under Business Intelligence | 4 Comments 

Business Intelligence, Done Right

October 14, 2008

Business Intelligence efforts often fail, not because of the technicians, but because of the disjointed relationships we (IT) have with the business. We fear relationships. We think that our investments and communications are a waste of time because we have a tremendous amount of downward pressure to deliver – so we start quickly and build according to some document that we substitute as face time with our partner. To fix this problem, we need to take the best part of our building experience as ITers and put that together with the best part of relationship management – skills that we often don’t posses, but are vital to successfully delivering value and meeting our partners expectations.
{more on “The Right Way” below}

Kimbal’s methodology calls for the segregation of the three layers of BI and this is fantastic. There are in fact three separate BI tracks that can and should run concurrently. The three tracks are:
1.    Technical Architecture
2.    Data Architecture
3.    Application Architecture
After all, we need to make progress on the technical choices of architecture and tools. What is our environment like, what standard tools do we use, what is our technical strategy to frame and contain our BI effort?
At the same time, we need to start looking at our data. What data will we need to work with, what is it, how should it relate, where does it come from, how do we extract, transform and load it. These are considerations of the data architecture effort.
Again, at the same time, what level of innovation do we need to arrive at? How do we present this to the user and provide the desired interaction to help mine data to craft information.

Kimbal’s Methodology

This methodology is right on! It is triggered by and the scope is managed by the requirements. These requirements are derived from that box that is labeled “Program/Project Planning”.  But it’s not enough, it’s not there yet! In my mind, this is a bit limited and really only addresses the “Go” portion of the project – to build. All too often, BI projects fail because of thing that are ‘above’ or before the Go. Here is what I have found to be the differentiating factors.

Requirements should be built from Strategy. Why are we building this BI application? What are the important questions that need to be answered? What is the value that these answers bring; are we making things better or faster or cheaper? A well formulated strategy addresses these questions and should manage the deliverables. When we rely on a set of requirements to build a BI solution, we are abstracted from the strategy and this is not good. When this abstraction occurs, we are removed from the business value and are relegated as a commodity…simply build to this specification.
However, strategy is not born without a birthing process. The birthing process consists of a couple of elements. The first is an alignment or a focus at most senior levels. If we can’t align on the true aspects of the business, we are forced to work in a vacuum and can, at best produce a solution that is severely slanted. This slant often caters to the loudest voice or the biggest ego. Worse, our solution is then forever raised in a silo that contributes to expensive growth and maturity with a limited enterprise appeal. If and only if  we get this alignment, we are doomed to deliver value slices rather than holistic value.
This alignment is not enough. After we have a focus, we then have to dive deep within the organization to see what raw materials we have to work with. I refer to this phase as ‘Discovery’. Once we are aligned and focused on the business value, what do we have to work with? What data exists in what format and at what availability and quality?
To state this concisely, we have the following necessary phases that will lead us to success.
1.    Alignment – A common focus with enterprise level buy in.
2.    Discovery – An exploration to ascertain our resources and an evaluation to ensure it supports the common focus.
3.    Strategy – The actual strategy that is an outcome of “What do you want” + “What do we have”.
4.    Requirements – The plan of how to get there from here.

Now, we are ready to “Go” forth and multiply! We are ready to build! And we know what we are building (requirements) and how the effort will benefit the organization (strategy). We know what we really have to work with (discovery). And finally, we have those committed at the top who are committed at the deepest levels of the effort and will both support/defend the effort as well as ensure that its accepted and reused across the enterprise.

Putting it all together, let me suggest the following methodology…

The Right Way to do BI

Sometimes we are asked “Why are you just sitting there? Do something!” We need to rally and fight the urge to just do something. We need to change that around as ask “Why are you just doing something? Sit there” (and get focused, aligned, discover, produce strategy, birth requirements…then we can “Go” and do something excellent).

The difference between a commodity and a partner is the level of time you invest in the relationship.
Take the time to do it right and it will be celebrated!
The next series of blogs will outline the above components; alignment, discovery, strategy, requirements and the three team approach to building BI solutions. Feel free to shoot me some questions or thoughts you may have regarding these topics.
Enjoy the ride!
~ Scott Felten

Written by davidebowman · Filed Under Business Intelligence, Featured | 1 Comment 

BI Maturity: You can’t get there from here!

May 20, 2008

I spent last weekend fishing with my father, brother and nephews. Since they live in Connecticut and I in Ohio – we decided to meet half way – somewhere in “The Alleghenies and Her Valleys” to quote the brochure. While I usually rely on my trusty Magellan GPS, I had given it to my oldest daughter to borrow as she was driving south where the weather is warm. So that left me driving through the mountains and her valleys around midnight. Driving through a small town on a small road, looking for a very small park proved more than a challenge. Since I have three daughters and one wife, I have learned to swallow my pride and ask directions. I did, but on my walk in to the “Sheetz” gas station, I was thinking they might give me that response…”Well, you can’t get there from here – you gotta go somewhere else, then loop back around to get there.” However, I received perfect directions! Thank you Mr. Sheetz!

But that got me thinking as I stumbled upon a poster from the TDWI folks that spoke about BI maturity and adoption. It was a few years old, but some things are so true. I was excited to see that old friend and took some time to write up my thoughts on the matter – as well as capture their context. You can visit their poster ‘2005 BI Maturity Model’ at http://www.tdwi.org/publications/display.aspx?id=7288.

In case you are wondering how I am going to tie the first two paragraphs together, here goes. From my experience, when senior leadership learns of the value that BI can bring, they really want to ‘get this thing going’. They want to launch a large, comprehensive, enterprise-wide, based-on-the-new-tools, BI innovation that will hit home runs and win ball games. Well the problem is that you can’t get there from here. :)   There is a progression that must happen. Farmers can’t just throw seed on the ground and expect to make a profit - there is work to be done to prepare the soil correctly, then lots of care and feeding, praying for rain (but not too much rain) and then F  I  N  A  L  L  Y  –> the harvest!

TDWI states that “Most organizations go through six stages when evolving their BI environment from a cost-center operation to a strategic resource that drives the business and shapes the market.”

Using their framework, here is how I break it down…

1. The Beginning (TDWI calls it ‘Prenatal’): Since this is mostly financial, there are a medium amount of standards and not much flexibility. The control is dictated from finance or finance needs. Causal users account for most activity. Power users may make use of this type of information and leverage it into their own ‘shadow’ systems. The problem is that there is a large IT backlog for these reports. The problem here is the information gap – we get the information after the decision had to be made. This decision latency could contribute to the wrong direction as the data it is built on is often not fresh. However, at this stage, a general ‘awareness’ exists – there is at least the existence of the correct information. To get here, there is a larger initial investment and costs are high as economies of scale are not yet a reality.

  • Architecture: Management Reporting
  • Scope: System
  • Type of System: Financial
  • Analytics: Paper Report
  • User: All
  • BI Focus: What Happened?
  • Executive Perception: Cost Center

2. Army of One (TDWI calls it ‘Infant’): Lots of flexibility and not any standards to speak of – other than what is negotiated from one user to another. People think local and resist any global initiatives. Causal users use decline, while power users step in to take advantage of this new information. Still, power users are reliant on IT to set the stage for their data and IT continues to struggle with a backlog of requests. As we extract the right data and manually assemble it to address business problems, there is an understanding of what factors are leading to what business results. Cost are somewhat low as analysts are using their own tools and working with certain data sets extracted by IT.

  • Architecture: Spreadmarts
  • Scope: Individual
  • Type of System: Executive
  • Analytics: Briefing Book
  • User: Analyst
  • BI Focus: What Will Happen?
  • Executive Perception: Inform Executive

3. Working as a team (TDWI calls it ‘Child’): Flexibility is somewhat high, but at this point is waning as people within the department begin to work together. But still not many standards to speak of – other than what is negotiated from one user to another or driven from within the department. People still think/act from a local perspective and resist any global initiatives. Causal users use starts to trend up to take advantage of some individual benefits provided to them at the department level. Once the organization deploys data marts based on the emerging standards, the BI environment becomes a self service type, where the bottle neck that once existed within IT has been removed. At this stage, an understanding of why things have happened is occurring because knowledge workers are using analytical systems to extract data to their own needs and using that data to draw conclusions about business events. Costs begin to creep a small amount as some technology is purchased, but overall not a big factor.

  • Architecture: Data Marts
  • Scope: Departmental
  • Type of System: Analytical
  • Analytics: Interactive Report
  • User: Knowledge Worker
  • BI Focus: Why Did It Happen?
  • Executive Perception: Empowers Workers

4. Thinking bigger (TDWI calls it ‘Teenager’): Flexibility starts to fade as division wide standards arise. People see the need to work together and are driven by common divisional goals. Here there is an atmosphere of negotiation and consolidation as these standards are built out. Now causal user use is on the rise, as the wide standards lead to increased reliability on the data available within the BI ‘system’. Power users use remains flat; but their ideas are rolled back in to divisional solutions; they are seen as subject matter experts and are often tapped to provide leadership and direction for their domain.  The focus here is customized delivery at the divisional level; dashboards, scorecards, report cards and the like.  At this stage, managers are making use of the divisional wide dashboards and are given real time information that is actionable – what is happening right now.  Costs are rising as we work within the division to develop standards and customized delivery.

  • Architecture: Data Warehouse
  • Scope: Division
  • Type of System: Monitoring
  • Analytics: Dashboard
  • User: Manager
  • BI Focus: What Is Happening?
  • Executive Perception: Monitor Processes

5. Mature (TDWI calls it ‘Adult’): Standards are formed at the enterprise level. Governance groups are now formal processes with the proper structure and sponsorship. Senior level support is solid. Although flexibility takes a dip at first as the organization learns, flexibility then trends up as efficiencies and learnings are gained. Truly people are planning globally to act local at this stage. At this stage, executives are also onboard as the mature BI environment serves to align all players within the organization.  The causal users use the system to help them understand what they should be working on and how their efforts affect the organization as a whole. The delivery mode transitions from a divisional perspective to the enterprise but is also balanced; balanced or cascading scorecards are the focus of the organization and serves as the single point of truth to answer the questions about our goals and progress towards them.  At this stage, executives are using the BI environment as a communication tool to both align the organization on goals and objectives as well as communicate the results and current situations. These pivotal points are balanced all the way through the organization and are socialized in a manner that is equal to business strategy. The balanced or cascading scorecards open up alternative decisions as all indicators that lead to a ‘score’ are actionable. Costs rise again because of the enterprise level investment and collaboration, but the value should increase dramatically.

  • Architecture: Enterprise Data Warehouse
  • Scope: Enterprise
  • Type of System: Strategic
  • Analytics: Cascading Scorecards
  • User: Executive
  • BI Focus: What Should We Do?
  • Executive Perception: Drive The Business

6. Harvesting Relationships or Partnerships (TDWI calls it ‘Sage’): Leveraging the mature BI environment  by opening up that business service to clients is the last stage. Here standards and control continue to be formed, but originates from client relationships. Flexibility is also harvested as new ideas, thoughts, concepts are embraced by the mature BI environment. At this stage, our BI environment can now be thought of as a BI Utility for our customers; helping them to solve their business problems by making use of the organization’s rich and focused information in the form of customer focused solutions deployed to help build or bind relationships, thus increasing the value proposition to them by the organization. At this stage, the BI Utility becomes a needed part within the customer’s infrastructure (whether it be for a single customer’s need for specific and unique information or for a company with complex business processes). Costs take a dip, the data/information infrastructure is in place and the capital expenditure has been amortized. Tools already exist to develop rich applications.  The value increases exceedingly abundantly here, as a very narrow scoped application brings a deep penetration of partnership.

  • Architecture: Analytical Services
  • Scope: Inter-Enterprise
  • Type of System: Business Service
  • Analytics: Embedded BI
  • User: Customer
  • BI Focus: What Can We Offer?
  • Executive Perception: Drive The Market

Now that you know… Where do you see your organization? How can you actualize the next stage? What are some value statements that you can take to senior leadership? What business problems can you address? What type of socialization strategy will work best? Where should you invest and what will the return look like? Who can you trust to help you get there from here without shortcutting the maturity journey – proper growth is built on a series of solid foundations. These sucesses are the underpinnings of the needed BI elements; Trust, Vision, Focus, Value, Momentum…repeat.

Happy Maturing!

Scott Felten

Written by Scott Felten · Filed Under Business Intelligence, Technology | 1 Comment 

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