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.
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.
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?
When Should You?
October 16, 2009
At LÛCRUM we help our clients by using data to provide simple answers to complex business questions. We convert information into knowledge so that businesses can understand the answers to Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? How Many? and other such questions. The idea is that we create a factual basis for better decisions, as defined by those resulting in consistently superior outcomes for our Clients. Put simply, knowledge offers the power to make better choices.
As I was driving home last night listening to All Things Considered on WVXU, I was captivated by a story about a fun book that uses data to answer some interesting questions about when it is the best time to do things. The book by Mark Di Vincenzo is entitled Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon, and it sets out to inform readers of the optimal time to engage in a wide range of activities – based on data. The story is a very entertaining way of looking at what we do for our business clients, although we don’t get a lot of ketchup purchasing questions.
Whether you are a data junkie or just someone interested in knowing when is the best time to defrost your freezer or study for an exam, the story is worth a look / listen. It is fascinating to see life analyzed in new and exciting ways. While we can’t make more time for ourselves, increasingly we are becoming able to make more out of the time we are given. (What we actually do with this time is fodder for another post.) Information technology is becoming more ubiquitous, more powerful, and more useful for everyday people every day. As data becomes more plentiful and more palatable, the ability to tweak our behavior and capitalize on opportunities that may otherwise not be apparent grows in both abundance and importance. What an exciting time to be alive, watching data connect and transform our world.
New Book Explores Best Times For Almost Everything : NPR
Just Say No!
September 14, 2009
With the difficult economy comes difficult choices. LÛCRUM is focused on helping our customers to realize the value of their data. This enables us to focus on what we do best, and continue to strengthen our skills in this area. This additionally increases our success in our work, as we only offer our expertise in the areas in which we truly are world class – data oriented solutions. This does however mean that on occasion we have to say no to our customers. This would typically be due to the fact that we are being asked to do work that is not truly within our focus. We have recently turned down infrastructure, pure design oriented development, and custom development requests. This is not easy to do in a difficult economy, but frankly is a critical aspect of our business – Focusing where we EXCEL. This has also given us the opportunity to partner with some great local firms. KiZAN, US Digital Partners, and recently DLP Solutions. These firms practice this focus, and it’s a pleasure working with them. I look forward to our long term partnerships, and to continuous improvement in our focus area – helping our customers to Realize the Value of their Data.
How Many Versions of The Truth Does Your Company Have?
September 11, 2009
Years ago, while at one of my previous employers, I was part of a cross functional team of people from across the organization given the seemingly simple task of identifying our best customers. Seems like this should have been pretty easy right? Define what best means, run a report or two, discuss the findings and cross it off the “to-do” list. Oh how naive I was to believe it would be so smooth.
In reality it took months to determine that there were in fact numerous clusters of our best customers, yet no master list that everyone could agree upon. Marketing had its list, and so did sales, and accounting, and finance, and operations. Everyone was pulling different points of data from different systems, and thus getting radically different results. We had multiple versions of the truth. Sadly, we never did figure it out. A month into the project, the company was bought out and we were pretty much all downsized out within a couple months – this actually ended up being a great thing for me. Still, that experience has stuck with me, and taught me a valuable lesson – to be useful, data needs to present one version of the truth.
Had we been able to create this list quickly and accurately, we could have spent time trying to determine the best ways to serve our best customers. We could have examined ways to get new customers that were similar to our best customers, convert good customers into great ones, and improved the results of the organization. Instead we spent time and money simply trying to figure out whose list was the right list. What a waste!
As the “marketing guy” I am not the utmost authority at LUCRUM on business intelligence and data architecture. Still, having gone through that experience makes me genuinely appreciate the services we provide our customers. I have been in their shoes – seeking the truth, seemingly finding it, wanting to move forward, only to have everything come to a screeching halt because of inconsistent, incomplete information. It is a frustrating situation to be in, and I smile every time we solve such a problem for a Client.
If you are spending more time debating the truth as described by your data than you are determining what to actually do about it, you should talk to us. We can deliver one accurate, actionable, complete, and timely version of the truth for you – saving you time, money, and a whole lot of aggravation.
Democratizing Data
June 25, 2009
Wired magazine has a great interview this month with America’s first ever CIO, Vivek Kundra, who has been tasked with making the vast amounts of data collected by the Federal Government available for public use. Kundra talks candidly about the need to open up this information to the people, and the power that can come from analyzing and understanding data. The project is now coming to life on the site data.gov. Sources for data include the EPA, Library of Congress, FBI, National Science Foundation…. and on and on and on, with reports ranging from peanut recall data to most wanted lists to on time reports for airlines.
Here is an excerpt from the article explaining the goal of the site:
"The goal of Kundra’s new Web site, Data.gov, is create a place where all the information is easy to find, sort, download, and manipulate. He wants to put as much data out there as possible, then sit back and let the private sector come up with great ways to use it. He envisions a future in which well-designed spreadsheets, charts, and graphs are embedded in applications for phones, Facebook, and blogs."
This quote speaks to the power of data in our world. Certainly our government has more of this raw material than anyone, and opening it up to be refined and tapped into by citizens and businesses will help to create new breakthroughs in our world. Data gives us the ability to better understand our world. Of course it often must be refined, shaped, and combined with other pieces of data to become useful information. Once information is created, we have the opportunity to see our world in new and exciting ways. it becomes the basis for informed debate, enlightened creativity, and compelling innovation.
By opening this data up to the public, the collective wisdom of the nation and even the world is being enhanced. People everywhere will have greater insight, deeper understanding, and ultimately a better definition of the truth. What to do then is a whole different debate, yet one that can also be guided by data.
The data.gov site is by no means perfect. It is definitely still a work in progress. There are broken links, some reports and files have limited formats, it is clunky and cumbersome, there are limited feeds, and there is not yet much data from individual states. Still, it appears that the site will continue to add enhancements, data sources, and useful functionality to address these issues. Even in its current imperfect state, data.gov has the potential to deliver great information.
Something else I learned from the article is that Kundra is embracing concepts like cloud computing, software as a service and open source development – placing the government further up the innovation curve than I would have guessed. It is plesantly surprising to see such things.
Mr. Kundra closes the article with a quote that I really like – "By democratizing data, the American people will be able to hold their government accountable, based on evidence rather than talk." Politics has no shortage of talk on both sides of the aisle. It is great to see that perhaps data will play a bigger role in governing our country, informing our citizens, and advancing our economy. While I would never wish for data to replace talking, I am hopeful that it provide us with more intelligent things to say.
And Data for All: Why Obama’s Geeky New CIO Wants to Put All Gov’t Info Online
Shocking Statistics on Spreadsheets
June 3, 2009
A number of recent studies have shown that, among other things, up to 94% of spreadsheets used today contain errors. Read more
Stories
December 18, 2008
What happens after we roll our applications into production? We are left with the stories?
It’s like raising a child, isn’t it? We spent so much time and pour our lives into the development of those much needed applications. As we trade hours for dollars as we watch them grow…
A problem turns into an opportunity.
That opportunity turns into a solution.
That solution gets a sponsor and a team.
The team raises that young solution.
Suddenly it blossoms into a application…a production application!
It may have taken us weeks, months or even years, but we were given guardianship over that child for a period of time. As it grew, and that production day came closer and closer, we felt the awkward anxiety of letting go. Yes, we know the dangers out there waiting for our young application; potentially low chance of adoption, push back, rejection, even the fear of death.
That young application is safest in the test environment. At least we can control its exposure and limit its risks. But in our heart of hearts, we know that the application was build for production. We know that it was designed to take on the hardest of situations and out perform expectations – that this application will make an impact in the business; making things better, faster, cheaper!
That day comes and we let it go and watch it fly. For a period of time, we watch it closely and ensure its safety. We anticipate the missteps and try to head them off. We add to it and extend its capabilities as new challenges are seen. We pour more and more of our time and energy into that application.
Soon, it grows mature and reaches the stage of life where it takes on its own personality. It reaches critical mass and there is no slowing it down. That application forms new relationships and makes new friends.
Then in a cruel twist of fate, it forgets about you. After all, you have other children to raise. While we may look back in pride, our jobs demand we look forward with a combination of power, agility and leveraged experiences to make an impact for the future.
Now the question remains; “What are we to do about this?” The answer is easy but it does draw against your heart. The answer, my friend, is that we are left with the stories, those fascinating stores of how we did it. Yes, some people call that experience, but who wants to hear about experience when they can listen to a story.
What are your favorite stories?
I’ll never forget leading a large government Oracle-based BI project back in 1998 when you couldn’t get an Oracle person for 100 lbs of gold. I brought in 4 network engineers – yeah you guessed it, they were Novel network managers. I trained one to be a DBA and the other three to be developers. What a time that was; gathering requirements, navigating the murky waters of government contracting, designing complex integration between the US Air Force and the US Navy, data architecture and applications development…and at the same time training four people in the art of Oracle! The point that I remember most was bringing that last person on board. You see, the contract stated that the person had to have a 4 year degree. Well, that last person had only an A.S. degree – well to be exact, she had two A.S. degrees. I remember it well; walking into the General’s office to get an exception. It had come down to that…asking a General! I walked into his office and after I gave my 2 minute context introduction, I said “Sir, this person has two 2-year degrees and the last time I checked…2 plus 2 equaled 4″. Then I shut my mouth and waited for what seemed to be a very long time and he looked me up and down and finally gave me the go ahead to move forward.
What attachment do I have with that application that is still in production today? My attachment is through those stories which make up the sum of my experiences. It is from these stories that I am forming who I am and amassing my worth.
Happy Story Telling!
~Scott Felten