Four Ways to Leverage BI for Executive-Level Reporting

Although companies have many tools to help to make decisions, many of them have difficulty in delivering insights to their management teams. The Information Management  published a good article on how to leverage BI for executives, written by Trevor Dunham. In the article, he mentions that many companies struggle to turn data into actionable insights at the executive level. He touches on a point still common in many companies: executives that depend on manually produced spreadsheets for managing and tracking performance. He cites four ways organizations can leverage existing business data intelligence to improve reporting at the executive level:

1. Be Visual: Keep it Simple.
Reports filled with endless rows and columns of  static, numerical data that take hours to sift through and weeks to assemble don’t enable decisions. However, using the data to see cues and visualize trends, increases understanding, allows for predictability and enables more informed decision-making

2. Be Concise: Get To The Point.
BI reports should not force management to wade through pages of data. Rather, these reports should be presented like a strategy plan or a news website. The goal is to present contextual meaning and actionable insight in an easily searchable format.

3. Be Timely: Distribute Real-Time Data Alerts.
Data alerts are unique visual indicators based on a defined key performance indicator. The ability to deliver real-time data alerts is an important best practice for any sales organization.

4. Be Mobile: Deliver Insight To The Point of Action.
For business intelligence to be useful, it has to be delivered to the point of action, which usually means a mobile device. Mobile BI is simply a must-have for any organization looking to improve business performance.

Companies that generate and deliver BI that is visual, concise, timely and mobile can achieve new levels of performance and the greatest possible competitive advantage.

How to Capture Nonfunctional Requirements

Information Management published this week a nice post entitled How to Capture Nonfunctional Requirements, written by Sastry Kolluru and Shantaram Nishtala, where they commented about an important issue: the nonfunctional requirements gathering.

The business users define the functional requirements substantially well but are challenged when detailing nonfunctional requirements. Asking business the right questions can achieve a better business-IT alignment, they wrote. In a typical data integration initiative, it is not uncommon that functional requirements may not be completely defined early in the project lifecycle; they get clarified as the project progresses. The clarity on nonfunctional aspects is much lower. NFRs are stated informally during the requirements gathering, are often contradictory, difficult to enforce during software development and hard to validate when the software system is ready for delivery.

They listed some reasons because the nonfunctional requirements seem less clear:
- There’s a lack of understanding about what to include as nonfunctional requirements;
- No one is sure what should be specified, this results in exclusion or specification of unrealistic nonfunctional requirements; and
- People assume it is implicit.

They defined some key questions that could be used to define Nonfunctional Requirements in some areas: Performance, Scalability, Reliability, Maintainability, Extensibility, Security and Resource Utilization.

Effectively gathering NFRs is a key success factor for all data integration initiatives. Understanding the types of NFRs and following a systematic approach for capturing them can help identify quantifiable and measurable NFRs, they concluded.

A requirements gathering (functional and nonfunctional) is a vital step to develop a succesful data integration initiative. You should understand well what the business users need, the difference between mandating “what” versus “how” and also define a transparent process to follow through the entire project lifecycle.

How to Get Executive Involvement

When you are starting a Business Intelligence initiative, one of the most important steps is the management commitment. Executive support is critical to any Business Intelligence program. Information Management published an article on this issue, entitled How to Get Executive Involvement - Ensure that sponsors and leaders understand the importance of business intelligence, written by Jonathan G. Geiger. In the article, Jonathan told about the great resistance to establishing an executive steering committee at numerous companies and some approaches for overcoming executive reluctance to participation.

In general, the executives are too busy, unaware or disinclined to support a given program, he said. Some executives simply do not know what BI is and why it is important to the enterprise. These executives may be receptive to requests for their time, but before making the commitment, they will need to understand how the BI program will help the company.This group of executives is ambivalent about BI. The best way to bring these people on board is to provide them with an executive-level briefing about BI, to show them examples of success stories at other companies within their industry.

The greatest challenge will come from key executives who think they understand BI but are openly nonsupportive. Most often, these detractors form their opinions based on personal negative experiences, misinformation or a desire to remain in control. Executives in opposition to a program cannot be ignored. These are influential people, and they are capable of derailing the program when it does not serve their objectives.

He commented about some approaches for overcoming executive reluctance to participation:

- Use an existing committee. Some companies are very resistant to forming committees. In such a situation, rather than establishing a new steering committee for BI, see if an existing executive committee exists with the same kinds of people that should provide BI oversight. If such a panel exists, consider appending BI topics to that committee's agenda on a periodic basis. While this approach does not provide a committed oversight group for BI, it can still provide direction, monitor progress, enlist funds/resources, and resolve issues. Over time, as the BI program grows, the members may choose to create a separate committee or devote specific meetings just to BI.

- Create a tactical committee. While it does not have the same level of authority, a tactical committee of middle managers can provide guidance on a day-to-day basis. If there is enough support for such a committee, it should be formed, and only issues that require higher sign-off would be raised to the executive committee. Keep in mind that limited executive involvement or response sends a clear negative signal concerning their perception of the program's importance.

- Make good use of their time. The BI director should set a process whereby executives can be assured that 1) they are needed, and 2) their time at BI steering committee meetings will be well spent. If executives feel their participation was worthy of their role, they will continue to participate; otherwise, they will send lower-level substitutes or choose not to be represented at all.

Why Isn't My BI Application Useful?

Boris Evelson wrote a nice post in Information Management, with a list of answers to the question: Why Isn't My BI Application Useful? He said that he can count at least 11 possible meanings, and potential reasons:

1. The data is not there, because:
- It's not in any operational sources, in which case the organization needs to implement a new app, a new process or get that data from an outside source
- It is in an operational source, but not accessible via the BI application.

The data is there, but:

2. It's not usable as is, because
- There are no common definitions, common metadata
- The data is of poor quality
- The data model is wrong, or out of date

3. I can't find it, because I:
- Can't find the right report
- Can't find the right metadata
- Can't find the data
- I don't have access rights to the data I am looking for

4. I don't know how to use my application, because I:
- Was not trained
- Was trained, but the application is not intuitive, user friendly enough

5. I can't/don't have time do it myself - because I just need to run my business, not do BI !!! - and
- I don't have support staff
- I am low on IT priority list

6. It takes too long to:
- Create a report/query
- Run/execute a report/query

7. I need to report/analyze on something that SQL can't do, such as:
- Faceted search
- SQL on data with uneven, unbalanced, ragged, recursive hierarchies

8. It's a wrong BI application:
- I have strategic decisions to make, but the app is designed for operational decisions, or
- I have operational decisions to make, but the app is designed for strategic decisions

9. The app is not integrated with other applications, processes or desktop so:
- I loose context
- Have to switch apps, cut & paste
- Don't know how to act on the info that I find

10. I don’t know what I am looking for, but my application is asking to:
- Run a specific report
- Pick specific facts and dimensions

So I don't know where to start.

11. The app stops short of helping me, directing me to make the actual decision, even if I know how to use the app, have access to the right data, and can find what I am looking for. It's a loooooong way between finding the right info and actually make a decision based on the info.

That is an interesting list. Have you heard some of those answers?

Does your company have a BI strategy?

Boris Evelson wrote today a short but nice post in Information Management, called Ten Strong Hints Your Enterprise May Not Have a BI Strategy, where he lists 10 hints why the companies don't have a BI strategy. Below is his list:

"You know that you don't have an enterprise BI strategy if:

1 - Your end users keep pointing to IT as the source of most BI problems
2 - Your business executives view BI as another cost center
3 - IT staff keep asking end users for report requirements
4 - Your BI is supported by IT help desk
5 - You can’ tell the difference between BI and Performance Management
6 - You can’t measure your BI usage
7 - You can’t measure your BI ROI
8 - You think your BI strategy is the same as your DW strategy
9 - You don’t have a plan to develop, hire, retain and grow BI staff
10- You actually don’t know if your enterprise has a BI strategy!"

Although BI remains at the top of the list of IT priorities, the most of companies still lack a cohesive strategy for Business Intelligence. The companies need to understand that BI is not just another IT project, is a continuous process to delivery better information to the company makes better decisions. The companies need to link the BI with corporate strategy, with the strategies defined by executives applied to BI efforts. BI also must be connected with the business process. For all of this to happen, it is essential that the company has an executive sponsor that has influence on all divisions and business units (who is not the CIO).

Using BI to reduce the crime recidivism rate

I read in Information Management an interesting article about the use of data warehousing and business intelligence in an effort to reduce the recidivism rate in Washington, DC. The article, called The Tracker, written by John McCormick, shows how the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), the federal agency that manages probations and paroles in the nation's capital is using data warehousing and business intelligence in an intensive effort to reduce the city's recidivism rate and make its streets safer.

Two years ago, the percentage was 69 percent of the 15,000 offenders it supervises in a "successful posture". At present, the agency's goal is 80 percent, according to Calvin Johnson, CSOSA's director of the Office of Research and Evaluation.

In 2002, CSOSA built a case management system, which it calls the Supervision and Management Automated Record Tracking (SMART) system, based on a Microsoft's platform (SQL Server database and software developed in house). When SMART was first rolled out, they had some issues with data quality and data integrity. Another issue is the use of different BI tools from SAS, Business Objects and Microsoft by different offices.

In 2005, using the SAS 9 enterprise intelligence platform from the SAS Institute, Johnson's team deployed a data warehouse. The SMART case management system serves as the main source for the data warehouse. Data from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies is pulled into SMART and matched to the offenders in CSOSA's care.

The CSOSA also monitors in real time some 800 offenders ordered to wear GPS ankle devices. The data is transferred from the system to the CSOSA data warehouse over a secure FTP connection, giving CSOSA a high-level of visibility into the activities of those under house arrest.

For the future, CSOSA is looking to use its data warehouse and business intelligence tools to leverage predictive analytics in real time for decision support. Predictive analytics would give the agency the ability to conduct what-if analyses - plugging offender, behavior and historical reference data into the system to suggest a likely outcome to everyday activities.

The article describes an interesting real case. In the CSOSA's project, they had many common issues that happening in BI projects: data quality, data integrity, the use of many different tools by different offices, and still managed to implement a BI project successfully.

The Second Annual Appliance Showdown

Tomorrow, May 7 at 3PM ET, will happen a live Web broadcast presentation entitled The Second Annual Appliance Showdown, provided by Information Management (formerly DM Review), and hosted by Eric Kavanagh with Jim Ericson, in its program called DM Radio.

According Information Management: "By definition, appliances are easy to use. That's the argument put forth by many appliance vendors over the past few years. How true is it? Tune into this episode of DM Radio to find out! We'll talk to Foster Hinshaw, argaubly the father of data warehouse appliances, now the head of Dataupia. We'll also hear from Barry Zane of ParAccel and Bruce Armstrong of Kickfire.

Attendees will learn:
- What, exactly, constitutes a data warehouse appliance;
- Use cases in which appliances are most effective;
- How some appliances are climbing the BI stack;
- What Oracle's Exadata means to the industry;
- Why so many appliance vendors have cropped up."


In the Information Management website, you can register for this live Web broadcast.

You also can check out the DM Radio archives to hear previous programs with a variety of other issues.

Making Rich Internet Applications That Work

Tomorrow, April 30, at 3PM ET, will happen a live Web broadcast presentation entitled Making Rich Internet Applications That Work, provided by Information Management (formerly DM Review), and hosted by Eric Kavanagh with Jim Ericson, in its program called DM Radio.


According Information Management: "What are Rich Internet Applications, and why should you care? Tune into this episode of DM Radio to find out! We'll explore the origins of RIA, as well as modern-day applications for such use cases as data exploration, dashboard design, predictive analytics and more. We'll talk to Eric Schmidt of Microsoft who will extol the virtues of SilverLight, Redmond's response to Adobe Flash. We'll also hear from Ryan Stewart, Adobe's evangelist for RIA, plus Milena Head, industry visionary and Associate Dean at DeGroote School of Business, and Mark Smith of Ventana, a DM Radio regular."

Attendees will learn:
- Why RIA design should adhere to several key principles;
- The importance of knowing your audience well;
- How rich media can add depth to an enterprise application;
- Which social networking sites are being leveraged and how;
- Whether RIA can replace expensive enterprise software."

In the Information Management website, you can register for this live Web broadcast.

You also can check out the DM Radio archives to hear previous programs with a variety of other issues.

Operational BI In The Real World

Today, March 19th, at 3PM ET, will happen a live Web broadcast presentation entitled Operational BI In The Real World, provided by Information Management (formerly DM Review), and hosted by Eric Kavanagh with Jim Ericson, in its program called DM Radio.

According Information Management: "Everyone in your company is a decision-maker at some level. That's why delivering BI-generated insights to operational employees can yield tremendous value. Of course, such insights must be accurate, timely and framed within the proper context. That's what Operational BI is all about. Tune into this episode of DM Radio to learn how your organization can achieve the long-sought BI for the Masses. We'll talk to Ventana Research Founder Mark Smith, Expressor Software CEO Bob Potter, Noetix VP of Engineering Technologies Daryl Orts, and Information Builders CMO Michael Corcoran.

Attendees will learn:
- The four pillars of Operational BI
- How to choose the right business functions to support
- Why good analytics make for great operational decisions
- Tips for leveraging existing applications and architecture
- Which messaging technologies can get the job done
- How Operational BI will help drive future application development."


In the Information Management website, you can register for this live Web broadcast.

You also can check out the DM Radio archives to hear previous programs with a variety of other issues.

The DM radio is an excellent initiative by Information Management (formerly DM Review) to spread knowledge with expert professionals in interesting subjects.

The Future of Information Management

Today, February 5th, at 3PM ET, will happen a live Web broadcast presentation entitled The Future of Information Management, provided by Information Management (formerly DM Review), and hosted by Eric Kavanagh with Jim Ericson, in its program called DM Radio.

According Information Management: "What does the future hold for Information Management? How will the economic downturn impact software vendors, consulting firms and information consumers? Has Microsoft lost its monopoly to Apple, Linux and others? Will the enterprise software licensing model unravel as Software-as-a-Service takes hold? Will SOA, open-source and Software-as-a-Service combine for a one-two-three punch?


Tune into this special episode of DM Radio to find out! We'll talk to professional prognosticator Robin Bloor, visualization visionary Howard Spielman, SAP VP of BI Franz Aman, and long-time Big Blue guru Lou Agosta."

In the Information Management website, you can register for this live Web broadcast.

You also can check out the DM Radio archives to hear previous programs with a variety of other issues.

The DM radio is an excellent initiative by Information Management (formerly DM Review) to spread knowledge with expert professionals in interesting subjects.