The Ten Commandments of Business Intelligence (with all due credit to Moses and his Supervisor)

I. If you’re not omnipotent, business intelligence is the closest you’re going to get.

Business intelligence, properly implemented, provides all stakeholders in an organization with a common view of what has happened, and with advanced analytics capabilities, can even predict the future.

II. It’s ok – there are many business intelligence technologies, and they serve varying purposes.

Unlike monotheism, we preach, uh, polytechnologism – the concept that there is no one right technology for all users, and that in fact, an optimal business intelligence implementation may use different technologies to meet the needs of different users. (More)

III. You shall make for yourself a data model (or we can do it for you, if that’s easier).

The true value of business intelligence comes from integrating data originating in disparate sources.  To do this correctly, you’ll need to identify the data sources and how they relate.  We’ve co-authored many books on this topic, and can help you realize the true value that can be derived from looking at your data in new ways.

IV. Remember to backup your data.

And the Sabbath day’s not a bad time to do it, since, after all, we’re not working, right?

V. Honor your transactional systems.

The most effective reporting and analysis comes from data that has been sourced from transactional systems, then cleansed (to remove erroneous data) and integrated.  We can report directly off of operating systems as a starting point, though we never put at risk mission critical applications.

VI. You shall not kill your executives by inundating them with unnecessary detail.

We can build for you an executive scorecard that displays key performance indicators in a nice, graphical display.  No need to be the “I’ll just manage in the dark” type any longer.

VII. You shall not commit business adultery.

Select one business intelligence vendor (Dataspace, perhaps) and let us help you determine which technologies will meet all your reporting and analysis needs.

VIII. You shall not steal.

And neither shall your employees.  We can find any that do.  We’ve used our technologies to uncover those lying, ne’er-do-wells, and provided the documentation to take action.  Unfortunately, any children you have in this category are beyond our expertise…

IX. You shall not bear false witness.

Here’s the crazy thing – you may be doing this already, albeit unintentionally.  We’ll help you look at what your data really says, and organize it so you can put it to use.

X. You shall not covet your competitor’s business intelligence systems.

Do you wonder how a particular competitor seems to ‘get it right’ time-after-time?  It’s not clairvoyance – it’s likely that they’re using the same type of technology we can implement for you.  And, with recent advances, we can do it for little up-front cost and a low monthly subscription.

Contact us to discuss further.  You’ll have to use a phone or email, praying alone probably won’t get through to us.

(The Ten Commandments here.)

Tying results to individuals

I was at a client this week and had the opportunity to present how a business intelligence solution using QlikView could provide needed insight to readily available, but difficult to analyze, supply-chain data.  The extract of sample data provided (we like to use real data from each prospect in our demos whenever practical) showed how a variety of products moved through the manufacturing supply chain, specifically, when an order was received, when it was sent to the factory for production, when it was scheduled for build, when it was completed, when it was shipped to the target market, when it was received at the port, when it was shipped to the dealer, and when it was sold.  By looking product line by product line, the total time from order to delivery can be easily analyzed.  Everyone understood the power in completing this type of analysis, as they had been struggling with a variety of home-grown macros in Excel to do this type of analysis.  During the dialog I picked up on a few points we’ll use in future discussions.

In this case, the people feeling the most pain were the ones that had to take flak from the dealers as to why their product took so long to arrive after the order was placed.  So, when I showed them how great our analysis was, how easy it was for them to see where the delays occurred, they responded with, “that’s great – but doing this analysis and addressing the delays is not our job.”  I picked up on that point and realized that when speaking with potential clients about the power of business intelligence, the benefits should be mapped as specifically to the user community as possible, not addressed in aggregate from an organization perspective.  The dialog progressed into how an empowered, independent group that could address delays across the supply chain would be of great value.

Further, concerns identified through analysis should be as closely tied to individual performance as possible.  If, for example, certain product lines took longer to ship from the factory to the market than others, and additional data such as shipping line and person who contracted with the shipping line could be added to the analysis, it would be easy to show that Product Line A that was Tom’s responsibility took, on average, 1.5x as long to transport as Product Line B, that was Keiko’s responsibility.  What gets measured gets attention, and what gets attention gets fixed.

When developing business intelligence solutions, look for data sources that tie the results of the analysis to individuals, and when talking about the benefits such analyses offer, make sure those benefits are relevant to each specific audience.

Eyes Wide Shut: The Case for a Developing a Corporate Early Warning System

In the Battle of Britain… radar was the eyes of Fighter Command… its effectiveness was greatly enhanced by being only one element of, and integrated into, a sophisticated command and control network which received the raw information of radar plots and rapidly applied it to direct the use of precious resources of pilots and aircraft to the best possible effect.

Courtesy Imperial War Museum, London

GM’s bankruptcy wasn’t a big surprise – it simply represented the nadir in a twenty year decline where the company’s shrinking market share and excessive labor costs had been well publicized.  In contrast, Toyota’s current sudden acceleration disaster seemed to come from out of nowhere.  In January the company was the industry darling, protecting its customers and our environment with safe, reliable vehicles.  Come February, the brand had become toxic, rapidly obliterating billions of dollars of shareholder value with a devastating impact on long-term goodwill.

But, were there really no warning signs?  I think that highly doubtful.  If Toyota is like the companies we work with, the indicators were there, in corporate systems, though probably lying dormant just out of executive visibility.  Imagine if six months ago an astute manager had correctly interpreted them and stakeholders had taken corrective action.

How does an organization develop an early warning system?  As a last resort, it’s easy to find signs of impending trouble in a company’s legal case matter management system.  These systems support corporate legal departments by capturing information about the content and status of the company’s legal case portfolio.  While each case will follow its own trajectory, in the aggregate the litigation for particular conditions will follow identifiable, predictable patterns.

A great example is the litigation trend that followed the auto industry’s introduction of standard passenger airbags.  Shortly after the technology was widely deployed, trends became visible in the product liability litigation that followed.  Tracking these trends, Federal standards were amended and companies introduced second generation (low powered) airbags, weight-based deactivation and instrument panel indicator lights.  They were also better able to plan and budget their legal costs.  Similar data must have been available at Toyota.  Imagine the billions of dollars, not to mention the innocent lives that could have been saved, if only someone had been looking.

But before troubles hit the legal case management system, they are often captured in a variety of other systems used for daily operations.  Great places to look include warranty claim systems and call center systems.  Just as radar provided the ability to foresee and react to threats during the Battle of Britain, wise companies will integrate information from these systems to create corporate early warning systems that will provide executives with the ability to foresee and react to threats on their company, preempting the worst fiascos.

Developing an early warning system doesn’t even have to be expensive.  Companies already own the data.  What’s needed are the critical steps of highlighting trends that predict trouble and making those trends visible in the form of management dashboards and automated alerts.  Start small, but start now – you can always expand later.  Can you imagine the ROI on this relatively small investment?

Create your own early warning system, transforming your call center, warranty and legal expenses from overhead into investments in a valuable strategic asset that can stave off crises before they occur.  It doesn’t take advanced analytics to know that Toyota’s current calamity could have been avoided had they had the foresight to do so.

Give us a call to talk about how an early warning system can help you reduce the risk to your organization.

The Vertical Integration of Knowledge

Vertical integration typically refers to the degree to which an organization owns (or controls) its own suppliers and/or consumers of its products or services.  The more vertically integrated an organization, the more of the value chain they control.  There are benefits to vertical integration including the ability to more closely match supply and demand, thus better controlling pricing and reducing uncertainty.  Detriments include more difficulty changing to suppliers who may offer competing raw materials at lower costs.

Vertical integration of knowledge, the way I’m defining it, similarly refers to the degree to which an organization obtains facts about their marketplace, and the extent of the value chain that was used to derive that knowledge.  Vertical integration of knowledge doesn’t require owning or controlling companies either upstream or downstream; it simply requires an agreement to collect data from organizations up or down the value chain.

For example, the company Above The Treeline collects sales data from independent booksellers and makes that information available to publishers, distributors, reviewers and librarians across the country.  While the purpose of the company was originally to help independent booksellers analyze their own sales and compare their sales to industry averages, the company now also provides vertically integrated knowledge (and collects revenue from providing that value) to:

• book distributors, who previously could only track sales only until booksellers bought books for their stock, and
• publishers, who previously could only track sales until distributors bought books.

Think of how the knowledge now available to these two groups can help them better manage their own businesses.  Now they can see when books were bought, if they were bought in specific combinations, how sales and incentives impact sales performance, and explore a variety of other factors.

At Dataspace we’re not only technologists, we’re strategists.  Talk to us about the data you have available (either from your systems or up/down the value chain), and we’ll work with you to integrate it, format it, and turn it into a strategic asset.  Who knows – you may even be able to sell it.

How can you use the concept of the vertical integration of knowledge to benefit your business?

The best analysis puts you in control

It’s a great feeling helping a client understand their data and working with them to analyze it to get to an ‘a-ha’ moment.  Since Dataspace’s founding 15 years ago, our leaders have seen pretty much every technology that helps us help our clients.  And until recently, our CEO would comment, “they’re all pretty much the same.”  Well, he’s got a different set of talking points now.

You may have seen a few of our posts on the merits of QlikView, and now I’m proud to announce we’re Michigan’s newest QlikView partner.  Let me tell you why I’m excited.  Trite as it sounds, QlikView really is different.  Well, maybe it’s not QlikView that’s different, maybe it’s that using QlikView is a completely different experience than using other leading BI tools.  I’m not talking about features, technical architecture,  enterprise deployability or things like that – I’m talking about how, at the most basic level, using QlikView is different, and here’s how I sum it up: QlikView allows analyses that follow the way your brain thinks, not the way the data is organized.

With traditional tools you get some data, format it a certain way, and then use some kind of analysis and reporting tool to view it different ways.  If you find that you missed something, you need to go back and get more data.  If you find you have the right data, but it’s not formatted so the tool is optimized, you need to reformat it.  All this means that to use the tool, the user must bow to the data.  It makes free-thinking difficult, because if you find you want to look at the data a new way, you need to jump through hoops to get the tool to do what you want it to.  Even worse, if you need to rely on IT to reextract and reorganize the data every time you want another analysis, good luck making friends with them.

With QlikView and its database structure, you load all the data at once.  You don’t have to create cubes or other views on which to perform your reporting and analyses – QlikView’s application lets you drill down, up, sideways, it doesn’t matter – it’s all there from the start.  So, if you’re investigating which products are most profitable, and realize it would be great to see which customers buy those products, with one click they’re identified.  Want to see which products one of those customers buys?  One click to reset the products and one click to select the customer, and all the information updates again.  No more cubes, no more incremental fetches, no more bowing to the way the data is structured, no more IT SOWs.

Let your BI tool help you uncover the facts as your brain dictates.  Give QlikView a once-over.  Contact us if you’d like to discuss further.