Business Intelligence Radar: Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Britain

What is business intelligence?  It’s the set of tools, abilities, and data required to create a picture of the world and how your organization operates in that world.  In building your business intelligence capabilities, you can learn a lot by looking at a historical precedent, the rise of radar, and applying it to your problems of getting to your data.

The Battle of Britain

The fate of the western world was largely determined by the actions of a few people in Britain in the late summer and early fall of 1940.  Poland had fallen, Belgium had fallen, France had fallen.  Great Britain was next.  Prime Minister Winston Churchill lobbied President Franklin Roosevelt for help.  But, Roosevelt was reluctant to fully support a Britain that looked doomed to defeat.

Air power had come into its own and the Nazis planned to use it to clear the way.  Key to their plan was destroying Britain’s air force.  Once it was gone, a seaborne attack would follow.

Winston Churchill knew what was coming and famously announced to Parliament, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

The air assault started in July with attacks on convoys in the English Channel.  Shortly thereafter, relentless attacks on the airfields.  The British airmen were outnumbered and exhausted.

Eventually, they were also victorious.  The Nazis gave up their plans for invading Britain and focused their attention on Russia.

A number of  factors led to Britain’s success.  One especially important asset was radar.  Britain was an early innovator in Radar and early warning technologies.  But, as we shall soon see, radar alone wouldn’t win battles.

7 December 1941 – Pearl Harbor

Around 7 am on the 7th of December, 1941 the Japanese arrived.  In a brilliant piece of seamanship and aviation skill they sneaked  up on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  A few hours later the US fleet lay in shambles.  While a few US fighters managed to take off and tangle with the attackers, their effect was negligible.

After the attack, US President Franklin Roosevelt gave a stirring speech that contained the following, memorable line, “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

It was over a year since America’s ally, Britain, had prevailed in the Battle of Britain.   The Americans also had radar.  In fact, American radar detected the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.   So, why was America so soundly defeated at Pearl Harbor?

The answer lies not in radar but in the military’s ability to take the data from radar, assemble it into a meaningful picture, and then act on the result.  The British had developed an entire information network that gathered data from radar, and other sources, assembled it at a central point, and then distributed it, as necessary to commanders in the field.  Each member of the team knew their job and knew how to use the information delivered to them.

At Pearl Harbor, on the other hand, the Americans hadn’t built the information infrastructure.  They captured the raw data but didn’t have the mechanisms for rapidly assembling that data into a coherent picture.  And, they certainly didn’t have the plans for how to act on that picture.

Business Intelligence

This brings us to the concept of business intelligence (BI).  What makes for effective BI?  It’s the ability to gather the  relevant data, integrate it into a coherent picture of reality, and the processes necessary to execute based on what that picture shows.

In large part, organizations already have the data – they have the radar.  Where?  In their operational systems.  In the ERP, sales, manufacturing, legal, HR, and other systems that run the business on a day to day basis.  Each entry, each transaction provides a pixel in the overall picture.

But, most organizations are more like the Americans in 1941 than the British in 1940 – they don’t have an integrated view of that data and they don’t have business processes to take advantage of it.

Which leaves me with a question for you… 1940 Britain or 1941 America, where are you?

Next post… Using the Data From Business Intelligence Radar

Business Process Driven BI – An Example

A quick example of how BI & BP (business process) should go hand in hand…

Working with statisticians from Central Michigan University, we’ve jointly developed PVForecaster, a product that allows hospital administrators to forecast their patient volumes on an hour-by-hour, specialty-by-specialty basis.  Tactically, the result is better control over scheduling and costs.  Strategically, PVForecaster helps administrators forecast changes in demand and react accordingly (e.g. build more capacity, etc.)

The PVForecaster  business process design is a good example of how BI (and predictive analytics) applications should integrate with business processes.  In our case, rather than just accepting data and ’spitting’ out forecasts, users drive the system as follows:

1) A planner uses PVForecaster to develop a number of forecast scenaria for the hospital.  For example, what is expected to happen if we increase our advertising budget?  What if we reduce it?  What if our operating territory’s population increases by 2%?  Stays flat?  Decreases?

2) The planner uses the BI tool to  review these scenaria with hospital executives.  Together they decide which scenario will be the one that the entire hospital will work from.  They use a routine in the BI application to designate this as the ‘working assumption.’

3) Department managers from across the hospital are given access to the ‘working assumption’ forecast in the BI tool.  They can use the tool to slice and dice through this forecast along all the relevant dimensions (e.g. date, specialty, time of day, etc.).

4) Using this information, the department managers can plan accordingly.

Yes, we could analyze data and build forecasts without implementing this business process.  But, the tools may not ever get used.  They may become the unused toy of some isolated planner.  On the other hand, implement a business process wherein all the relevant parties have, and need, access to the BI tool to do their jobs and you’ve developed a powerful tool that will get used and will provide enormous value.

Do you have any other good examples of business process / business intelligence synergy?  Put them in your comments.  Thanks!

– Ben

Dataspace Profiled in “New” Newspaper

Last month Ann Arbor’s long established newspaper, the Ann Arbor News, shut down.  But, it was replaced with a web / twice weekly hard copy publication.  Little did I know that Dataspace would be one of the first companies profiled in the new business section.  To see what they have to say, click here.

I, also, wanted to add a little ’subjective’, business intelligence quiz here.  The answer is really open to interpretation so it will be interesting to see what people think.  The question is: What was the first business intelligence tool?  Why?

Feel free to add your opinion as a comment.

Thanks for following us!

– Ben

Selling Business Intelligence to the Business

Business executives already know our secret.  The best business intelligence systems are not about the system.  The best business intelligence systems are about the business.  Sometimes it’s up to us, as IT professionals, to remind ourselves of this reality.  When talking to a business executive, don’t use keywords like analytics, data mining or data warehouses.  Instead, talk to them about their business.

Ask them if they know which of their customers are the most profitable and which are actually draining resources.  Ask if they want to find ways to reduce the amount they spend in legal costs.  Ask if they want to be able to predict the future demand for their products and services, so they can match capacity and staffing levels accordingly.

As experienced IT professionals we know that the way to provide these answers is to use the data already being collected by organizations in their operational systems (like ERP, CRM) and present it in new, visually appealing ways, with Business Intelligence (BI) tools.  But, occasionally we need to remind ourselves that no matter how cool the technology (to us, even that first program we all wrote that displayed the words “Hello World” was really cool), that’s not what sells BI.

Executives appreciate technology, and many are quite savvy, but when it comes to how they spend their day, they’ve got problems to solve, opportunities to capitalize on, and stakeholders to please.  To them, the best systems are like dishwashers – tools that get a job done.  Executives are not interested in how the dishes get clean, just that they do get clean in a fast, reliable, budget-friendly way.

In other words, executives are interested in the benefits of BI, not how it gets delivered.  So, the next time you’re discussing BI with an executive, sell the benefits, not the tool.  Sell the value of sales force ranking, not the BI system.  Sell the patient volume forecast, not analytic algorithms.  Sell the ability to direct your valuable purchasing dollars to the lowest cost vendors, the ability to have your sales executives use their limited time to court the most profitable clients, the ability to gauge the effectiveness of your latest promotion… you get the idea.

I’ve gotten some great feedback on my Blog posts and I’d love to hear your input.  Feel free to add a comment or email me directly at btaub@dataspace.com.

Dataspace is now an Information Builders Partner!

Just a quick note here, a few weeks ago I wrote the IBI was a sensible player in the BI space that is sometimes overlooked in BI evaluations. Well, to follow that up, Dataspace has just joined the Information Builders (IBI) partner program. For more information, check out the link to the press release on our home page: www.dataspace.com.

Business Intelligence: Where to turn now?

In my discussions with customers and others in the BI field I am hearing a lot of anguish about software vendors.  Many of the larger BI players have been sucked up into bigger companies and I’m hearing that these BI vendors, which were never customer-friendly to begin with, are now becoming downright customer-hostile – even with customers who have paid maintenance for the privilege of obtaining technical support.  Take a look at this article from CIO Magazine for more detail on the turmoil, and this article on Business Intelligence vendors to watch.

BI software vendors used to be grouped into the top three or four players, with open source and smaller players taking a far back-seat.  Things have changed.  Every week I’m seeing product announcements from new entrants.  Some of the tools look really good.  One I’m a big fan of, despite some limitations, is QlikView.  They’ve been around for a while, but are still relatively new compared with long-time BI players.

As consultants, we have the opportunity to work with a great group of clients, and we apply our expertise regardless of the technology they have already deployed – even if its one of the aforementioned customer service-challenged companies.  What to do, though, when a client asks us to recommend a new technology to help them rid themselves of their BI headaches, or make a new start in the field?  We’ve learned that the company behind a technology is as important to a successful implementation as the technology itself.  After all, you can get management dashboards, alerts, statistical analysis and basic reporting from virtually all of the established players.

So, who to choose?

Of course it depends on the application, but if you’re looking for enterprise-class reporting, dashboarding capability, the ability to email basic business intelligence to a broad audience, reasonable licensing models, and an independent vendor partner with a great reputation for customer service, the answer could very well be Information Builders, IBI, the creators of Focus and WebFocus.

What?  Isn’t IBI an old-line mainframe reporting solution?  That’s what I thought.  But, then I saw the technology demonstrated to one of my clients.  Is it perfect?  No.  Other major vendors like Business Objects, Cognos and MicroStrategy each have their unique advantages and disadvantages.  But, IBI really seems to ‘get it’ in two very important ways:

1) WebFocus provides flexibility but also comprehends a fact I’ve been talking about for a long time: MOST USERS DO NOT CREATE REPORTS FROM SCRATCH.  In most BI environments reports are created by IT and, perhaps, a few power users.  The vast majority of users don’t want to and don’t need to create reports from scratch.  (For more on this see my post on tying the BI tool to the user. )

2) IBI customers are genuinely happy both with the tools AND with the vendor.  As with any piece of software, tech support issues do occasionally arise, but the feedback I’ve received is that when they occur, they are given top priority.  Can you say that about your BI vendor?

We were so impressed with the research we’ve conducted, that we’re considering partnership with IBI.  If you are evaluating Business Intelligence tool sets, I recommend that you consider them.

– Ben