Client-facing Project Lead / DW Architect

OVERVIEW:	Are you an undeniably strong BI & DW expert who can play a senior-level role as we expand our professional consulting business?  Do you want to build a BI / DW career in an environment with similarly-focused professionals?  Are you excited by the prospect of letting your true value drive your compensation?
RESPONSI-BILITIES:	Design & implement data warehouse & business intelligence systems Manage project teams Interface with clients Contribute to Dataspace sales and marketing efforts Develop skills in new technologies
SUCCESS CRITERIA:	Satisfied clients Successful completion of projects on budget & schedule Recurring work Account growth Flexibility and team orientation
LOCATION:	Ann Arbor, MI base preferred but not required Possible  travel 4 – 5 days / week on billable assignments
START DATE:	1 July 2011
REQUIRED SKILLS:	Data modeling (normalized & denormalized) DW Architecture design Implementation of BI & DW tools Workplan development and management Client interface skills
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE:	DW architecture design and development Overall design Requirements gathering Report design Src – tgt mapping Data model development (normalized & denormalized) Use of at least one BI tool Use of at least one ETL tool Project team management
OTHER REQUIRE-MENTS:	Bachelor’s degree
DESIRED SKILLS:	QlikView development
DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE:	Consulting experience
DESIRABLE CERTIFICATIONS:	CBIP BI and / or ETL tool certifications PMP
BACKGROUND INFORMATION	Dataspace serves customers in both strategic BI consulting and BI project staffing .  We have identified a number of opportunities to expand the consulting side of our practice and are looking for an accomplished, energetic consultant to help us manage and deliver on these opportunities.
APPLICATIONS	To apply, please send your resume, cover letter, immigration status, and contact information to: recruiting@dataspace.com.

Enhance Your BI With External Data – And Where to Find That Data

Chances are that you can make a small change to your BI data that could provide a huge increase in value.  How?  By including data from outside your company.  In this post I focus primarily on customer and sales data but the concepts apply equally well to a wide range of analytic situations – do they apply to yours?

BI Systems Are Internally Focused

The vast majority of business intelligence systems are internally focused.   They show data from within the company – what products did we sell, who is our least expensive delivery vendor, what is our average salary.  These systems might be able tell you where performance is strong (e.g. what customers are buying more than they did last year) AND where problems exist (e.g. which customers are buying less than they did last year).  But, any opportunities they show are based on things you already know – on data you already have.

Huge Opportunities Beyond the Borders of Your Organization

In other words, your BI systems show only opportunities embedded in the data you already have.  In many cases this represents the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  For example, how much do you know about good and bad customers besides their names and addresses?  Do you know their income levels?  Do you know how many people are in their households?  Do you know their average ages?  Do you know how a good customer differs from a weak one along these dimensions?  And, finally, do you know who is not a customer but fits the profile of a good customer?

Chances are that this kind of information is not captured by your systems but, it can provide huge value.

Two Types of External Data

External data breaks down into two basic categories: Attibutes of things you already know and new things you know nothing about.

Attributes of The Customers You Already Know

Consider additional knowledge about customers you already know to be attributes of those customers.  The list of possible attributes is infinite.  Things like income level, household size, number of cars owned, level of crime in the local area, and average level of local twitter usage are all examples of attributes.  Getting this information, and tying it to your existing customer records, can give you a much more nuanced idea of what represents a good customer – and how to reach that customer.

Information About Prospective Customers That You Don’t Already Know

So, you’ve taken the step of broadening your view of your existing customers but how do you identify new prospects?  By understanding your attributes of good customers and acquiring lists of prospects filtered through that “lens”.  Then, make your pitch to those prospects.  Given that you know a lot about these prospects, you can even tailor that pitch.  For example, offer minivans to families and sports sedans to yuppies (wait, did I just date myself?  Does anyone use the term ‘yuppie’ anymore?)

Where You can Find External Data

An amazing about of external data is available to those who look for it and,  it’s becoming easier to find.  Here are just a few places where you might want to look:

GeoCommons is a really interesting concept – public domain data sets.  There are really interesting data sets here and they can be yours.  The site requires that you use it for non commercial purposes but GeoCommons parent, FortiusOne can provide commercial licenses.

Microsoft is now in the game with their SQL Azure service Codename “Dallas”.  The site contains a number of free and for-pay data sets.  For example, here is the description of one of the free sets: Cumulative American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) Prime and Sub-recipient award reports from 02/17/2009 to 06/30/2010 updated as of 09/22/2010.

Another place where you might find interesting data sets is DexOne.  Dex is the largest publisher of yellow pages phone books and a provider of online search and marketing services.  The company is a Dataspace client and I can attest to how seriously they take their data.

There are, of course, a million other places to look, these are just a start.

How You Can Get Started

If you have a marketing background you probably recognize that we’ve stepped firmly into the realm of campaign management.  We certainly have but remember that these techniques can be applied to areas far afield from traditional campaign management.  For example, site selection or fraud risk analysis or investment valuation.  What it takes is creativity.  Start by thinking about what you’d like to know but isn’t accessible from within your company.

Of course it’s not quite as simple as I note here but, like many things in BI, you can make it hard or you can make it easy.  Make your first cuts manageable.  Start by experimenting on a small scale.  Come up with an idea and attack it in a week or less.

 

So, what do you think?  Are you using external data?  Write your comments below and feel free to contact me directly if you’d like to kick some ideas around!

– 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.

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