Not to Offend, But You Are Thinking All Wrong About BI (Probably)

What’s the first step in building a data warehouse or a business intelligence system?  Defining the key performance indicators (KPIs), right?  Wrong!  KPIs are certainly great to know and can definitely apply when you’re developing BI applications like management dashboards.  But, BI is NOT about management dashboards or data warehouses or query and reporting or QlikView or Business Objects…

Business intelligence is simply about capitalizing on data that was captured for other purposes.

I was struck by this thought over the Thanksgiving holiday when speaking to my brother in law.  He’s an executive with an up-and-coming, private-equity-financed distributor.  One night, his CEO had an epiphany

We know what people buy but we don’t know if what people buy is generally correlated with other things that they buy, or should buy.  If we knew this, we could encourage folks buying one thing to also purchase its natural accompaniment.

For those of us who have been in the BI business for long enough, this is a take on the classic ‘beer and diapers’ data mining example (click here for more on this BI ‘fable’).

This is certainly a use of BI, of capitalizing on data assets but it doesn’t really work in the way that folks expect BI to work:

• It doesn’t really start with a definition of KPIs
• While it may use a data mining tool, it doesn’t use dashboards or query tools or other, common, reporting tools
• It may use a data warehouse but it may, also, just use data assembled for a one-time analysis

In any case, when thinking about BI, the vast majority of companies need to stop thinking about BI.  BI is not the point.  Doing something extraordinary is the point and, if using data assets gets you to extraordinary, then BI is the mechanism.

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.)