Applied BI

Ambient Data and DataStreams instead of DataWarehouses

Magnus Carlsson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:18:55 +0000

Microsoft has done quite some research on capturing high volumes of event data, the idea is that in many cases it is not viable or even possible to build a DW to analyse data streams and also real-time analysis might be needed. Example applications could be click-stream analysis in real-time or analysis of all calls in a phone-netowrk, events generated in a manufacturing plant. The analysis can also be done on historical data, which means that this approach overlaps with traditional DataWarehouses.
The technology is called StreamInsight and can be tested right now, it will be publically available in first half of 2010 as an addition to SQL Server 2008 R2.

Report from Microsoft PDC – Codename “Dallas”

Magnus Carlsson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:29:56 +0000

I´m currently at PDC in Los Angeles, it is heavy focus on the shift towards the cloud and spicically Windows Azure. From a Information Management and Business Perspective, the new Windows Azure components “Dallas” is extremely cool and will give us a platform where providers and consumers of data can meet. This will be the AppStore for data. Microsoft will take care of billing and also do some quality assurance of the data provided.

Data can be structured, unstructured data, BLOB, images, videos and so on. The really big question is how we are going to use these amazing capabilities. Some obvious usages is distribution of demografics, company information, such as DUNS and all sorts of statistics.

Take a look at: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/default.aspx for more information on “Dallas”.

What do you see we can build to our clients using this cool technology?

Do you want to impress your audience with Data Visualization?

Magnus Carlsson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:15:20 +0000

Do you want to present data and also impress your audience? A tool that has been available for some time is Trandanalyzer. I have (a bit late, I admit) started to use Trandanalyzer and I must say that this is really useful in many cases, not just for just for web metrics.
Take a look at: http://www.gapminder.org/ for very inspiring examples and if you havent seen his presentations, Hans Rosling is a role-model for data visualization.

Do you want to do your own visualizations, take a look at:
http://www.gapminder.org/upload-data/motion-chart/

More advanced users can do much more advanced things using the Google visualization API (some of my collegues at Acando is using this), se http://code.google.com/intl/sv/apis/visualization/documentation/gadgetgallery.htm for more on that topic.

Happy visualization!

BI consultancy hiring – good guys for nothing doing a good job ?

Ola Wallinder — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:05:12 +0000

For some years I´ve noticed colleages and fellow companies hiring consultants for quarters or years – cheap! The main thing is to have them close, feel comfortable and that they are – cheap! However, this is very expensive! Do you agree ?

Cheap is however cheating you. Let´s say you hire two skilled guys for a year, i.e. 3000 hours of consulting. However, you haven´t figured out the clear deliverables. This means the guys are hugging your solution, doing the most urgent requests from your users and making sure business managment don´t come around with the hammer because something “f-up”.

Is this a good job ? Is this value for money ? Probably not. Probably those guys could have done some development work or held up some good service levels IF THE PLANNING HAD BEEN DONE UPFRONT !

The message is that most companies do not have a clear view of their BI roadmap, neither the key deliverables for the next year, and definetely not a clear view of the best competence to do the job. IF they had had a much clearer view, I’m sure they would not have hired the two guys for a year – they would have spent the money on service levels from one company and competitive bids on projects with clear deliverables. Now, the cost will probably be much lower, while the quality and the service of the deliverables is higher,

However, it is much more convenient to hire two “friends” for a year. And by the way, the purchasing department is happy as well…

Business domains – will IT finally be managed effectively?

Ola Wallinder — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:04:47 +0000

Following the discussions we´ve had of ERP and BI integration, it is natural to move into the domain thinking. The usual definition of a domain is a rather general interpretation, i.e. a territory, space, knowedge area but also including some kind of managerial or power.

Looking at the integration of ERP and BI, with a managerial perspective, it is interesting to discuss Business Domains, i.e. a domain of business with managerial power to improve the business value of information systems.

The tricky part here is the budgeting and governance part, i.e. the division of budget between IT, business units and a “virtual decision forum” of a Business Domain. The line of thinking leads us to the opportunity of actual movet budget from IT and business units to a new (virtual) managerial body – a Business Domain. By doing that, it is usually possible to gain more business value of the integration of ERP + BI. However, the major obstacle here is the knowledge level of the participants in the domain decision forums and the ability of those preparing decision proposals to present ERP and BI challenges at a management level.

There are a number of examples where the ability to take decisions needs to be improved:
- How do you present masterdata on management level for investments ?
- How do you understand the complexity of a target state ERP+BI landscape ?
- How do you present the performance and cost drivers of alternative BI target states ?
- How do you prioritize target group information need trade-offs vs. efficicent ERP installations ?
etc. etc.

The paradox where ERP+BI is squeezing out BICC

Ola Wallinder — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:00:37 +0000

A recent reflection from the market is that while ERP suppliers are integrating BI into their platforms – this opens up for a more coherent and common view of the IT strategy – which means that BICC will not have such as a strong position anymore.

The paradox is that while BI is stronger integrated into ERP platforms – this seems to mean that BICC is loosing momentum in IT departments and becomes a less independent unit.

The new challenge might rather be to deal with information management as a part of integrating operational ERP with management oriented BI and tie it all together in an IT strategy.

The new way would rather be to integrate the ERP and BI perspectives towards each business domain. The coherent and common view on IT from a business domain would (with this line of thinking) be better than sliced independent view of BI and ERP, respectively.

Bad information – a management problem

Ola Wallinder — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:00:50 +0000

A year ago I did not know of any CEO who had master data or data quality on the top management agenda. Now I know several of them – and it seems that the more I ask, the more interest I get from C-level executives. The thing is that while BI users and sponsors have built data warehouses for a decade or so – and nowadays competition and cost reduction demands increase ever as much – the need for high quality data rapidly increase.

The problem is that most C-level executives – and their BI managers and owners – do not know HOW to approach this issue. What´s your experience of improving data quality ? What´s the best practice approach to HOW ?

One approach is of course to start by using data quality tools with a set of predefined business rules. By using those you will fairly quickly being able to identify fundamental issues and improvements. However, the root causes are usually not easily found (ask why, why, why, why and why again). After a while you will probably come up with some key areas such as:

Lack of commonly implemented information models
Various ways of doing the same business activities in support systems
Different data definitions implemented in support systems
Lack of business rules of who and when to create, update and delete critical data

Now – this is a management problem !

But, back again – HOW do you solve this. HOW do you involve the business ? What´s the business case ?

ERP delivers BI – good or bad?

Ola Wallinder — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:19:44 +0000

ERP suppliers continue to integrate BI platforms and tools. One of the major examples is that we now should learn to say SAP BO instead of the installed base of Oracle BO. Should the customers obey to this and change their BI strategies ? Are there reasons for switching BI platform or front-end tools just because the ERP suppliers have that strategy ?

One BICC manager said the other day that “the trend is going just the opposite to our BI-strategy of having an ERP independent BI-platform where we have the flexibility of changing ERP modules and keeping information up to date to management“

However, yesterday a representative of one of the largest ERP / BI suppliers said “now, we can really provide true customer value in our integrated environment“

What´s your point of view ? Is it good or bad that ERP delivers BI ?

Mixing Social Web and Business Intelligence

Magnus Carlsson — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:00:12 +0000

We had a very interesting seminar today att my company on Enterprise 2.0 and how the social web thinking comes to the enterprise environment.
One area that will benefit a lot from this development is Business Intelligence. A few months ago, Gartner published an article in this direction, that I think is owrth reading. The article is publicly available at: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article8/article8.html.
My collegues have a very interesting blog on Enterprise 2.0 at www.thecontenteconomy.com.

Bringing a new BI+ABC product to life

Magnus Carlsson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:30:08 +0000

There is a common understanding that many decisions today are based on a vague, or in worst case, a totally wrong understanding of what generates net profit. A popular way to solve this issue is to apply Activity Based Costing (ABC), this was particularly popular about ten years ago, but then had dereasing popularity, at least in Scandinavia, but is now very popular again. A large number of big enterprises have used this this methodology, some with great success, others have left the idea. A problem has been the cumbersome process of implementation, very costly tools and the facts that it has been a problem to process the amout of data required. Now, with great focus on profitability and with the recent years advancement in available technology, it would be possible to create more easy to use and powerful ABC-tools, integrated with leading BI-stacks. The solutions currently available in the market are in general old, hard to integrate and not updated very often. I think the market need a new, modern tool to do this type of analysis. We have already startd development of his type of product and has choosen the Microsoft BI stack to implement it, since no really good ABC tool exists today (that I know of), that is well interated with SQL Server, Sharepoint and Office. This will be an interesting task. More inforatin will son be available on an official product website.