Business Intelligence: Keep Your Eye on the Road
Business Intelligence: Keep Your Eye on the Road
September/October Edition, 2007: Once compared to a peak through the rear-vision mirror in a car to identify trends on the road behind you to direct you where to go, a changing Business Intelligence market-space now offers a global positioning system of sorts, offering the fastest and easiest directions on how to reach specific goals. But is it time to take your eye off the road just yet?
A winding road
Few organisations are immune to the data disease. In a dynamic business world data in need of retention is expanding out at an uncontrollable rate. But far from being a disease, the value from all that data on our storage systems could very well bring on the cure to some pertinent business pain-points.
Organisations are currently turning to business intelligence (BI) and data-warehousing (DW) appliances in droves to effectively exploit their data. While some may have already been there and done all that in the 1990s, today’s BI and DW options present some more realistic and less ambitious tools to capture information and make strategic decisions accordingly.
“The dynamic nature of doing business is whenever there is a change, it forces you to have a better understanding of what’s going on with your products,” says Gavin Cooke, director of Altis Consulting. “What we’re seeing is for organisations working in dynamic industries, like telecommunications, ten years ago, no one really sent text messages let alone sent pictures, watch videos and download applications. The products are constantly changing.”
However it’s not just a changing business that’s driving forward the implementation of BI projects, but also regulatory requirements, the need to report and retain information alongside the ability to maintain current analysis of information even once businesses merge or acquire each other.
The current generation of BI has a number of marketing spin names. Some might call it ‘operational BI,’ others refer to it as ‘real-time BI’ or ‘third-generation BI’ and even the classic ‘BI 2.0.’ But no matter what the name, the market really is seeing a changing technological space alongside evolving attitudes to what BI can actually deliver and what users can expect from their data.
Robert Spinks, sales director at Sybase Australia believes the older style of BI is simply not cutting it anymore. “The tolerance from users of data is diminishing and they want to view more data quicker to make timely decisions,” he says. “These days there’s a lot of empowerment going on as organisations are pushing further and deeper into their data to make better operational decisions.”
So where are we really at with BI technology? To bring an analogy into the picture, some analysts and vendors refer to the changing technological landscape of BI as being similar to looking in the rear-view mirror of a car. “The latency of data, how old it is, days, months year, I’m going to look behind to pick trends as to where I’ve been in order to direct me where to now go,” says Spinks. “With operational BI, the latency of data is getting shorter and shorter. I’ve still got my eye on the road and the information behind me.”
To put the current state of BI in context, Philip Parton, managing director of Attain IT highlights the benefits of BI in reference to a DW project they’re currently working on for a major shipping company. “It can really help their container movements around the world, something that’s hard to do with standard reporting,” he says. “Things like what stock levels are at a port. It all tends to be driven by operational and financial issues in an organisation and one of the first thing we do is more correctly attribute revenue to cargo items being shipped around.”
The BI technologies of today promise a lot, but that’s not to say the strategy hasn’t suffered a long and colourful history. Big in the 1990s, many of the earlier implementations fell away as the technology, people and resources may not have been prepared for the benefits it can offer.
Too much gas!
Today, BI vendors say the technology can almost be a guaranteed win if an organisation is prepared and willing to commit to the implementation.
“Sometimes the costs just get too high, but the project isn’t delivering,” says Parton. “Typically the projects are under scoped and it’s more than they chose. Sometimes they also don’t necessarily deliver what the customer has been looking for.”
However it’s not usually the technology that’s the problem, but rather the resources in place to handle it. “You’ve got to get the key people involved, that usually means both business and IT, you also need to have a key person driving it, someone who can keep it close to their heart,” says Parton.
Spinks agrees that leadership will drive a successful Bi implementation. “People doing BI need a custodian or strong sponsor to bring it over from the IT side of the organisation,” he says.
At Altis Consulting, Cooke suggests the success of a good BI project comes back to the attitude of the business itself. “We believe good BI comes from understanding the business and really, most businesses don’t actually change their core. The IT and tools might change but the core business doesn’t,” he says.
Overall Cooke believes it’s not just about spending up on the ‘whizbang technology’ and doesn’t necessarily matter which platform you chose. “If you’re going to render your bricks, you don’t really need to worry about which bricks you buy,” he says. “We’ve seen more success when people focus on the business outcomes they hope to achieve from their BI strategy, rather than just concentrating on the technology.”
Taking the wheel: Controlling the technology
Any BI preparation needs all relevant aspects of the business in cooperation. “You need someone involved who can cross all the barriers, someone who can break down the wall and understand what issues are facing the business and they key answers they’re looking for,” says Parton.
It’s these ‘answers’ that are key to business intelligence. Aiming for too much all at once is a common symptom of the BI failure. An over scoped project attempting to answer too many question can often and up in the ‘too hard’ basket or worse still, run into escalating costs without the equivalent benefits. The best option is for organsiations to consider what exactly needs to be addressed by BI, with options extensively reviewed and workshopped.
Most vendors, like Attain IT, will work with an organisation in the preliminary stages of BI planning. Attain IT says they will first ensure a BI implementation will make sense to an organisation and then more on to facilitate the understanding on how the overall process will be driven. “Typically we do a series of workshops, some prototyping and work to give the company a taste of what BI data can actually do,” says Parton.
Short drives, long returns
It seems a business, no matter what size, will see the benefits of BI if its ability to address a key pain-point can be identified. Smaller and more digestible projects with realistic short-term wins can often be the best method, because extending out even just beyond 12 months could be risky, especially given how much certain industries and businesses can change in that limited time-frame.
“Often the client has more say in determining the success of the project over the vendor,” says Cooke. “We have two types of clients; those who come to us and say ‘who can I blame if something goes wrong,’ and those who say ‘here are the outcomes and this is what I want.’ There are always people who want to cover their own arse.”
Taking your eyes off the road
Meanwhile Cognos, with its entire focus and 17 years in the BI and performance measurement space and 23,000 customers worldwide have seen the BI market trends go up and down. “We’re starting to see a lot of collaboration across organizations, we’re seeing more companies looking to adopt a performance management strategy with a forward looking view,” says Dave Laverty, senior VP, Global Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer of Cognos. “We’re now starting to see integrated planning moving from spreadsheet systems for monitoring to having everybody able to consistently access the information. We’re seeing this from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have.”
However Cooke doesn’t necessarily believe the information need be dispersed this way. “Do you want your staff and customers finding the golden nugget or do you actually want them out there selling,” he asks. “Rather than having BI out there with everyone, because not everyone is good at delineating between the primary job function, it’s best to have specialised people doing the analysis.”
Moving on, BI and data warehousing projects are getting bigger and better offering real-time developments that may soon be essential for some organisations to remain competitive in their industry sector. “It’s a logical development for companies,” says Parton. “You just need to have the management and know how to interpret the results.”