For the past month or so, I’ve been writing, interviewing and editing a white-paper: “The Definitive Guide to BusinessObjects for SAP”. It’s set to be released this fall. We recently had a webcast on this topic, which was very well attended. I know this is very important to SAP customers so I am glad to share the knowledge. If you would like a recording of the “How to Build BusinessObjects BI on SAP” webcast, Please email me, or post here.
But I also want to make it a little more interactive. So I’ve crafted an “exciting multifaceted omnidirectional question-o-gram” … ok, it’s just a survey. But I’ve kept it really short, and I’ll return the benchmark results and a copy of the whitepaper for free to all respondents. I hope you’ll take 2 minutes to fill it in. Please take the survey here.
Registration for Canadian cities has not been opened yet, but stay tuned for an announcement about Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal! They have some pretty good keynote speakers lined up, but I’m not allowed to say which famous hockey player(s) may or may not be involved.
It will be a good opportunity to:
Hear visionary and informative presentations from SAP Customers
Understand where the market is going and how SAP’s roadmap will take you there
Benefit from a unique opportunity to learn and network with key peers and stakeholders within your Industry
Explore your business at the speed of thought with SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer
Meet SAP LOB Experts, Customers and Partners in the Exhibition.
I just came across this great video: a TED talk by David McCandless
“David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.” I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
If the embedded video does not play here, please visit TED directly at:
“Health data analysis and benchmarking firm Press Ganey Associates Inc. has acquired the Quality Indicator Project division of the Maryland Hospital Association for an undisclosed sum.” Full article on HealthDataManagement.
I was interested to know if the QI Project had some experience with Emergency Department Quality Indicators (or KPI), since that would be related to The BI Builders focus on Emergency Department Business Intelligence. Alas they do not. Or at least they do not advertise such experience. Where do you find quality measures for Emergency Medicine? How do you evaluate your measures?
We tend to leverage PressGaney data as well, when constructing Emergency Department analytics. I’m curious if there’s another way to get at this key information.
Companies that are best able to integrate Business Intelligence with their ERP systems experience a 17% reduction in operating costs and 18% reduction in administrative costs. They are able to do so within 19 months. (Aberdeen Group research)
This really blows me away. And it got me to thinking:
What’s the motivation to try putting Business Intelligence on an ERP system? It’s very clear that increased transparency is becoming a requirement for regulatory reasons, and that giving analysts and finance managers/executives better access to the information in the ERP (high-level views with drill-down) will certainly increase the value of having that information, and the cost to access it (fewer IT resources to create reports). These are some ideas. But there are many other systems that could use good BI. Is BI on ERP a good fit for a smaller businesses, or for niche industries? What are the challenges that finance executives face that ERP+BI can fix.
Why is it that some companies that try to implement Business Intelligence on top of ERP either stall before they get started, take years to realize the benefits, or fail to achieve any cost savings?
I’ve been speaking to some people who have very good ideas about these two questions, and I’ve managed to coordinate them with two webcasts, back to back on August 26th.
Top strategies involve prioritizing BI projects (hence the BI Competency Centre), and setting up the technology, training and organizational structure that will empower the business to serve its own BI needs. “The top two strategies are “implement self-service BI” (66%) and “implement a BI competency center” (66%), followed closely by “cultivate a network of super users in each department (65%) and “create small, cross-functional BI teams” (65%).”
I recently interviewed a client of ours on his choices for structuring a BI project. The background is that they’re transitioning from a legacy system to SAP, while at the same time developing a new reporting a dashboard infrastructure with the SAP BusinessObjects toolset. Obviously it’s a big undertaking, so I asked how they’d gone about planning the project, why they’d done it that way, and what they’d learned.
Here’s a brief summary:
The first two weeks of the project, in which BI consultants came on site to help with requirements gathering were absolutely critical. When gathering requirements, the client did not limit themselves to what people wanted (If this sounds cryptic, Barb Stearns has an excellent article about freeing ourselves from limits in requirements gathering).
When they had a list of required reports, they prioritized them and grouped them into 12 categories (business functional areas). They decided to tackle the two areas that had the highest number of priority reports first.
They set up some mock dashboards with KPI that the business was already using. The focus here was to make sure that the data presented was appropriate and met the needs.
Then they set about data modeling, with help from expert data modelers.
They will iterate through the remaining 10 categories.
Key lessons: Thorough requirements gathering can reveal broader than expected data needs. This may lead to a lot more work in getting the data together. It’s important to break the project down into manageable chunks, and prove value after every segment.
Iain Rogers
Sr. Marketing Manager – The BI Builders
As a Business Intelligence solution provider partner, The BI Builders usually experiences better project success when our clients have done some good thinking about the provider they choose, and the long run ‘journey’ of business intelligence. ‘Journey’ is Boris’s term, and I like it so I will use it again – it’s the recognition that BI implementation is never a discrete project. Business Intelligence touches so many facets of business, and is so dynamic, that implementation becomes an art, and does not fit into the usual project execution methodology. (See The BI Builders LiqUID methodology for background).
As a Boutique BI firm, we are sometimes called in to take over a failed project and turn it around. It’s satisfying to be able to achieve a turn-around, but it’s in the clients best interest that the project never fail in the first place. For this reason, we will sometimes turn down work if we do not feel that we can make the project succeed. It is important the both sides consider the best fit of skills to the project.
Organizations should employ a mix of resourcing options so as to take advantage of the various strengths of each. For instance, an organization may decide that they are best suited to use a vendor to implement, employees for development, and a boutique provider for solution maintenance/sustainment. Here’s my take on the different Business Intelligence Consulting and Implementation options:
Direct Hires – This may be the lowest cost option, have clear long run wins, and good integration with the business. Consider though that return on investment will be lower if you have to train the resource, or if the project evolves beyond the skill-set you’ve hired. Direct hires are likely to have a lower variety of experience.
Independent Consultants – Independent consultants will have worked on a variety of projects, making them adaptable to new environments, and will likely be a low-cost option. There is less overhead involved (as compared with hires.) Good local consultants may be hard to find, however, and their reputation difficult to establish.
Staff Augmentation Agencies – Staff Augmentation agencies make finding contractors easy, and have a bit more accountability in that they will likely replace a resource if he/she doesn’t work out. Cost will be higher however, and the agency doesn’t take responsibility for managing the work.
Boutique BI – Business Intelligence firms tend to have very strong experience in specific skillsets, industries or functional areas. Implementation is likely to be fast, managed by the provider, and can involve multiple resources per project. Expect very strong knowledge/relationships for the vendors whose tools they use. Reputation may be hard to establish, however, and hourly rates will be higher than independents.
Large Professional Services Organizations – The broad skillset companies like Deloitte and Accenture bring to Business Intelligence projects mean a highly integrated solution can be delivered, using a large project team. The project is likely to be managed by the provider, and you can feasibly outsource the whole program to them. The cost is likely to be high, however, and you may not experience the level of visibility/control in the project that you would on your own.
Vendor Professional Services – The main advantage of working directly with the vendor for implementations is accountability. Implementation is likely to be fast, managed by the vendor and may draw on multiple resources. Cost is likely to be higher, however, than working with a boutique BI firm or an independent consultant.
Iain Rogers
Sr. Marketing Manager – The BI Builders
Oracle released their latest Business Intelligence platform a few days ago. To me the most interesting parts of the offering, in terms of raising the bar for BI solutions are:
Insight driven actions – makes it easier for users to take action based on information. I can picture a user drilling down into reports, seeing a potential issue with number of service calls at a particular customer and clicking a button to get an account service manager to call in. Or clicking a button to deny further credit to a customer who has missed payments.
My opinion: Cool, but what if the process changes? Also, I can see this would be only marginally quicker than switching windows to the CRM and making the change there. Am I missing something?
Business Process Optimization – BIEE integrates with Oracle BEPL Process Manager. I’m not really familiar with this piece, but I gather one use case example is: the solution can notice a large order coming in, notify the account rep and check inventory. If you set it up right.
Anyone have insight as to how BIEE adds value to the BEPL Process Manager? i.e. can the BEPL Process Manager not do this on its own?
Our Business Intelligence solutions for Healthcare got some media attention recently! The BI Builders are working with EMBI – domain experts in Emergency Department analytics, metrics, dashboards and reporting – to offer a pre-built solution kit for Emergency Departments to better track their performance, meet government mandates, and improve patient care.
“BI gave me back the time to do my real job, which is to lead a department and to take care of patients,”
“[The system] has basically paid for itself in improved operations and improved revenue,” he said. “The value has been enormous for the money I paid for the BI. The return on both my time and the ability to improve my department has paid off many, many times over.”
High praise from a happy customer!
Canadian customers will note that the metrics required for emergency departments in Connecticut are different than those required at home. Check our the sample solution for Emergency Medicine Business Intelligence that has been completely retooled for Canadian use.
