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Monday, February 1, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Help save $3.39 billion on BI wastage
Companies have a potential to directly save $3.39 billion annually on BI investments and potentially save $13.4 billion on future safeguards
i.e. this is
- Can accomplish an Appolo moon launch in 7 years
- Can build 3 tallest buildings in the world at Dubai costing
- Can build the eitire Dubai downtown in 6 years
- Can launch 3 dreamliners size new projects in aerospace technology
And we do this every year and will continue to do this for the following years if we dont stop and listen...
Background:
Reference 1
1966 total cost of the Appolo mission = $24 billion. This represents the largest commitment of resources made by any nation during peace time for peaceful purposes.
Reference 2
2009: total cost of building the Boeing dreamliner US$ 1billionReference 3
2010: total cost of building the worlds tallest building, Burj Dubai, UAE $1.0 billion.
For the entire Dubai downtown US$ 20 billion
Basis of above statements:
Global DW Costs2008: total spend on BI = $8.8 billion (Source Gartner June 2010)
total spend on BI Implementation = $7.54 billion (source SAP, teched, 1:7 ratio)
total spend on BI SW = $1.26 billion (1:7 ratio)
2006: only 52 % of ERP projects achieve success at go live (source ASUG Benchmark)
40% of IT projects fail at $ (source Gartner)
Average failure rate = 45% (random computation of above)
45% of $7.54 billion computes to a cool $3.39 billion.
Kicker: It costs 4 times more to fix a BI issues than it does the first time around.
Our tactical saving is $3.39 billion, the strategic saving might be $13.5 billion. That is how much it will cost you to fix these $3.39 billion errors (1:4)
when did you last check your BI expenses, i.e. your initial investments v/s total fixing spend.
Not from a financial Cost and resource allocation... but from a 'Business Value Attainment' view
i.e. this is
- Can accomplish an Appolo moon launch in 7 years
- Can build 3 tallest buildings in the world at Dubai costing
- Can build the eitire Dubai downtown in 6 years
- Can launch 3 dreamliners size new projects in aerospace technology
And we do this every year and will continue to do this for the following years if we dont stop and listen...
Background:
Reference 1
1966 total cost of the Appolo mission = $24 billion. This represents the largest commitment of resources made by any nation during peace time for peaceful purposes.
Reference 2
2009: total cost of building the Boeing dreamliner US$ 1billionReference 3
2010: total cost of building the worlds tallest building, Burj Dubai, UAE $1.0 billion.
For the entire Dubai downtown US$ 20 billion
Basis of above statements:
Global DW Costs2008: total spend on BI = $8.8 billion (Source Gartner June 2010)
total spend on BI Implementation = $7.54 billion (source SAP, teched, 1:7 ratio)
total spend on BI SW = $1.26 billion (1:7 ratio)
2006: only 52 % of ERP projects achieve success at go live (source ASUG Benchmark)
40% of IT projects fail at $ (source Gartner)
Average failure rate = 45% (random computation of above)
45% of $7.54 billion computes to a cool $3.39 billion.
Kicker: It costs 4 times more to fix a BI issues than it does the first time around.
Our tactical saving is $3.39 billion, the strategic saving might be $13.5 billion. That is how much it will cost you to fix these $3.39 billion errors (1:4)
when did you last check your BI expenses, i.e. your initial investments v/s total fixing spend.
Not from a financial Cost and resource allocation... but from a 'Business Value Attainment' view
Friday, January 15, 2010
New Movie release and BI Initiatives
Success of a BI initiative is very similar to the release of a new movie.
It does not matter how fast or how much you spent on making the movie, but how it does in the first two weeks.
Very like a BI project the life of the movie is defined in these first few weeks – mega hit, will make a profit, will make a loss, few might see it, or a flop.
However, the major difference is due to the lack of public, or shareholder, inputs we often declare a flop as a success for various reasons and then spend the next few years trying to turn around our so-so movie into a success.
In BI this is possible. In strategic planning this is avoidable
Coming from over 9 years of Sr. business management experience and over 25,000 hours of working with BI customer in a business facing, lead, project manager, architect, and modeler the contents of this book are concepts you can work with starting next Monday.
We have identified the lack of a methodology to explicitly identify and prioritize the Attainment of Business Value in BI initiatives.
So when your BI project goes live its success is announced on week 1 and often users stop using part, or all, of the BI delivered in 10-12 weeks.
Use this book to assure a mega hit first time, every time
It does not matter how fast or how much you spent on making the movie, but how it does in the first two weeks.
Very like a BI project the life of the movie is defined in these first few weeks – mega hit, will make a profit, will make a loss, few might see it, or a flop.
However, the major difference is due to the lack of public, or shareholder, inputs we often declare a flop as a success for various reasons and then spend the next few years trying to turn around our so-so movie into a success.
In BI this is possible. In strategic planning this is avoidable
Coming from over 9 years of Sr. business management experience and over 25,000 hours of working with BI customer in a business facing, lead, project manager, architect, and modeler the contents of this book are concepts you can work with starting next Monday.
We have identified the lack of a methodology to explicitly identify and prioritize the Attainment of Business Value in BI initiatives.
So when your BI project goes live its success is announced on week 1 and often users stop using part, or all, of the BI delivered in 10-12 weeks.
Use this book to assure a mega hit first time, every time
Heard it through the grapevine
http:/bivaluenomics.blogsport.com
Background: 2010_Customer in Boston undertaking Portal Upgrade, via the migration option. Discussion was whether to migrate MyFavourite objects or not. IT said no need as there was a lot of junk there; my advice was to ask business before they take any such decisions..
Statement from IT Technical lead: "I don't see any value in getting business owners to analyst into this planning phase for they will only raise concerns and delay the whole process. This is my final decision - end of topic.
=============
Background: 2008_Customer in Florida undertaking a BI 'Business Transformation' upgrade from 2.x to 3.x. Meeting for all global BPO's (I represented BI) with the Sr Project Manager clarifying the roadmap.
Statement from Vendor Partner Sr. VP: " You all represent XXXX (us).....for BI group the instructions are extremely clear. [1] Business is not mature to understand what we are going to build; [2] No BI team member is to fix any meeting with business users or owners without first getting approval from John Doe; [3] If you involve business it will only delay our project nad deliverables; [4] You have been given your tasks, just put your nose to the wheel and do the job, if in doubt contact John Doe only.......
+++++++++++++
Background: 2006_Customer is a global manufacturer with a global BI in Germany. They are implementing their first BI for North America operations.
IT Manager (ITM): The other two vendors said most of our reporting needs will be met by standard content in BW that meets best practices. They even let us speak to a customer each who said great things about their BI. They both said they can start next week and have given firm timelines and budgets for our needs. We need FI, SD and MM reports. We are a manufacturing company.
XX: I am assuming the information they had is identical to what we have. In that case I cannot compete with companies that can provide you a solution without understanding your needs.
ITM: Explain
XX: Have you talked to Germany about Standards
ITM: No
XX: Do you have a copy of your global deployment policies and processes
ITM: No
XX: Have you talked to Germany about this project
ITM: No
XX: I would first advice you co-ordinate with Germany and have your PM go to Germany or Germany come to the US for a week or two to align standards & Processses
--
XX: Have you identified what the deliverables for the project are
ITM: The other two vendors both confirmed that what they could deliver was more than we would ever need.
XX: Do you have any complex cross-application reports that are critical to business
ITM:L I can think of two daily reports that take over 10 hours to run
XX: Do you want them to run in under 10 minutes
ITM: That woudl be fantastic
XX: Here is my recommendation. You talk to Germany about our proposal, and the lack of this request from the other two vendors hopefully. Then We align to global standards and discuss all your reporting needs. We then priritize what will come best from your BI and what from your operational systems. Simple as that.
One week later customer signed the contract and 6 months later customer achieved over 92% customer satisfaction. Measures were
1. Met your expectations of reports being delivered
2. Reports met your needs
3. Reports business could use from day 1 as a percentage of total reports delivered.
(p.s. the 10 hour report ran in under 10 minutes)
===============================================
Background: 2010_Customer in Boston undertaking Portal Upgrade, via the migration option. Discussion was whether to migrate MyFavourite objects or not. IT said no need as there was a lot of junk there; my advice was to ask business before they take any such decisions..
Statement from IT Technical lead: "I don't see any value in getting business owners to analyst into this planning phase for they will only raise concerns and delay the whole process. This is my final decision - end of topic.
=============
Background: 2008_Customer in Florida undertaking a BI 'Business Transformation' upgrade from 2.x to 3.x. Meeting for all global BPO's (I represented BI) with the Sr Project Manager clarifying the roadmap.
Statement from Vendor Partner Sr. VP: " You all represent XXXX (us).....for BI group the instructions are extremely clear. [1] Business is not mature to understand what we are going to build; [2] No BI team member is to fix any meeting with business users or owners without first getting approval from John Doe; [3] If you involve business it will only delay our project nad deliverables; [4] You have been given your tasks, just put your nose to the wheel and do the job, if in doubt contact John Doe only.......
+++++++++++++
Background: 2006_Customer is a global manufacturer with a global BI in Germany. They are implementing their first BI for North America operations.
IT Manager (ITM): The other two vendors said most of our reporting needs will be met by standard content in BW that meets best practices. They even let us speak to a customer each who said great things about their BI. They both said they can start next week and have given firm timelines and budgets for our needs. We need FI, SD and MM reports. We are a manufacturing company.
XX: I am assuming the information they had is identical to what we have. In that case I cannot compete with companies that can provide you a solution without understanding your needs.
ITM: Explain
XX: Have you talked to Germany about Standards
ITM: No
XX: Do you have a copy of your global deployment policies and processes
ITM: No
XX: Have you talked to Germany about this project
ITM: No
XX: I would first advice you co-ordinate with Germany and have your PM go to Germany or Germany come to the US for a week or two to align standards & Processses
--
XX: Have you identified what the deliverables for the project are
ITM: The other two vendors both confirmed that what they could deliver was more than we would ever need.
XX: Do you have any complex cross-application reports that are critical to business
ITM:L I can think of two daily reports that take over 10 hours to run
XX: Do you want them to run in under 10 minutes
ITM: That woudl be fantastic
XX: Here is my recommendation. You talk to Germany about our proposal, and the lack of this request from the other two vendors hopefully. Then We align to global standards and discuss all your reporting needs. We then priritize what will come best from your BI and what from your operational systems. Simple as that.
One week later customer signed the contract and 6 months later customer achieved over 92% customer satisfaction. Measures were
1. Met your expectations of reports being delivered
2. Reports met your needs
3. Reports business could use from day 1 as a percentage of total reports delivered.
(p.s. the 10 hour report ran in under 10 minutes)
===============================================
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Why BI Projects fail to deliver ROI
One of the RCA's with SAP BW implementation is the Business content that SAP delivers with their BW. This is a beauty and a beast. At the time when everyone wanted to install BW, i.e. from 1999 to August 2008 the looming potential of a BI crisis was only on the horizon. From 2003 to August 2008 BI remained in the # 3 to #2 priority of worldwide CEO's as reported by Gartner, Forrester, AMR and Business Week. Then in Aug 2008 it dropped to the #8 position.
The idea of building BW 'Better, Faster, Cheaper' had failed to quite an extent.
Because so mush investment had been done, and companies still needed to report it moved down to #5. CEO's stated that even though they continued to invest large budgets they were not attaining Business Value in accordance to promises or their expectations.
ROI was just not there.
After 10.08 (October 2008) the world just melted. After that companies realized that good or bad they need reports and analytics. BW teams across the planet were put into high gear and by Feb 2009 BI was the # 1 priority of over 1,400 CEO's interviewed by Gartner.
The reason was that during this crisis analytics and risk analysis was imperative and most essential.
ROI demands reverberated across the plant and I tend to support it
1. Business must take back ownership and accountability of all BI implementations
2. Automation of any manual tasks must replace manual processes - higher quality at lower cost
3. Self-Service Queries are the goal of 2009-12 (which means faster query response)
4. Factory model solutions must be tried and implemented.
While it is important that every project must be delivered on time and in budget. It is more important that it delivers Business Value. It must also look to deliver into the strategic future of business. Quick hits are of little use if they delivery little or no business value.
The type of lead resources you employ will have a direct impact on the end result of the project. Your leads must come from business and application experience. It is more critical you hire the right business resources than ones that understand the technology totally and understand little of business. Winning the technology battle is of little use if it does not meet business requirements. Does this mean you can ignore technology, of course not.
Finding BVA is critical and technology is the catalyst that allows proactive management to achieve greater heights with proper business alignment while leveraging technology solutions.
The idea of building BW 'Better, Faster, Cheaper' had failed to quite an extent.
Because so mush investment had been done, and companies still needed to report it moved down to #5. CEO's stated that even though they continued to invest large budgets they were not attaining Business Value in accordance to promises or their expectations.
ROI was just not there.
After 10.08 (October 2008) the world just melted. After that companies realized that good or bad they need reports and analytics. BW teams across the planet were put into high gear and by Feb 2009 BI was the # 1 priority of over 1,400 CEO's interviewed by Gartner.
The reason was that during this crisis analytics and risk analysis was imperative and most essential.
ROI demands reverberated across the plant and I tend to support it
1. Business must take back ownership and accountability of all BI implementations
2. Automation of any manual tasks must replace manual processes - higher quality at lower cost
3. Self-Service Queries are the goal of 2009-12 (which means faster query response)
4. Factory model solutions must be tried and implemented.
While it is important that every project must be delivered on time and in budget. It is more important that it delivers Business Value. It must also look to deliver into the strategic future of business. Quick hits are of little use if they delivery little or no business value.
The type of lead resources you employ will have a direct impact on the end result of the project. Your leads must come from business and application experience. It is more critical you hire the right business resources than ones that understand the technology totally and understand little of business. Winning the technology battle is of little use if it does not meet business requirements. Does this mean you can ignore technology, of course not.
Finding BVA is critical and technology is the catalyst that allows proactive management to achieve greater heights with proper business alignment while leveraging technology solutions.
How to find business benefits in SAP BW
At the start of any BW project, be it new or a rollover or an addition of InfoProviders it seems a lot of companies, big and small, old and new, the most important task is to review deliverables with business owners and users. The second most important thing is for business owners and users to understand what they are being.
Business Case: I was appointed Project manager for a Post go live BW implementation in which a large company, that had been with BW for the last 4 years and a team of 13 BW consultants took the decision to let the new business unit heads and steering committee take care of their BW implementation. The partner convinced the Steering committee that they had enough industry experience to know exactly what the customer needed and that they were going to delivery leading edge metrics whereby the company would be able to measure their performance in ways never done before. Also in order to meet the daily reports they would delivery over six hundred queries that would meet the needs of any large global company.
I find it funny to mention that the company's 1st BW go-live had not been a total success too and their second one had taken a similar direction. To cut the story short Go-Live was planned to be simultaneous to the ECC 6 go live in PP. Out of the six hundred reports our audit clarified that users could only use 28 reports As-Is, 68 reports needed considerable rearchitecture and the rest were useless. Of the metrics delivered none were usable from day one. The company spent the next 6 months with an additional team of 7 resources and did not get very far once gain.
First things first - Basic Business Strategy
One of the critical lessons learned, and the company put the project aside as a lesson learned experience, is that executive sponsor was for budget and time purposes only. Business had been totally kept out of the whole BW implementation process as all key users were fully occupied with the ECC processes and tasks. Thus in order to meet BW needs the company hired an external business manager, from their vendor, who led the project deliverables and decided what was, and what was not, good for the BW deliverables. What they ended with is mostly business content and generic metrics that came straight out of the vendor valuts. It was also found that 86 of the reports were operational reports that were more efficiently delivered directly from existing reports in the ECC system and never needed to be deployed from the BW.
One of the Business Owners even went as far as to ask the question "..can we sue the Vendor.." and we all knew that the vendor had all deliverables covered in their small print and business had signed off to most of the deliverables - as that was part of the standard cutover checks and handover requirement.
So how do we ensure Business Value
1. Business must become an integral part of every BW project
2. Business must participate, own, design and define what they need and do not need
3. Where they are unsure, a Value Architect must be hired to assist them make the right decisions
4. The value architect must not belong to the triad - SW, HW or Vendor partners.
5. There must be constant Business value checks all along the project process
6. A details process must be put into place to clearly define what report comes from which system.
7. Day-to-day reporting needs must be met first
8. All metrics, dashboards and scorecards must be a subsequent event after primary business needs have been met.
9. Architecture and Modeling are key but standards are imperative - part of BI Strategy and best practice documentation
In other words when we fail to plan for business = Plan to fail for business.
Data warehouses were supposed to eliminate a lot of data and replace it with a lot of information, but it seems we are still generating more and more data and sometimes not all the information that business expected to get out of their BW investments.
Business Case: I was appointed Project manager for a Post go live BW implementation in which a large company, that had been with BW for the last 4 years and a team of 13 BW consultants took the decision to let the new business unit heads and steering committee take care of their BW implementation. The partner convinced the Steering committee that they had enough industry experience to know exactly what the customer needed and that they were going to delivery leading edge metrics whereby the company would be able to measure their performance in ways never done before. Also in order to meet the daily reports they would delivery over six hundred queries that would meet the needs of any large global company.
I find it funny to mention that the company's 1st BW go-live had not been a total success too and their second one had taken a similar direction. To cut the story short Go-Live was planned to be simultaneous to the ECC 6 go live in PP. Out of the six hundred reports our audit clarified that users could only use 28 reports As-Is, 68 reports needed considerable rearchitecture and the rest were useless. Of the metrics delivered none were usable from day one. The company spent the next 6 months with an additional team of 7 resources and did not get very far once gain.
First things first - Basic Business Strategy
One of the critical lessons learned, and the company put the project aside as a lesson learned experience, is that executive sponsor was for budget and time purposes only. Business had been totally kept out of the whole BW implementation process as all key users were fully occupied with the ECC processes and tasks. Thus in order to meet BW needs the company hired an external business manager, from their vendor, who led the project deliverables and decided what was, and what was not, good for the BW deliverables. What they ended with is mostly business content and generic metrics that came straight out of the vendor valuts. It was also found that 86 of the reports were operational reports that were more efficiently delivered directly from existing reports in the ECC system and never needed to be deployed from the BW.
One of the Business Owners even went as far as to ask the question "..can we sue the Vendor.." and we all knew that the vendor had all deliverables covered in their small print and business had signed off to most of the deliverables - as that was part of the standard cutover checks and handover requirement.
So how do we ensure Business Value
1. Business must become an integral part of every BW project
2. Business must participate, own, design and define what they need and do not need
3. Where they are unsure, a Value Architect must be hired to assist them make the right decisions
4. The value architect must not belong to the triad - SW, HW or Vendor partners.
5. There must be constant Business value checks all along the project process
6. A details process must be put into place to clearly define what report comes from which system.
7. Day-to-day reporting needs must be met first
8. All metrics, dashboards and scorecards must be a subsequent event after primary business needs have been met.
9. Architecture and Modeling are key but standards are imperative - part of BI Strategy and best practice documentation
In other words when we fail to plan for business = Plan to fail for business.
Data warehouses were supposed to eliminate a lot of data and replace it with a lot of information, but it seems we are still generating more and more data and sometimes not all the information that business expected to get out of their BW investments.
Why executive participation is so important
Since I started working in 1987 one of the fundamental thing I learned is ' Don't provide a solution until you understand the need'. I used to be a salesman at that time and slowly progressed to sales manager and national sales director.
Over the years it is surprising how SAP implementations still sometimes do not follow this simple guideline. I started with SAP R/3 in 1995 and have since heard it repeated, re-iterated, proposed and discussed how important executive participation is to the success of a ERP project. This is independent whether it be a SAP, APO, CRM or BI project. As I have focused on BI since 1997 I will delve on that aspect of SAP.
most companies erroneously believe that executive participation brings stamina and sustenance. That too but one of the most important aspects executive participation brings is strategic sustenance. The future plans, the future business needs and the future business goals that are integral to the development of all ERP configurations and along with architecture and modeling of the BI environments.
If you are a CEO, CIO, CTO or VP operations your active participation with current business needs, future business plans and strategic business goals can be the difference of success or heading down a road of technical delivery with difficult user and budget discussions as a predictable outcome. Fail to plan = Plan to Fail.
Business cases
In one of my SAP Projects while talking to the CEO and CIO over lunch I was told that this global manufacturing company was planning to invest into their own distribution network by possibly buying out their current small distributors.
I went back reviewed the configuration in R/3 and a couple of weeks later requested that if the company had any possibility of going to distribution then we would need to move from manufacture to order to manufacture to stock. There was also the need to set up new company codes. We extended the project timeline by 3 weeks and 4 months after go live the company did decide to implement their plans. Their ECC and BW was perfectly designed to accommodate such a scenario and the move went very smoothly indeed.
In another company in our weekly meetings the CEO came in unexpectedly and mentioned that they were working with a high tier company that was delivering all their manufacturing reports. he also mentioned in his conversations that the proposed plan was to deliver business content as it met most of the reports. In a subsequent meeting with the CEO I requested permission to review the new BW plans and deliverable's. The CEO offered me a 4 week time to part time work with the group and report back to him after 4 weeks. In two weeks I realized the new team had not talked to any business stakeholders, were planning to deliver metrics as their BI strategy and mostly standard business content. By week three I requested the CEO to arrange a meeting with business owners and we all agreed that the current path would deliver a lot of data but very little information. I was moved from my existing project and made PM for the new implementation where we totally changed path, increased business needs identification, ownership and participation and the outcome was a very smooth and successful BW implementation.
Without executive participation and communications all this would have been an absolute disaster. The failure to plan for direct business needs and for the future in the initial phases can lead to a form of architecture called 'Report marts' - something most best practices would not recommend going to.
Find the Missing Link
In every ERP and/or BW project find the ownership to Business Value Attainment. In the above two examples the reason success was reached is because of executive involvement. There are many stories some of them ending with a simple question "..can we sue the implementing partner..? and none of us want to go anywhere near that path or direction.
One of the critical aspects of all BI strategy is alignment to business goals. We see this missing in most BW implementation, but a few. We have seen many enterprises have.
According to a Gartner report of Feb 209, many multi-billion dollar, multi-nationals companies, have invested million of dollars into BI and potentially not attained their anticipated Business Value from their investments. We call this BVA or Business Value Attainment.
The three things essential for BVA are, [1] Executive participation and communication; [2] BI Value Owner or Architect, and [3] BI Strategy & best practice documentation.
Lessons Learned
1. Executive participation in IT projects creates ownership and visibility within strategic company directives. Just having an executive sponsor is not adequate, it must be leveraged, communicated and utilized.
2. The second most important criteria would be BI Strategy including best practice documentation and communication of it thereof.
3. BI Value Architect is possibly the second most critical component in BI success. In a 8 month research we came out with a clear finding that in current BW projects there is no BI Business Value Owner. No particular individual, or a group, that is directly responsible for ensuring value delivery. Ths person should not belong to any of the triad players, i.e. SW, HW or Implementing partner as that by definition is a conflict position.
Properly engaged senior leadership and executive participation ensures that business takes a leading role in what happens and how BW deliverables are planned. It ensures that technology is used and designed to meet business needs and all tactical decisions are aligned to meet with strategic alignments.
Over the years it is surprising how SAP implementations still sometimes do not follow this simple guideline. I started with SAP R/3 in 1995 and have since heard it repeated, re-iterated, proposed and discussed how important executive participation is to the success of a ERP project. This is independent whether it be a SAP, APO, CRM or BI project. As I have focused on BI since 1997 I will delve on that aspect of SAP.
most companies erroneously believe that executive participation brings stamina and sustenance. That too but one of the most important aspects executive participation brings is strategic sustenance. The future plans, the future business needs and the future business goals that are integral to the development of all ERP configurations and along with architecture and modeling of the BI environments.
If you are a CEO, CIO, CTO or VP operations your active participation with current business needs, future business plans and strategic business goals can be the difference of success or heading down a road of technical delivery with difficult user and budget discussions as a predictable outcome. Fail to plan = Plan to Fail.
Business cases
In one of my SAP Projects while talking to the CEO and CIO over lunch I was told that this global manufacturing company was planning to invest into their own distribution network by possibly buying out their current small distributors.
I went back reviewed the configuration in R/3 and a couple of weeks later requested that if the company had any possibility of going to distribution then we would need to move from manufacture to order to manufacture to stock. There was also the need to set up new company codes. We extended the project timeline by 3 weeks and 4 months after go live the company did decide to implement their plans. Their ECC and BW was perfectly designed to accommodate such a scenario and the move went very smoothly indeed.
In another company in our weekly meetings the CEO came in unexpectedly and mentioned that they were working with a high tier company that was delivering all their manufacturing reports. he also mentioned in his conversations that the proposed plan was to deliver business content as it met most of the reports. In a subsequent meeting with the CEO I requested permission to review the new BW plans and deliverable's. The CEO offered me a 4 week time to part time work with the group and report back to him after 4 weeks. In two weeks I realized the new team had not talked to any business stakeholders, were planning to deliver metrics as their BI strategy and mostly standard business content. By week three I requested the CEO to arrange a meeting with business owners and we all agreed that the current path would deliver a lot of data but very little information. I was moved from my existing project and made PM for the new implementation where we totally changed path, increased business needs identification, ownership and participation and the outcome was a very smooth and successful BW implementation.
Without executive participation and communications all this would have been an absolute disaster. The failure to plan for direct business needs and for the future in the initial phases can lead to a form of architecture called 'Report marts' - something most best practices would not recommend going to.
Find the Missing Link
In every ERP and/or BW project find the ownership to Business Value Attainment. In the above two examples the reason success was reached is because of executive involvement. There are many stories some of them ending with a simple question "..can we sue the implementing partner..? and none of us want to go anywhere near that path or direction.
One of the critical aspects of all BI strategy is alignment to business goals. We see this missing in most BW implementation, but a few. We have seen many enterprises have.
According to a Gartner report of Feb 209, many multi-billion dollar, multi-nationals companies, have invested million of dollars into BI and potentially not attained their anticipated Business Value from their investments. We call this BVA or Business Value Attainment.
The three things essential for BVA are, [1] Executive participation and communication; [2] BI Value Owner or Architect, and [3] BI Strategy & best practice documentation.
Lessons Learned
1. Executive participation in IT projects creates ownership and visibility within strategic company directives. Just having an executive sponsor is not adequate, it must be leveraged, communicated and utilized.
2. The second most important criteria would be BI Strategy including best practice documentation and communication of it thereof.
3. BI Value Architect is possibly the second most critical component in BI success. In a 8 month research we came out with a clear finding that in current BW projects there is no BI Business Value Owner. No particular individual, or a group, that is directly responsible for ensuring value delivery. Ths person should not belong to any of the triad players, i.e. SW, HW or Implementing partner as that by definition is a conflict position.
Properly engaged senior leadership and executive participation ensures that business takes a leading role in what happens and how BW deliverables are planned. It ensures that technology is used and designed to meet business needs and all tactical decisions are aligned to meet with strategic alignments.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Where is the missing Link for BW Success
BW Success has been elusive since its inception. Customer blame SW, SW blames HW, HW and SW Blame vendors and Vendors blame Business. But no one has been able to identify the culprit.
In 2007 BI was the # 2 priority of CEO's this remained until Aug 2008 when Forrester reported that BI had been relegated to the # 5 priority of CEO's. It was not that information was getting any less important but companies continued to invest into Oracle, Informix, SAP and other DW solutions but all they got is lack of BVA (Business Value realization).
BVA is very different from Value Attainment. Value Attainment may be the vendor view of what will bring value to your company - and most companies may have been led astray by this singular investment. What it may end up doing is bringing value to the adviser's.
Anyhow there is a brief article on the missing link and if you like it you can request for the longer version.
https://www.box.net/shared/fctnd7tsnx
See if you agree that the fundamental Value componet is currently missing from BW implementations
In 2007 BI was the # 2 priority of CEO's this remained until Aug 2008 when Forrester reported that BI had been relegated to the # 5 priority of CEO's. It was not that information was getting any less important but companies continued to invest into Oracle, Informix, SAP and other DW solutions but all they got is lack of BVA (Business Value realization).
BVA is very different from Value Attainment. Value Attainment may be the vendor view of what will bring value to your company - and most companies may have been led astray by this singular investment. What it may end up doing is bringing value to the adviser's.
Anyhow there is a brief article on the missing link and if you like it you can request for the longer version.
https://www.box.net/shared/fctnd7tsnx
See if you agree that the fundamental Value componet is currently missing from BW implementations
Notes from DSAG
In contrast to last year, when there were very visible signs of revolt against the arrogant and monopolistic behaviour of SAP and its management, the mood this year at the DSAG (German speaking SAP User Group) Annual Congress was more realistic: customers continue to be very dissatisfied but realize that DSAG is no source of miracles. In his presentation, Prof. Karl Liebstückel continued to emphasize the need for lower cost of ownership, lower complexity and higher sustainability of SAP solutions. He reiterated the lack of evidence of additional value of SAP’s enterprise support. The chairmen of the special interest groups added to this list – the lack of SOA in Business Suite 7, the disappointment about Business by Design (the work group has too few members), the inconsistenrt state of verticals. No surprises – all very well known issues. DSAG management made every attempt to sell the stretching of SAP’s maintenance increase intervals as an achievement of its negotiations with SAP.
The current DSAG chairman is no CIO and apparently a number of CIOs felt poorly represented and threatened to create their own SAP CIO group – separate and without relationship to DSAG. DSAG, now representing about 50% of the German SAP users and 15% in Austria and Switzerland respectively, was quick to embrace the separatists: Prof. Liebstückel announced the creation of a CIO advisory board to balance his more academic and technology oriented origin.
And then Léo Apotheker made his first speech in front of about 3000 quite critical users. He was nervous, mixed up places (mistook Bremen for Berlin) and after one or two minutes of warming up delivered quite a good pitch. After bashing the press for all the unnecessary criticism about SAP he went on to emphasize how important customer relations, sustainability, agility and service quality are in a time of economic crisis. A lot of ”tikkun olam” a day after yom kippur.
Very convincing, very much to the point for everybody who had no idea about the real issues of the SAP users or had not listened to the lengthy list of top concerns the DSAG board had laid out in the session before Léo’s. His pitch was a good sales pitch but a poor example of positive vendor reaction to customer needs. He gave himself very high marks for the revolutionary, KPI-based enterprise support (no customer yet has really reported advantages that were quantifiable and higher than the extra costs) and cited positive verdicts from Gartner on the KPI system (without mentioning that Gartner had a key role in developing the KPIs).
Senior DSAG members noted that while the presentation was well delivered it continued the tradition of widening the mental gap between SAP’s management and the SAP users. A certain amount of resignation could be felt and customers I spoke with expressed a more realistic view than a year before: they start to understand that there is no substitute for their own, very personal strategy. Emancipation is not an easy process. It requires a lot of information (not sourced from the vendor’s marketing department), thinking and reflection and, above all, determination.
The current DSAG chairman is no CIO and apparently a number of CIOs felt poorly represented and threatened to create their own SAP CIO group – separate and without relationship to DSAG. DSAG, now representing about 50% of the German SAP users and 15% in Austria and Switzerland respectively, was quick to embrace the separatists: Prof. Liebstückel announced the creation of a CIO advisory board to balance his more academic and technology oriented origin.
And then Léo Apotheker made his first speech in front of about 3000 quite critical users. He was nervous, mixed up places (mistook Bremen for Berlin) and after one or two minutes of warming up delivered quite a good pitch. After bashing the press for all the unnecessary criticism about SAP he went on to emphasize how important customer relations, sustainability, agility and service quality are in a time of economic crisis. A lot of ”tikkun olam” a day after yom kippur.
Very convincing, very much to the point for everybody who had no idea about the real issues of the SAP users or had not listened to the lengthy list of top concerns the DSAG board had laid out in the session before Léo’s. His pitch was a good sales pitch but a poor example of positive vendor reaction to customer needs. He gave himself very high marks for the revolutionary, KPI-based enterprise support (no customer yet has really reported advantages that were quantifiable and higher than the extra costs) and cited positive verdicts from Gartner on the KPI system (without mentioning that Gartner had a key role in developing the KPIs).
Senior DSAG members noted that while the presentation was well delivered it continued the tradition of widening the mental gap between SAP’s management and the SAP users. A certain amount of resignation could be felt and customers I spoke with expressed a more realistic view than a year before: they start to understand that there is no substitute for their own, very personal strategy. Emancipation is not an easy process. It requires a lot of information (not sourced from the vendor’s marketing department), thinking and reflection and, above all, determination.
SAP Starts customer loyalty programs in Germany
In a few days, SAP will send out letters to all those German customers who have remained on standard support. Recent surveys indicated that this is over 60% of the installed base. In this letter, SAP will enforce a hitherto never used clause in their maintenance agreement. This clause allows for a salary-index based increase of maintenance.
SAP plans to apply this clause retroactively. This means: old agreements will see a higher increase. Hence, loyalty is not rewarded – rather, it is penalized — a first in the industry. Another rather bizarre effect is that customers will pay different percentages – even though they have purchased the same product.
The only comfort is that SAP will cap the increase to prevent standard maintenance from getting more expensive than Enterprise Support.
The retroactive application of the index-based increase is not without legal issues. The jury is still out on whether it will pass and I strongly advise customers to contest this practice.
When will SAP become smart enough to understand that molesting customers is not to their advantage? Well, in a recent article InformationWeek’s Bob Evans ventures an interesting speculation: http://tiny.cc/wsrlo
SAP plans to apply this clause retroactively. This means: old agreements will see a higher increase. Hence, loyalty is not rewarded – rather, it is penalized — a first in the industry. Another rather bizarre effect is that customers will pay different percentages – even though they have purchased the same product.
The only comfort is that SAP will cap the increase to prevent standard maintenance from getting more expensive than Enterprise Support.
The retroactive application of the index-based increase is not without legal issues. The jury is still out on whether it will pass and I strongly advise customers to contest this practice.
When will SAP become smart enough to understand that molesting customers is not to their advantage? Well, in a recent article InformationWeek’s Bob Evans ventures an interesting speculation: http://tiny.cc/wsrlo
t-Systems takes over SAP Hosting
After about 10 years of soul searching, SAP has finally decided to pull out of the hosting and outsourcing business. The original goals of this endeavor were:
Gain experience on the costs of operation
Developing best practises for service providers
Influence the product development process to improve the suitability of SAP products for hosting and outsourcing
Host beta-versions of new SAP products to improve time-to-market
Help partners and customers during the implementation process by providing the development environment scaling it gradually up until production capability was reached
Of these goals, only the last goal was achieved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The hope to develop this business into the directions of both SaaS and BPO was never fulfilled. It remained an illusion.
Why did this happen? First and foremost, SAP’s margin aspirations are just not attainable – a 30% margin in a hosting business is way out (especially, if it is burdened with SAP’s high cost of manpower and the need to pay for licenses at par with other system houses). Secondly, all hosting, outsourcing, and SaaS offerings start with investments creating negative cash flow way before a single Euro hits SAP’s accounts. Thirdly, there are partners competing with better cost structures that bring more business and frequently were irritated about SAP’s own hosting business. And, finally – SAP is primarily focused on selling licenses and, as of late, maintenance. SAPHosting never had the sales force it deserved.
Bottom line: the financial analysts will like this move. Not too many customers will dislike it. But SAP will be missing out on an opportunity to have continuous first hand insight into what it takes to actually tame the beast. That could have been turned into an edge over competition and a source of true COO improvements – too bad it did not happen. But, maybe, SAP did not even want to get smart about this. Ferri Abolhassan, up until recently SAP EVP EMEA, and now at the helm of T-Systems, can show his old employer what to make out of it.
Gain experience on the costs of operation
Developing best practises for service providers
Influence the product development process to improve the suitability of SAP products for hosting and outsourcing
Host beta-versions of new SAP products to improve time-to-market
Help partners and customers during the implementation process by providing the development environment scaling it gradually up until production capability was reached
Of these goals, only the last goal was achieved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The hope to develop this business into the directions of both SaaS and BPO was never fulfilled. It remained an illusion.
Why did this happen? First and foremost, SAP’s margin aspirations are just not attainable – a 30% margin in a hosting business is way out (especially, if it is burdened with SAP’s high cost of manpower and the need to pay for licenses at par with other system houses). Secondly, all hosting, outsourcing, and SaaS offerings start with investments creating negative cash flow way before a single Euro hits SAP’s accounts. Thirdly, there are partners competing with better cost structures that bring more business and frequently were irritated about SAP’s own hosting business. And, finally – SAP is primarily focused on selling licenses and, as of late, maintenance. SAPHosting never had the sales force it deserved.
Bottom line: the financial analysts will like this move. Not too many customers will dislike it. But SAP will be missing out on an opportunity to have continuous first hand insight into what it takes to actually tame the beast. That could have been turned into an edge over competition and a source of true COO improvements – too bad it did not happen. But, maybe, SAP did not even want to get smart about this. Ferri Abolhassan, up until recently SAP EVP EMEA, and now at the helm of T-Systems, can show his old employer what to make out of it.
SAP Maintenance: All or Nothing
SAP (like Oracle) has so far refused steadfastly to accept partial maintenance cancellations. While this is (from the vendor’s point of view) quite understandable, it can lead to very unpleasant situations that are not without legal issues.
Case in point: a recent insolvency in Germany. A mid-sized company filed for insolvency and failed to revive the troubled enterprise. There are still orders that must be served but in a few months the lights will be out.
Most of the 350 users of their SAP system are gone. Only about 50 are left and, of course, the HR-system is required to pay the residual staff. Closer to year end, a few legal updates will have to be fitted to the SAP-HR-installation.
The administrator, in an attempt to make sure that staff can be paid, asked SAP to accept a partial maintenance cancellation for 300 seats – very appropriate especially in light of the upcoming increase for standard support.
SAP refused to accept the partial cancellation. Either you cancel in full or you pay in full. Under German law, the maintenace bill ranks way lower than salaries in an insolvency. SAP, however, has apparently found a way to circumvent this. The customer, while not requiring maintence for the 300 empty seats, needs the legal updates to pay his workers. If he does not pay them, he has to shut down immediatedly. Paying full maintenance, on the other hand, may mean that he may have to shortchange his workers in favor of SAP. This is clearly not what the lawmakers had in mind.
Case in point: a recent insolvency in Germany. A mid-sized company filed for insolvency and failed to revive the troubled enterprise. There are still orders that must be served but in a few months the lights will be out.
Most of the 350 users of their SAP system are gone. Only about 50 are left and, of course, the HR-system is required to pay the residual staff. Closer to year end, a few legal updates will have to be fitted to the SAP-HR-installation.
The administrator, in an attempt to make sure that staff can be paid, asked SAP to accept a partial maintenance cancellation for 300 seats – very appropriate especially in light of the upcoming increase for standard support.
SAP refused to accept the partial cancellation. Either you cancel in full or you pay in full. Under German law, the maintenace bill ranks way lower than salaries in an insolvency. SAP, however, has apparently found a way to circumvent this. The customer, while not requiring maintence for the 300 empty seats, needs the legal updates to pay his workers. If he does not pay them, he has to shut down immediatedly. Paying full maintenance, on the other hand, may mean that he may have to shortchange his workers in favor of SAP. This is clearly not what the lawmakers had in mind.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The 10 principles of BI Success
Introduction:
Business Value Attainment 2:
2009 is a landmark year for all DW and BI Professionals, agnostic of technology platforms. On one side of the equation we have a deep recession on finances, corporate expenses and overall project expenses. One the other side we have 1,500 CEO’s worldwide that have said BI is their # 1 priority for the 2009 -12 period. Gartner Feb 2009
(source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636310)
BI was #2 in Jan 2007, it shifted to #5 by August 2008 and has resurfaced as #1 in Feb 2009.
The reason it was high until 2007 is that management thought BI imperative to the overall decision process.The reason it declined in 2008 is that numerous project did not provide anticipated BVA (Business Value Attainment)
It is now our ownership to ensure that we redefine what project success means and then extrapolate that to BI Projects.
One thing is certain we have moved away from the traditional ‘Build mode of ‘Fire, Ready, Did we Aim’ methodology towards a sustainable planning mode.
My hope is that 2009-10 will delve a lot into introspection.
Question like ROI and TCO will become paramount. BI Business Value audits, Checklists and foundation layers will become imperative. Though this sounds like common sense but we find it still uncommon by rating the customer satisfaction 4-6 months after go live.
We may have to revert to the traditional method of success – plan. ‘Plan your work and only then work your plan’ as our motto for 2009.
This note highlights the strategic, and success, components of a Fundamental Principles of BI Projects.
What are the lessons we have learned either from your implementation or from that of others? Failures should catalyze evolutionary knowledge, and successes create proven structures and processes as wisdom. The question is: Are we learning from our failures, and sharing our wisdom, professionally and not politically, to assure future successes?
Start now! Because it’s all about ‘ethics’ and ‘business value’, ‘standards’ and ‘processes’, ‘people’, ‘communications’, ‘quality’ and ‘governance’ we need to consider the solution holistically with a sound business strategic goal in planning.
All BI Projects end on a binary outcome – either they work or they do not.
Either it provides business value, the measure of which is business user satisfaction, or it do not.
Everything else, as far as these Principles is herein defined as ‘playing the game’
Ethics remain the foundation of this Principle.
Recognize short term 3rd Party providers for they might simply work on a principle of ‘Play the Game’.
Long term partners work with standards and processes and then simply govern them. Experience must be empowered to trust their own intuition more than the recommendations of profiteering 3rd Party.
Principle 1: BI must only be about Business‘’
Two thing lacking in some BI implementations are business and Intelligence’’ Alex Paleologoes, BI DataBridge Europe.
Great BI can only be accomplished by teaming with business to meet business needs. Business Value cannot be attained by keeping business in isolation.
Action: Let business take ownership, or participative ownership, of all BI projects. SOX mandates business ownership and accountability of all BI. Don’t let your vendor recommendation or beliefs steal this fundamental right from business. Someone in the company has to be accountable for business value assurance of BI projects – who better than business itself.
Principle 2: Successful business is all about People & process
Employees are at the root of all successful companies and thus BI projects. A single hour spent with business will assures more success, than the same many hours spent with concepts, apologies, ideas or recommendations. Great BI projects keep business and data as the center of their universe; average BI keeps business in the loop, and bad BI keep business and people out of the BI decision process.
Action: Trust the people that have made your company great. Trust your advisors only if your business owners fully trust and sponsor new ideas without constraints or boundaries. If business is the final ‘customer’ then let them take ownership and accountability of their BI. Build accountability if new ideas fail to add strategic business value.
Principle 3: Data Governance [1] is not possible without Data Quality
Structure defines the path to success, standards the boundaries, and processes the methodology, Data Quality the foundation of Data Governance. Only after these four are established can any form of governance take place.Great BI’s have complex layered architecture consisting of technical and business layers. There are tens of millions of data elements in any data warehouse. 1% data cleansing cannot provide global data quality. Data governance driven by MDM[2] is like monitoring only state leaders, in the fight of global terrorism, and letting all other passengers pass through unchecked.
Action: Get a Global Data Quality profiler and score every data element entering your data warehouse. This is the only way to lay the foundation of Data Governance in BI. Measure every sucker that enters your data warehouse, not just a handful of them. [1] Gartner, Forrester, TDWI and all advisors are recommending Data Governance, however currently this is limited to Master data elements only. Researching all providers we find all of them center around MDM elements only. [2]Total DQM, i.e. scoring and profiling every data element, remains the holy grail in SAP and more so in SAP BI. Data profiling is the foundation of Data qualifying, and data scoring is the key to assuring data quality, thus data quality is the foundation of Data Governance. What you can’t measure you cannot improve’ , stands true in data quality. If you do not have rules there is nothing to govern, stands true to data governance. According to SAP in January 2006 there are less than 300 MDM elements in all of SAP. The average cost of cleansing one to two of these, i.e. customer and vendor, normally runs some pretty high budgets.
Principle 4: Plan your work and only then work your plan
Very common saying, very uncommonly usage. Makes one believe that sometimes common sense can be most uncommon. All plans must be based on structures, methodologies, processes, standards and best practices. Processes must be measured, Principles governed. Data must be profiled and scored prior to letting it enter the data warehouse. Without structures and processes chaos becomes the only available option
Action: Immediately install structure, standards and processes and then follow the plan. Baseline on proven success, improve it as you go along
Principle 5: You’re not dumb. They’re not smart
3rd Parties can sometime fool companies with their jargons and complex presentations. The fact is that your business owners know, best of all, what is good for your business should be leveraged in every BI process or deliverable. Vendor recommendations must be aligned and filtered with business needs. Business must take the final fine-tuning of their analytics Final ownership must lie with your business owners. Never let your business become isolated from what is being done on their behalf. Keeping business out of any BI process is a predictable recipe to disaster - some enterprises learn early others as they mature with the technology.
Action: Business must be a willing sponsor. They must own and be accountable for all BI deliverables. When in doubt let business make the final call.
Principle 6: Control is but a momentary illusion
We have seen numerous BI implementations where the vendor controls all BI deliverables, in some worst case scenarios even prohibits business from participating in what they will finally receive. There must be no single person in any Company that believes in thrusting BI on business users as the right way to implement BI. Let 3rd Party build relationships of trust with the business, rather than a protocol of control and instruct. Control destroys trust and eliminates ownership.
Action: Business based BI relies on business leadership and trust rather than on Vendor recommendations and control
Principle 7: Data is complex, requirements confusing, still must deliver to business needs
Most companies that do not involve business early in the BI ownership normally land up in a situation ‘..this is now so complex, I don’t know where to start..’. Business does not march along nice straight lines. It meanders. Organizations are organic and grow organically. Your project must follow structure and standards in order to assure success. Stop fighting structure and eliminate ‘Quick-Fix’ options.
Action: Train business on BW checks and balances if you are new to BW. Get a mentor for your Operational management so they can become intelligent sponsorsInvolve business very early in BI implementations, and keep them integrated into the BI deployment process to assure success. Most projects that keep business isolated from BI end up with data and numbers but very little business relevant information. Build Data Warehouses and not report marts by planned Architecture and modeling checks along the way
Principle 8: There can be no secrets
If you think BI can be implemented in isolation and in a secretive way then you are only committing self cannibalism. This is akin to a cancerous methodology of BI implementation. Is most such cases the only predictable victim is the BI project itself. A project that keeps secrets loose respect of others and soon sponsor’s budgets and then success itself.
Action: View issues with a magnifying glass and successes with a telescope. Align all things near with goals of far away. Ensure that there is direct contact between business owners, users and the BW developers. Do not let any process or person insulate the key decision makers.
Principle 9: Always trust your ‘blink’ factor
‘Blink’[3] is the concept of first instinct feeling. This can professionally be eroded by sales experts and convincing arguments of big 3rd Party presentations. At the end of the day do not buy into any concept unless you personally feel the ‘Blink’ factor, i.e. personal warm-and-fuzzy feeling. Trust your instincts and those of your business owners as respect their initial concerns and negative feedback.
Action: Buy only into concepts that the company and business owners are personally confident with, and are willing to take ownership from its initial proposal. If unable to take ownership, either disassociate yourself from the process or find a mentor who will guide you through the maze or confusion and thereby enable you weed out the wool and direct you towards true Business Value Attainment (BVA). After each project add a BVA score to success measures that must be filled by business owners three to four months after go live. [3] Blink: Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324#reader) ‘The statue that did’nt look right and other cases.
Principle 10: The only constant is change
As Einstein confirmed and with everything being dynamic we must always question every Principle here. With proven expertise new BI concepts must constantly be implemented. Scorecards and metrics are pure example of change. With emerging BI technology complex decision methods are being enhanced periodically. No decision must isolate new conceptsat the cost of business familiarity. The other way, if proven, often just works fine.
Action: Special functionalities require special assistance. Do not let 3rd Parties convince you of their version of truth. Never change the terminologies, i.e. a COE can only be that and nothing else, as you change the name so does its essence. Small minds encourage re-titles as a form of originality, only to loose the very essence of the roiginal concept in a very short time. Hire the concept expert, where possible, to provide ‘Value Drivers’ to assure concept success every time. Do not waste time with any form of apologies.
Take decisions that assure high BVA.
Business Value Attainment 2:
2009 is a landmark year for all DW and BI Professionals, agnostic of technology platforms. On one side of the equation we have a deep recession on finances, corporate expenses and overall project expenses. One the other side we have 1,500 CEO’s worldwide that have said BI is their # 1 priority for the 2009 -12 period. Gartner Feb 2009
(source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636310)
BI was #2 in Jan 2007, it shifted to #5 by August 2008 and has resurfaced as #1 in Feb 2009.
The reason it was high until 2007 is that management thought BI imperative to the overall decision process.The reason it declined in 2008 is that numerous project did not provide anticipated BVA (Business Value Attainment)
It is now our ownership to ensure that we redefine what project success means and then extrapolate that to BI Projects.
One thing is certain we have moved away from the traditional ‘Build mode of ‘Fire, Ready, Did we Aim’ methodology towards a sustainable planning mode.
My hope is that 2009-10 will delve a lot into introspection.
Question like ROI and TCO will become paramount. BI Business Value audits, Checklists and foundation layers will become imperative. Though this sounds like common sense but we find it still uncommon by rating the customer satisfaction 4-6 months after go live.
We may have to revert to the traditional method of success – plan. ‘Plan your work and only then work your plan’ as our motto for 2009.
This note highlights the strategic, and success, components of a Fundamental Principles of BI Projects.
What are the lessons we have learned either from your implementation or from that of others? Failures should catalyze evolutionary knowledge, and successes create proven structures and processes as wisdom. The question is: Are we learning from our failures, and sharing our wisdom, professionally and not politically, to assure future successes?
Start now! Because it’s all about ‘ethics’ and ‘business value’, ‘standards’ and ‘processes’, ‘people’, ‘communications’, ‘quality’ and ‘governance’ we need to consider the solution holistically with a sound business strategic goal in planning.
All BI Projects end on a binary outcome – either they work or they do not.
Either it provides business value, the measure of which is business user satisfaction, or it do not.
Everything else, as far as these Principles is herein defined as ‘playing the game’
Ethics remain the foundation of this Principle.
Recognize short term 3rd Party providers for they might simply work on a principle of ‘Play the Game’.
Long term partners work with standards and processes and then simply govern them. Experience must be empowered to trust their own intuition more than the recommendations of profiteering 3rd Party.
Principle 1: BI must only be about Business‘’
Two thing lacking in some BI implementations are business and Intelligence’’ Alex Paleologoes, BI DataBridge Europe.
Great BI can only be accomplished by teaming with business to meet business needs. Business Value cannot be attained by keeping business in isolation.
Action: Let business take ownership, or participative ownership, of all BI projects. SOX mandates business ownership and accountability of all BI. Don’t let your vendor recommendation or beliefs steal this fundamental right from business. Someone in the company has to be accountable for business value assurance of BI projects – who better than business itself.
Principle 2: Successful business is all about People & process
Employees are at the root of all successful companies and thus BI projects. A single hour spent with business will assures more success, than the same many hours spent with concepts, apologies, ideas or recommendations. Great BI projects keep business and data as the center of their universe; average BI keeps business in the loop, and bad BI keep business and people out of the BI decision process.
Action: Trust the people that have made your company great. Trust your advisors only if your business owners fully trust and sponsor new ideas without constraints or boundaries. If business is the final ‘customer’ then let them take ownership and accountability of their BI. Build accountability if new ideas fail to add strategic business value.
Principle 3: Data Governance [1] is not possible without Data Quality
Structure defines the path to success, standards the boundaries, and processes the methodology, Data Quality the foundation of Data Governance. Only after these four are established can any form of governance take place.Great BI’s have complex layered architecture consisting of technical and business layers. There are tens of millions of data elements in any data warehouse. 1% data cleansing cannot provide global data quality. Data governance driven by MDM[2] is like monitoring only state leaders, in the fight of global terrorism, and letting all other passengers pass through unchecked.
Action: Get a Global Data Quality profiler and score every data element entering your data warehouse. This is the only way to lay the foundation of Data Governance in BI. Measure every sucker that enters your data warehouse, not just a handful of them. [1] Gartner, Forrester, TDWI and all advisors are recommending Data Governance, however currently this is limited to Master data elements only. Researching all providers we find all of them center around MDM elements only. [2]Total DQM, i.e. scoring and profiling every data element, remains the holy grail in SAP and more so in SAP BI. Data profiling is the foundation of Data qualifying, and data scoring is the key to assuring data quality, thus data quality is the foundation of Data Governance. What you can’t measure you cannot improve’ , stands true in data quality. If you do not have rules there is nothing to govern, stands true to data governance. According to SAP in January 2006 there are less than 300 MDM elements in all of SAP. The average cost of cleansing one to two of these, i.e. customer and vendor, normally runs some pretty high budgets.
Principle 4: Plan your work and only then work your plan
Very common saying, very uncommonly usage. Makes one believe that sometimes common sense can be most uncommon. All plans must be based on structures, methodologies, processes, standards and best practices. Processes must be measured, Principles governed. Data must be profiled and scored prior to letting it enter the data warehouse. Without structures and processes chaos becomes the only available option
Action: Immediately install structure, standards and processes and then follow the plan. Baseline on proven success, improve it as you go along
Principle 5: You’re not dumb. They’re not smart
3rd Parties can sometime fool companies with their jargons and complex presentations. The fact is that your business owners know, best of all, what is good for your business should be leveraged in every BI process or deliverable. Vendor recommendations must be aligned and filtered with business needs. Business must take the final fine-tuning of their analytics Final ownership must lie with your business owners. Never let your business become isolated from what is being done on their behalf. Keeping business out of any BI process is a predictable recipe to disaster - some enterprises learn early others as they mature with the technology.
Action: Business must be a willing sponsor. They must own and be accountable for all BI deliverables. When in doubt let business make the final call.
Principle 6: Control is but a momentary illusion
We have seen numerous BI implementations where the vendor controls all BI deliverables, in some worst case scenarios even prohibits business from participating in what they will finally receive. There must be no single person in any Company that believes in thrusting BI on business users as the right way to implement BI. Let 3rd Party build relationships of trust with the business, rather than a protocol of control and instruct. Control destroys trust and eliminates ownership.
Action: Business based BI relies on business leadership and trust rather than on Vendor recommendations and control
Principle 7: Data is complex, requirements confusing, still must deliver to business needs
Most companies that do not involve business early in the BI ownership normally land up in a situation ‘..this is now so complex, I don’t know where to start..’. Business does not march along nice straight lines. It meanders. Organizations are organic and grow organically. Your project must follow structure and standards in order to assure success. Stop fighting structure and eliminate ‘Quick-Fix’ options.
Action: Train business on BW checks and balances if you are new to BW. Get a mentor for your Operational management so they can become intelligent sponsorsInvolve business very early in BI implementations, and keep them integrated into the BI deployment process to assure success. Most projects that keep business isolated from BI end up with data and numbers but very little business relevant information. Build Data Warehouses and not report marts by planned Architecture and modeling checks along the way
Principle 8: There can be no secrets
If you think BI can be implemented in isolation and in a secretive way then you are only committing self cannibalism. This is akin to a cancerous methodology of BI implementation. Is most such cases the only predictable victim is the BI project itself. A project that keeps secrets loose respect of others and soon sponsor’s budgets and then success itself.
Action: View issues with a magnifying glass and successes with a telescope. Align all things near with goals of far away. Ensure that there is direct contact between business owners, users and the BW developers. Do not let any process or person insulate the key decision makers.
Principle 9: Always trust your ‘blink’ factor
‘Blink’[3] is the concept of first instinct feeling. This can professionally be eroded by sales experts and convincing arguments of big 3rd Party presentations. At the end of the day do not buy into any concept unless you personally feel the ‘Blink’ factor, i.e. personal warm-and-fuzzy feeling. Trust your instincts and those of your business owners as respect their initial concerns and negative feedback.
Action: Buy only into concepts that the company and business owners are personally confident with, and are willing to take ownership from its initial proposal. If unable to take ownership, either disassociate yourself from the process or find a mentor who will guide you through the maze or confusion and thereby enable you weed out the wool and direct you towards true Business Value Attainment (BVA). After each project add a BVA score to success measures that must be filled by business owners three to four months after go live. [3] Blink: Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324#reader) ‘The statue that did’nt look right and other cases.
Principle 10: The only constant is change
As Einstein confirmed and with everything being dynamic we must always question every Principle here. With proven expertise new BI concepts must constantly be implemented. Scorecards and metrics are pure example of change. With emerging BI technology complex decision methods are being enhanced periodically. No decision must isolate new conceptsat the cost of business familiarity. The other way, if proven, often just works fine.
Action: Special functionalities require special assistance. Do not let 3rd Parties convince you of their version of truth. Never change the terminologies, i.e. a COE can only be that and nothing else, as you change the name so does its essence. Small minds encourage re-titles as a form of originality, only to loose the very essence of the roiginal concept in a very short time. Hire the concept expert, where possible, to provide ‘Value Drivers’ to assure concept success every time. Do not waste time with any form of apologies.
Take decisions that assure high BVA.
IS BI Recession Proof
Is BI/BW recession proof.
Towards the end of 2009 gartner published what was most important to 1,500 CEO.
Business Intelligence came #1.
Surprising fact: in 2005-2007 BI was #2 with CEO's. By August 2008 it becomes #5 priority for the CEO's. Now in Jan-Feb 2009 it is back to #1.
(source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636310)
What changed - the market and the crash in October 2008.
What is the writing on the wall.
BI is necessary when times are good and all the more so when times are very bad- like right now.
The critical success factor is to lower operational costs, get the fluff out of the way and Plan, plan and Plan - not with the same partners that have taken your plane for a nosedive but a BI Business Value Architect that represents your company and your business and audit for your BVA (Business Value attainment) at every step.
[1] We collectively nearly messed up BW/BI by not delivering high BVA (Business Value Attainment) and now the ownership is on BI professionals to deliver to BVA.
[2] This is possible a second change. All BI administrators, managers and leadership need to get some critical facts together - this is clearly identified by the CEO's
a. High in priority is 'Self Service Queries. This means query performance. In the same breadth Gartner also stated that SAP Query performance is not one of BW's greatest assets. So in order to improve query performance we have the BW Accelerator or the SmartCube from erada. Without query performance Self Service is but a figment of ones imagination. (Source: Gartners magic Quardrent for 2009)
b. High BVA: Business Value Attainment is going to be the critical shift in the 2009-12 period for BI Implementations.
[1] We will need to make a quantum leap from
'Fire, Ready, did we Aim' to
'plan your work and only then work your plan'.
[2] We must see a distinct shift away from conceptual 3rd party led projects to Business Owned BI projects.
[3] Planning will need to become the fundamental fulcrum to success.
c. Business focused Planning: the third leg of success is going to be business focused BI Strategy. not just the concept and the statements but the whole nine yards.
(a) Alignment of BI Strategy to direct Business Needs;
(b) Enterprise BI Cookbook (Standards, Processes, Principles, Org Structures and governance guidelines);
(c) Architecture Framework and its amalgamation into an enterprise architecture;
(d) Source System analysis along with reporting apps and business report needs;
(e) Identifying what reports will be delivered from what source;
(f) Assuring day-to-day reports are met first;
(g) Risk Registers;
(h) Actionable roadmap;
(i) Business accountability, ownership and participation.
Priority 1 should be to get a BI Strategy in place for without a plan no wind will be a good wind, even for the best captains.
Build your BI Methodology right and everything else should fall right into place.
Get a second doctor to review the recommendations if your doctor did not provide high BVA the last time around - second opinions cost very little and can benefit one heaven of a lot.
Towards the end of 2009 gartner published what was most important to 1,500 CEO.
Business Intelligence came #1.
Surprising fact: in 2005-2007 BI was #2 with CEO's. By August 2008 it becomes #5 priority for the CEO's. Now in Jan-Feb 2009 it is back to #1.
(source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636310)
What changed - the market and the crash in October 2008.
What is the writing on the wall.
BI is necessary when times are good and all the more so when times are very bad- like right now.
The critical success factor is to lower operational costs, get the fluff out of the way and Plan, plan and Plan - not with the same partners that have taken your plane for a nosedive but a BI Business Value Architect that represents your company and your business and audit for your BVA (Business Value attainment) at every step.
[1] We collectively nearly messed up BW/BI by not delivering high BVA (Business Value Attainment) and now the ownership is on BI professionals to deliver to BVA.
[2] This is possible a second change. All BI administrators, managers and leadership need to get some critical facts together - this is clearly identified by the CEO's
a. High in priority is 'Self Service Queries. This means query performance. In the same breadth Gartner also stated that SAP Query performance is not one of BW's greatest assets. So in order to improve query performance we have the BW Accelerator or the SmartCube from erada. Without query performance Self Service is but a figment of ones imagination. (Source: Gartners magic Quardrent for 2009)
b. High BVA: Business Value Attainment is going to be the critical shift in the 2009-12 period for BI Implementations.
[1] We will need to make a quantum leap from
'Fire, Ready, did we Aim' to
'plan your work and only then work your plan'.
[2] We must see a distinct shift away from conceptual 3rd party led projects to Business Owned BI projects.
[3] Planning will need to become the fundamental fulcrum to success.
c. Business focused Planning: the third leg of success is going to be business focused BI Strategy. not just the concept and the statements but the whole nine yards.
(a) Alignment of BI Strategy to direct Business Needs;
(b) Enterprise BI Cookbook (Standards, Processes, Principles, Org Structures and governance guidelines);
(c) Architecture Framework and its amalgamation into an enterprise architecture;
(d) Source System analysis along with reporting apps and business report needs;
(e) Identifying what reports will be delivered from what source;
(f) Assuring day-to-day reports are met first;
(g) Risk Registers;
(h) Actionable roadmap;
(i) Business accountability, ownership and participation.
Priority 1 should be to get a BI Strategy in place for without a plan no wind will be a good wind, even for the best captains.
Build your BI Methodology right and everything else should fall right into place.
Get a second doctor to review the recommendations if your doctor did not provide high BVA the last time around - second opinions cost very little and can benefit one heaven of a lot.
Leo/Hasso 2
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE is the #1 priority of Gartner, (Feb 2009), SAPPHIRE and ASUG (May 1-14). Not a coincedence at all.
By Feb 2009 1,500 CEO's told Gartner that BI was their #1 priority for the 2009-12 period.
In May SAP reconfirmed this with statements from Leo Apotheker, Bill Mcdermott and Hasso Plattner, who is the original icon of SAP, that SAP is focusing totally on Analytics.
Their keynotes reverberated across all SAP corridors.
When talking to various customer managers, at the conference, opinions swung like a pendulum.
On one side of the swing were managers that basically wanted to hear how SAP could assist them during this time of crisis and felt that ‘Hasso just promised another pie in the sky for the future..’
On the other side of the swing were managers who realized that they needed ‘self-serive’ information to sustain the current financial crisis. A number of them are implementing the dream of Hasso – Polestar/ BO Explorer.
BO Explorer is nothing but Polestar and Polestar is kind of dependent on BW Accelerator to meet the Leo/Hasso vision with large data volumes. BW Accelerator is still dependent on SAP BW, and to BW InfoCubes. (refer to my paper on positioning the Infocube for SAP BW'
To enable the Leo/Hasso dream we need to finetune and optimize every widget in these above layers.
Within Business Intelligence there are two critical areas Leo/Hasso focused on:-
1. Business Objects and
2. BW Accelerator
Some of the key issues Hasso focused on, plus my commets
1. Business Intelligence is extremely important ( Information driven companies will be the market leaders of tomorrow.
(My comments: Information MUST be what business needs and not just reports. conduct a BVA audit on all Information Deliveries)
2. Business Needs need to drive analytics
(My comments: Business Must take Ownership, Accountability and Audit all BW Deliverables)
3. Optimize Self Service to under 1 second: Hasso took self-service to a new level. Answer any question you can think of. The managers can once again sit in a cockpit environment and get any answer to their operation. I love the concept I am sceptical as to its delivery potential based on my past experience with DW's, especially the technology promises and business delivered.
(my comment: I remember seeing something similar from Hasso and SEM back in 2008-9 so am once again skeptical to this idea. challenge the operational aspects of it. In fact Hasso had shown his hand and promised answers on your fingertips from BW – a move he repeated and confessed to repeating, in the 2009 conference. From my point of view self service analytics, and even Polestar is all about modeling. Using automated modeling we can deliver Hasso’s dream today. The issue with todays speed is not the technology it is the application, or lack of it thereof, that is the real issue. Without a accelerator or automated modeling I have personally reduced a SAP R/3 query runtime from 10 hours to under 9 minutes. Just with modeling I have reduced a query response time from 722 seconds to under 23 seconds in 4 hours flat. So we need to review business needs and modeling a little more seriously before we put all our budgets into the technology basket once again)
4. Collect all operational data into BW Accelerator: We must take all operational data into the BI environment so we can ask any question and the BO Explorer will answer it under a second. (My comment: Here is where Hasso and I have a deep devide. This is a technology data modeling answer with data as the center of the universe and very little business alignment. From a technology side hasso confessed this is experimental and if SAP invests and then it will work. From my business practical side I see three fundamental issues with this approach
(1) Management does not need simple answers which have existing attributes (Leo used Head – the system did not have Knees and could not have answered that if required);
(2) BW Accelerator has sponsored by business for Intuitive analytics (Something is not right with a number and I need to slice down, across and sideways to find answers);
(3) The issue from the beginning has been architecture and modeling and we have proven that if these are done right most of what Hasso displayed could be answered with current technology.)
(My comment2: The issue has never been technology but building a BVA (Business Value Attainment BW ). 90% of questions that can be answered by today’s technology remain unanswered due to bad design and modeling. How then do we assure that bad design is not going to mothball this dream. WE NEED TO START WITH THE BASICS AND IMPROVE THAT. Then everything on top aligns automatically)
5. Eliminate redundancy: Hasso clearly pointed out that we need to eliminate duplication of data and mainly master data.
(My comment: From a BW point of view we also need to eliminate non reporting elements from the BW. There are tolls that can do this automatically now)
6. Eliminate the need for a data warehouse as we know it: Hasso did elude, if I heard correct, the possibility to take all operational data directly into the the Accelerator.
(My Comments: I am not a supporter for Data collection and even if we did that then that would currently possibly need 70 to a 100 BW Accelerator Blades. I am more for of a modeling person that likes to select the the elements in my data warehouse and convert them into information objects rather than calculate them at the time of query. Unless Hasso and his team have found a new algorithm them I stand corrected. )
I think the Leo/Hasso have a wonderful vision and the fact that it is supported by 1,500 CEO’s across the planet who independently to Gartner in 2009 and placed BI as their #1 priority and Self Service Queries as their #1 priority in BW. (For more details read my whitepaper BI forecast for 2009-12).
I am fully committed to realizing the goals of the leo/Hasso vision as this is the quest that started me on BI 14 years ago when I was the group marketing manager for SCC a multinational cable and Wire manufacrurer.
Information is business critical, information at the speed of market change is imperative to business success.
Strategically 5 years from today the successful companies will be defined by those that have better and faster information than their competition.
Information leaders will defacto become business leaders.
If we look at 2009 then we need to support the vision of Leo and Hasso. We need business to own and audit BI developments, automate BI Modeling, automatically convert reporting DSO's into InfoCubes and make them non-reporting, get better visibility ino the BWA with a BW Accelerator Workbench, we need to automate modeling for Polestar for at that level human interpretations cannot work.
Basically we need to automate all complex human interpretations into an engineered science
Dreams yesterday, reality today and Routine Tomorrow
Leo/Hasso vision deployment
Let’s take the Leo/Hasso vision and draw an actionable map to make the vision into a reality.
However, we cannot simply go full steam ahead without reviewing the past and define our CLEAR methodology.we cannot be CLEAR if the past is muddy. CLEAR is a message Hasso and Leo communicated to all 10,000 participants on site and 18,000 online Sapphire Attendees. Global SAP is about CLEAR and Business Intelligence.
CLEAR will eliminate inefficiencies so let us start with the foundations, i.e. auditing the house for BVA (Business Value Attainment).
These audits are applicable both for New and existing customers. i.e. even if you are 8 years with BW and do not have standards and processes clearly defined then we need to do that immediately, or if your Infocube models are not optimized then we need to do that...
Here is a list of BVA Chekclist that can be used as a KSF (Key Success form) that will analyze the foundation without and possibly need a signoff from key stakeholders.
BW Audit 1: BI Strategy alignment to Business Needs
(not 3rd party alignment but pure business, by business owners only. Hasso's vision answers business questions)
BW Audit 2: Audit Business participation, Standards, Processes, Org Structures and Governance against BVA
(Lack of standards leads to duplication and redundancies something Hasso clearly pointed we must eliminate)
BW Audit 3: Check Architecture for Best Practice against BVA
(Hasso's vision did not need an architecture but right now we will need to this to succeed)
BW Audit 4: check DSO and InfoCube design and automate modeling for the dream to come true.
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or objects but right now we will need to this to succeed. The cost of getting all data elements from Operating systems into BW Accelerator will be prohibitive for most companies so I am relying on the BW as a pass through layer for now)
BW Audit 5: Optimize InfoCube modeling: Read paper ‘Positioning InfoCube for SAP BI’ for details. Use automation as your only option for self service excellence.
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or objects but right now we will need to this to lower your BW Accelerator considerably. Each blade reduced can save a company 1 million dollars in 10 years)
BWA Audit 6: Slim BI Footprint in BI. Note reduce 1 blade and save ($1 million in 10 years)
(Hasso's vision did not recommend for ROI, but I need to run that as I come from a business background and cannot work with a '..given infinite money and memory...' scenario
BWA Audit 7: List navigation Attributes, Restricted Key Figures, Calculated Key figures for BWA
(Hasso's vision did not need to review objects that slow BWA processing speeds, but right now we will need to this to succeed.
BWA Audit 6: More accurate BWA support and admin from customer for Polestar
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or administration as his vision can answer any question. I tend to differ for unless the question is positioned in my database the system cannot possibly answer it. Try answering what is my current stock position for the next 4 weeks by week (consider stock, Purchase orders, returns, requisitions and give me true numbers) in a polestar environment and we see where I am coning from. I love the the vision but do not yet see the business solution and I accept the limitation may be mine)
BOE Audit 7: use of Automated Modeling InfoCubes for Polestar /BO Explorer
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling and for right now we have seen a many fold improvement in Query Performance simply with automated modeling. When the vision becomes a reality we can stop doing all this but till then....
Key Success factors:
Conduct a Polestar BVA Audit for Query Performance
1. Business participation, Ownership and Audits *****
2. Business and Information Architecture *****
3. Object duplication / redundancy audit *****
4. Automated optimization of existing Infocubes *****
5. Automated Modeling & Conversion of DSO’s into Infocubes *****
6. Automated BW Accelerator support and forecast ***
7. Automated Polestar Modeling ****
However, we cannot simply go full steam ahead without reviewing the past and define our CLEAR methodology.we cannot be CLEAR if the past is muddy. CLEAR is a message Hasso and Leo communicated to all 10,000 participants on site and 18,000 online Sapphire Attendees. Global SAP is about CLEAR and Business Intelligence.
CLEAR will eliminate inefficiencies so let us start with the foundations, i.e. auditing the house for BVA (Business Value Attainment).
These audits are applicable both for New and existing customers. i.e. even if you are 8 years with BW and do not have standards and processes clearly defined then we need to do that immediately, or if your Infocube models are not optimized then we need to do that...
Here is a list of BVA Chekclist that can be used as a KSF (Key Success form) that will analyze the foundation without and possibly need a signoff from key stakeholders.
BW Audit 1: BI Strategy alignment to Business Needs
(not 3rd party alignment but pure business, by business owners only. Hasso's vision answers business questions)
BW Audit 2: Audit Business participation, Standards, Processes, Org Structures and Governance against BVA
(Lack of standards leads to duplication and redundancies something Hasso clearly pointed we must eliminate)
BW Audit 3: Check Architecture for Best Practice against BVA
(Hasso's vision did not need an architecture but right now we will need to this to succeed)
BW Audit 4: check DSO and InfoCube design and automate modeling for the dream to come true.
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or objects but right now we will need to this to succeed. The cost of getting all data elements from Operating systems into BW Accelerator will be prohibitive for most companies so I am relying on the BW as a pass through layer for now)
BW Audit 5: Optimize InfoCube modeling: Read paper ‘Positioning InfoCube for SAP BI’ for details. Use automation as your only option for self service excellence.
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or objects but right now we will need to this to lower your BW Accelerator considerably. Each blade reduced can save a company 1 million dollars in 10 years)
BWA Audit 6: Slim BI Footprint in BI. Note reduce 1 blade and save ($1 million in 10 years)
(Hasso's vision did not recommend for ROI, but I need to run that as I come from a business background and cannot work with a '..given infinite money and memory...' scenario
BWA Audit 7: List navigation Attributes, Restricted Key Figures, Calculated Key figures for BWA
(Hasso's vision did not need to review objects that slow BWA processing speeds, but right now we will need to this to succeed.
BWA Audit 6: More accurate BWA support and admin from customer for Polestar
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling or administration as his vision can answer any question. I tend to differ for unless the question is positioned in my database the system cannot possibly answer it. Try answering what is my current stock position for the next 4 weeks by week (consider stock, Purchase orders, returns, requisitions and give me true numbers) in a polestar environment and we see where I am coning from. I love the the vision but do not yet see the business solution and I accept the limitation may be mine)
BOE Audit 7: use of Automated Modeling InfoCubes for Polestar /BO Explorer
(Hasso's vision did not need modeling and for right now we have seen a many fold improvement in Query Performance simply with automated modeling. When the vision becomes a reality we can stop doing all this but till then....
Key Success factors:
Conduct a Polestar BVA Audit for Query Performance
1. Business participation, Ownership and Audits *****
2. Business and Information Architecture *****
3. Object duplication / redundancy audit *****
4. Automated optimization of existing Infocubes *****
5. Automated Modeling & Conversion of DSO’s into Infocubes *****
6. Automated BW Accelerator support and forecast ***
7. Automated Polestar Modeling ****
News from SAPPHIRE/ASUG
The show was tremendous and the focus razer sharp.
In 2008 ASUG alone had almost 2 times the attendance that both ASUG & SAPPHIRE had this year. time are bad, we need to assure BVA (Business Value Attainment), and wastage is no longer an option.
Gartner announced that 1,500 CEO's had made BI their #1 priority in the 2009-12 period in january and then again in February 2009.
Leo followed Suite at Sapphire/ASUG at Orlando. Bill McDermott and Hasso followed suite. Have released a paper 'Roadmap to Leo/Hasso vision, Sapphire 2009'
What was established by Leo was stabalized by Bill and then forecasted by Hasso. As one walked out of the keynote presentation there was little else on the screen other than polestar, Oh! sorry BO Explorer on 50% of hte screens.
The message is CLEAR 'BI is recession proof'.
What Sapphire forgot to mention and Gartner clearly stated is that 'Doing it right is important to derive value from your BI Investments' & that business must now take ownership and IT, and technology, must become but an internal service provider to business needs.
If you derived 90% expected BVA after your BW project went live, whenever, then raise your hand. I dont have to be there but there are very few hands being raised.
If you thing that BW has a 90% possibility, from a technology and functionality point of view, of meeting your initial goals then raise your hands.
I can see a lot of hands probably being raised, some hesitently.
I can assure you it is possible
The key is doing it right..
I wrote a paper in 1996 on doing it right with SAP, then in 2001 on doing it right with BW and now it is 'Back to the Past' (quote Hasso) for I am forced to write the same paper once again.
Just also released a 9+3 reasons BI Fails that has 9 reasons given by gartner in 2006 and 3 of mine from the war zone that I feel compliment the paper.
Things have not changed - but they must.
Lets do it right this time
In 2008 ASUG alone had almost 2 times the attendance that both ASUG & SAPPHIRE had this year. time are bad, we need to assure BVA (Business Value Attainment), and wastage is no longer an option.
Gartner announced that 1,500 CEO's had made BI their #1 priority in the 2009-12 period in january and then again in February 2009.
Leo followed Suite at Sapphire/ASUG at Orlando. Bill McDermott and Hasso followed suite. Have released a paper 'Roadmap to Leo/Hasso vision, Sapphire 2009'
What was established by Leo was stabalized by Bill and then forecasted by Hasso. As one walked out of the keynote presentation there was little else on the screen other than polestar, Oh! sorry BO Explorer on 50% of hte screens.
The message is CLEAR 'BI is recession proof'.
What Sapphire forgot to mention and Gartner clearly stated is that 'Doing it right is important to derive value from your BI Investments' & that business must now take ownership and IT, and technology, must become but an internal service provider to business needs.
If you derived 90% expected BVA after your BW project went live, whenever, then raise your hand. I dont have to be there but there are very few hands being raised.
If you thing that BW has a 90% possibility, from a technology and functionality point of view, of meeting your initial goals then raise your hands.
I can see a lot of hands probably being raised, some hesitently.
I can assure you it is possible
The key is doing it right..
I wrote a paper in 1996 on doing it right with SAP, then in 2001 on doing it right with BW and now it is 'Back to the Past' (quote Hasso) for I am forced to write the same paper once again.
Just also released a 9+3 reasons BI Fails that has 9 reasons given by gartner in 2006 and 3 of mine from the war zone that I feel compliment the paper.
Things have not changed - but they must.
Lets do it right this time
What is a Value Architect?
Someone asked me at sapphire what a Value Architects role is in BI.
A Value Architect is a strategist for attaining the same acronym BVA (Business Value Attainment).
My primary goal has been to raise awareness of the value of good planning, knowledge, decisions based on BVA checks and balances, i.s. assure business value at the end of the tunnel.
My secondary goal is to assist customers maximize their business value benefits that can be derived from a fundamental methodology and process oriented data warehouse management and administration - review Value Attainment.
My third priority is to work directly with clients to attaine P1 and P2.
I remain technology agnostic, though frankly have a SAP bias, as have worked with SAP BIW, BW, BI, BW and probably to become BIW so its a full circle, form the last 10 years. Worked with Informaix and Oracle Data Warehouses for 4 years prior to that. BVA is my goal and technology and IT are mostly service providers.
i have a short checklist that lets you evaluate if you need a BI Business Value Architect or not.
Hope that answers the questions.
A Value Architect is a strategist for attaining the same acronym BVA (Business Value Attainment).
My primary goal has been to raise awareness of the value of good planning, knowledge, decisions based on BVA checks and balances, i.s. assure business value at the end of the tunnel.
My secondary goal is to assist customers maximize their business value benefits that can be derived from a fundamental methodology and process oriented data warehouse management and administration - review Value Attainment.
My third priority is to work directly with clients to attaine P1 and P2.
I remain technology agnostic, though frankly have a SAP bias, as have worked with SAP BIW, BW, BI, BW and probably to become BIW so its a full circle, form the last 10 years. Worked with Informaix and Oracle Data Warehouses for 4 years prior to that. BVA is my goal and technology and IT are mostly service providers.
i have a short checklist that lets you evaluate if you need a BI Business Value Architect or not.
Hope that answers the questions.
2 New BVA articles released
1. 'Roadmap to Leo/Hasso vision, Sapphire 2009
2. SCM Risk management and BI
2. SCM Risk management and BI
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