Here is what looks like some good advice in the form of insightful story about an exchange between drunk and a priest. A drunk sat down on a subway next to a priest.. His tie was stained, his face was plastered with lipstick, and a half-empty bottle was sticking out of his torn coat pocket. He opened his newspaper and began reading. After a few minutes the man turned asked, “Say Father,what causes arthritis?” The priest replied, “My Son, it’s caused by loose living, being with wicked women, too much alcohol, sleeping around with prostitutes and lack of a bath.” The drunk muttered , “Well, I’ll be darned,” Then returned to his paper. The priest, thinking about what he had said, nudged the man and apologized. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?” The drunk answered, “I don’t Father. I was just reading that the Pope does.” The story concluded saying: When someone asks you a question make sure you understand it before answering” . . . → Read More: Do you make sure you understand the question before you answer?
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We rightfully focus on Business intelligence as the way to manage mass amounts of data. This no brainer gives us access to markets with wider spreads of control and reduces or even sometimes completely eliminate costs. There is no argument in a growing business that using technology to create new markets, make or processes and change or reduce what can be an alarming increase in process inefficiencies that emerge as a business changes. But it must be done with management brains still in gear and their eyes on the ball to avoid what are my be obvious disasters. . . . → Read More: Does aiming to make decisions ahead of there time bring new issues? I know it is so often said that figures can lie, but lies cannot figure. Or can they? The trouble is suspended disbelief conditioning starts when we are small with fairytale stories This week I got a report from NYC Parking Ticket with the full set of New York City accounts for 2010 attached . As I read them it seems no wonder they are losing money. I you want to know how not to do accounts take a look. . . . → Read More: City Extra: New York City lesson on how not to manage performance. Many people don’t realize the simplicity that comes when they have a reporting database to pull all their information together in a workflow based setup. This lets everyone see and believe all their relevant data from anywhere at anytime. Being able to find a solutions to meet all criteria is the key to answer the question often asked about where and when to start. In fact getting controls can start anywhere in the cycle and even small pieces to solves an immediate problem and then take it from there. . . . → Read More: When should businesses upgrade systems to pull together the taxing tasks to plan ahead, maintain control & efficiently close the books? Sometimes precious metals are not where we expect them. The slurry pump, used in fine mineral extraction to sift thru residual mud to find metallic gold, is akin to an analytics based reporting systems used to finding information gold in residual data. Some also call this data mining. It seems business Intelligence as it is evolving now is it not just about having a single source of data all stored in one place. but more about having a continued ability to create reliable access to mine lots of information that many be stored once in more than place. . . . → Read More: Turning Slurry to Gold. In sport, it is quite fascinating to see how a top tennis player can react to a ball traveling at 190 miles per hour. From an arm chair watching as a youth I have listened to commentators who could articulate how they did it and I recall once hearing that the player . . . → Read More: Is being a Master in sport and business to do with having good information Lately, I read a lot about the high take up of Business Intelligence in organizations and wonder why. Like baking a cake Business intelligence is not new. Getting timely information in formatted reports with the ability to drill down to get more detail and do analyses is a fundamental of any business. When . . . → Read More: CFO job, like a cake is to cooking: is about reporting business performance In Melbourne late last year Lindsay Fox, founder and Chairman of LINFOX, was the key-note speaker to an Australia Thailand Business Council seminar attended by around 100 participants. The seminar was not about transport but about providing insights into Thailand’s political and economic situation for people seeking to do business in there. Thai Ambassador to Australia, Dr. Kriangsak, also made an eloquent and informative address expanded on the opportunities now wide open with the Thai –Australia Free Trade agreements in place. The web has the full story. . . . → Read More: Lindsay Fox, the Thai Ambassador to Australia and others talk about Australians doing Business in Thailand where success is all about building sustainable relationships. This week I visited a company that employs about 2,000 people. As I looked at the organization charts I wondered what they all did. I was there was to advise on their business process and for that it seemed I had a daunting task to understand their work. A management course some years . . . → Read More: Do you know that knowing you don’t know what you don’t know can be empowering? As US companies look at ways to balance the books it is bringing opportunity that Industry leaders are spotting. The imbalance reduction, albeit slow and painful is happening with local supply culture changing too so it can compete . Other counties watching how the pendulum moves need to watch these dynamics as the US restore its balance of trade. . . . → Read More: Why are containers are the only cargo on container ships retuning to China and what are the opportunities this brings? People who make things happen,need rules. Sticking to their knitting is one. Those who don’t fail trying to do all things for all people. They also need to be clear about what they don’t know and find people who do. The rule for handling things that they don’t even know they don’t know . . . → Read More: Can a Business Performance Management Process that measures outcomes increase business knowledge and its value and vice versa? If big, old, traditional BI companies are going to find their way from the back room to the living room and kitchen where people live, they’ll need ….. ……………………As an attention grabber I just love this line, as it makes me want to read more. . . . → Read More: Stephen Few talks about living room challenges of Analytics Recently, at my firm we implemented a business intelligence (BI) system for a Centara Hotels and Resorts chain using Infor Performance Management. Being veterans in this domain we immediately knew this project was a little different. I want to now tell you that story, which about how this Business intelligence project took a quite different approach that paid off. It began when we considered the very first question: Where to start? It’s horses for courses when it comes to what needs doing first when adding a BI platform in any organization. And every organization is different. Be-it management culture, its maturity, its client mix, diversity and even how it sits in the market. But its Courses for horses that are needed to make the right choice. For some having a business intelligence tool it is perceived as adding a reporting layer to see the financials in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) That is good to allow conversations to add and compare budgets and plans. But others need something more. Integrating departmental access to operations data for such things as measuring marketing and daily revenue activity by category can also be join this with a Customer relationship management (CRM) system. That will then get to the deep detail and allow understanding of the variables that produce cause it so then plan business strategies (e.g understanding guest country of origin consumer habits allows better business performance on guest activity Know this and its worth is like being given gold as to tailor guest and such things as food and beverage outlet services to match. Understanding too which agent and or/ outlet is adding well to mix and the overall plan for new business is then easy and so much more empowering, With both an organic and strategic growth based system in place it can really start to hum as take more market share So enough of the motherhood stuff. I will now get to the heart of my story. . . . → Read More: Centara Case Study: For control of your Hotel Chain would you start by building a data warehouse or by adding Business Intelligence tool? Energy cannot be created nor destroyed; it can only change in form”. Predicting the reformation is the challenge. When you hear about data mining and the Clementine methodology; it is nothing to do with digging for precious metals or singing that old song by the same name around a miners’ camp fire. And the job of Data Mining certainly is No Free Lunch. “Data mining is not primarily the technology, it is the process, with business objectives at its heart. Experimentation is a key as is preparation more than half of every data mining process. At the heart of our very existences is our inquisitiveness. Analytics turns that into value. Understanding what data mining is all about is not just for academics and marketing gurus It is for all of us. . . . → Read More: It may not be all you need to know about doing “Data Mining” but reading some basics on how experts do is a good start. Here is a 4 minute video I did to talk about distractions. At the time I was involved in a project that had all the usual roadblocks and attention grabbers that can derail things. To some extent it is reflective. I do hope there is value for you. . . . → Read More: Distractions can be distracting but also work in your favour. We all know that part of selling is matching problems to solutions and that is an important service. But not all sales people play by these rules. So as a buyer the sting comes when you don’t need something but get hooked on the promise of what may lead to a better life. . . . → Read More: In this day and age do you believe a shonky salesman can still fool all of the people some of the time? This week in my subscriptions inbox was a post from a contemporary. Larry Berezin writes about a proposed law to Pay-the-Motorist-$100-when-a–Parking-Ticket-is-Dismissed, His regular blog is on legal issues around New York Parking. Berezin discusses the so called DenDekker Bill for a law to dis-incentivize rogue parking inspector rackets. This potentially exposes NYC to a $6M liability . . . → Read More: To stop erroneous dealing is it better to give a One Hundred Dollar Cash Back or a use a Performance Management system to fix the route cause? Last year, using Infor Performance Management solution we rolled out a very successful business intelligence solution for Krung Thai AXA. It was a winner which of course we claim was due to our skill to deploy this rich this world class software package. But the truth is business intelligence needs more than that to be a winner. It really works best when you either use it to create a winning team or you already have a winning team that wants to move to the next level. . . . → Read More: Why do winning teams use Business intelligence to win? A joint PwC and IT Governance Institute research paper, just released has perhaps a less enthusiastic opinion of IT’s contribution As explained by this figure 3 which form part of their finding to this question.”To what extent does your IT function inform the enterprise about potential business opportunities enabled by new technologies?” was:…….One-third of the respondents relayed that their IT function does not inform the enterprise of new business opportunities made possible by new technologies, or does so only to a limited extent. Another third indicated that such communication occurs only to some extent. Only one-third of enterprises can count on their IT department to provide this type of information—information that could create a competitive advantage. Implied in this is a call to action for IT management to better communicate and align IT’s capabilities to enhance business growth through innovation……… The study which may be very useful reflective reading to consider who drives IT is aimed at Executive Teams and IT professionals, and has 28 graphical figures with expanded findings under the embodied questioning elements. One-third of the respondents relayed that their IT function does not inform the enterprise of new business opportunities made possible by new technologies, or does so only to a limited extent. Another third indicated that such communication occurs only to some extent. Only one-third of enterprises can count on their IT department to provide this type of information—information that could create a competitive advantage. Implied in this is a call to action for IT management to better communicate and align IT’s capabilities to enhance business growth through innovation. The study which may be very useful reflective reading to consider who drives IT is aimed at Executive Teams and IT professionals, and has 28 graphical figures with expanded findings under the embodied questioning elements. . . . → Read More: To what extent does your IT function inform the enterprise about potential business opportunities enabled by new technologies? Traditionally any branded retailer, for example, knows good analytics and business intelligence are mandatory for category planning. Hence good BI systems with potent analytics capabilities are vital and must be kept up to date. If you are a business manager or information provider and don’t think you have or need a BI system you may find it there anyway but it is just called your reports. Then ask yourself the humming part of the question. If you find reporting is slow, fragmented and hard to access; or it is hard to drill into or do meaningful analysis and does not delver the information you need to move quickly on decisions, then it needs attention. One acid test is to ask yourself “does it constrain your ability respond to and understand the market behavior and constrain how quick you are to be able respond to it compared to your competitors. . . . → Read More: Is your Business Intelligence humming and if not why not; or do you actually need it? |
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