Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

In business intelligence projects, assembling the data is large part of the deal as you go about building an independent data warehouse or set one up in Business Intelligence reporting software itself.

The Pareto theory to focuses on 20% of effort to get 80% of the value does not work in business intelligence projects. You need to get 100% of the data right and cleaned up before it can be mapped and reported consistently.

Even cutting corners by doing a departmental business intelligence may work for a while. But in the end if it is not linked to the published finance results it will be soon be undermined and will eventually end in the scrap bin of good ideas that did not fly; along with those who attempted to fly them.

Using an enterprise level business Intelligence project as a focus to clean up data in itself is a great way to go. The benefits are most often immediate. In fact to get those jobs done any other way almost never happens as the business continues to struggle on with hybrid decision processes that hinder progress.

Building a consistent data-warehouse in fact is the real job in setting up business intelligence reporting. The problem there is cleaning up is often costly and the perception is by most that there is no problem or cleaning adds no value, so it gets left out of the value discussion.

As a Finance or IT manager how often have you heard, “We already have a good data warehouse and all we need is a Business intelligence tool to do our reporting from it.”

As one who lives in both worlds and in my case as a consultant too it actually tells me to beware to do much more proving work on the business case. And do more project due diligence work before locking in on contracts. 

In the case of the CFO or Business Vice President  championing the work, this should also be done before seeking the budget and letting procurement loose to go find a vendor and a competent consultant. Finding the bad data story after the fact, when the installed team and software is on deck, is far too late. No-one cares by then as they know you are between a rock and a hard place with little or no way out.

And if the business is performing well and the goal is for faster decisions information to maintain momentum, then  time to delivery as goal is seen as the most critical project driver. Then things like consistency are automatically assumed to be there or must be dealt with regardless of other change impact considerations.  But of course in this type of case given performance is relative in terms of these constraints, problems that most often show up are on the enterprise’s source systems themselves. So then the paradigm shift as a goal is stalled and the project, which may get off to a great start, quickly falters as these issues surface.

So it actually does take a great deal of resolve, process change management and team work to agree consistent business rules at all levels to solve the issues. That is at the heart of it all. And it is what can trip you up if you don’t stay focused and get it under control. The rest of the work is really just technical and is quite straight forward with limited risk.

Hence in well thought through projects where the value of cleaning is recognized and the correct value focus is brought to bear, it can pay for the project many times over. In such cases this should be recognized as a business benefit to be targeted and not just left as a by-the-way or left out as a buyer beware tactic to get unknown issues solved and cost savings on the cheap.

And in the end who cares what BI tool we use. The truth is if you don’t use one you are foolish as the disciplines they bring alone are worth the money, I should quickly add that this only applies if they are setup by people who actually do know what they are doing. I have seen too many IT selves with software still its shrink packed box never opened. Or when it does it is badly used by installation novices. As one of my software vendor contemporaries said to me recently

“if you don’t have a competent data management team included in your BI project, then I hope you don’t choose my software as I don’t need the reputation”

As too often we aim for the utopian state to exploit what comes only after the hidden work is done. getting there is often actually where the value is as your conversations across the business sort-out the issues in a more natural way. So seeing it as a burden and a delay to project is folly. Doing this will invariably cause frustration and loss of focus and may cause it to even falter and/or fail.

More to the point business leaders who provide budgets for this work, who may also have been part of the evolution that unknowingly or otherwise create the issues, invariable underestimate what it will takes to fix them. They must understand it takes momentum and motivation to get the tough and dirty job of cleaning done. And that business intelligence is about their future and not just some fancy reporting process that sends emails on delinquent performance and helps cuts the costs of doing things in spreadsheets.

As sponsors entitled to see more visible progress to the end game solution that they approved the budget for, they  should call to account project managers to bring to attention any value that gets the money back earlier than expected. By simply enforcing standards and making data process improvements before the project is even completed will delver this.

Hence the value is in the understanding the secondary benefit of cleaning up data and continually selling the value of the process it takes to get that work done is vital.

It is not just all about setting up dashboards and dials to help focus and understand the data but also about having consistent data that has universal acceptance and integrity.  This combination in turns allow business intelligence to be used to create an intelligent business

For many of us doing this do we really need to rethink our mission and how we manage.

 

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In a related post Failing-address-data-quality-and-consistency here are some very key points

Don’t fall into these traps. Don’t assume anything about the state of the data. The areas where data quality and inconsistency problems lurk:

• Data quality within systems-of-record applications may be “masked” by corrections made within reports or spreadsheets created from this data. The people who told you the data is fine might not even be aware of these “adjustments.”
• Data does not age well. Although data quality may be fine now, there’s always the chance that you’ll have problems or inconsistencies with the historical data. The problems can also arise when applications like predicative analytics need to use historical data.
• Data quality may be fine within each systems-of-record application, but may be very inconsistent across applications. Many companies have master data inconsistency problems with product, customer and other dimensions that will not be apparent until the data is loaded into the enterprise Data warehouse.

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I had some interesting exchanges recently that took me to a UK  firm who specialize in data cleansing, They reminded of a survey we did some time ago that asked the question, How do Business Intelligence solutions provide value?

Of the 86 replies the answers varied in weight but it was clear Sales Growth and Operating Performance are the top issues.

In my discussion with Chris Johnson at CNM in the he said

Companies waste so much money and cause harm to the environment by not regularly cleansing their data. Data is one of our biggest assets. You wouldn’t drive around in your Ferrari or work in your high rise office block without getting it cleaned once in a while would you?

Clean data means happy informed customers and less environmental impact to our planet.

In my personal opinion it should be a legal/moral obligation to clean data regularly.

This was very sound advice which I was looking for to help me in my work in Business Intelligence that relies so much on clean data.

As I looked through the impressive product list at CNM, (Yes it is one of those coveted TLA names) it seemed to focus on these needs so well so I decided to keep it as a reference list of issues that people in business face.

For example in their How can we help? section it bring to the forefront familiar issues with some pertinent questions that just make think about the quality of your data.

Telephone Number Appending

Have you got a list of contacts without a phone number? We have one of the most efficient and accurate telephone numbering services in the UK. more…

TPS Screening

Need to comply with the law? Our TPS matching service can flag or remove TPS registered records from your data. more…

Tracing Services

Lost contact with your debtors? Our tracing service is second to none, we not only find new addresses for your debtors we can also give you an indication of how likely they are to repay their debts. more…

Data Supply

Need campaign specific profiled data? Then look no further. At CNM we have access to the most up-to-date data available in the UK. more…

Their full list of Core Services, in context also provides valuable insights about uses of data. A most useful resource.

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Disclaimer

I have no interest at all nor do I get any benefit from this firm aside from the value of having connected at an intellectual level.  I just like what they have to say hence I am sharing it.

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In the wake of the Greek financial crisis in Europe, world stock markets, including the beleaguered US ones, last week had downslides. Late in the week Australian markets also dipped but they are all now bouncing back.

A mate in the US I spoke to this morning said after yesterday trading,

“I need another rally to recapture losses from last week.”

As with many like me we have been concerned for our retirement and investment plans. Even short-lived shocks make us nervous as regained confidence in the Australian market has been supported by a strong currency with strong trading ties with Asia.

To help understand this more I got a timely email this morning from my financial advisors, Mathews Steer. It carried a tag line “Where do I go from here” and went on to say:

Last week the US and Australia saw some extraordinary market movement for asset classes across the board.

A weaker Asian market during Thursday (thanks to China being down 4%) set the tone for European markets to be weaker when they opened on Friday. Along with continued concerns over the protests in Greece put additional pressure on the Euro, which fell to levels last seen at the beginning of 2009.

Investors had potentially been looking for some additional information in relation to debt default risks in Greece and the possible contagion in to other European countries from the scheduled meeting of the European Central Bank, but this didn’t eventuate, and uncertainty weighed upon the market. That said, the Greek parliament voted in favour of the austerity measures from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund on Thursday, and there will be more news in the coming weeks providing further clarity.

This more negative tone flowed into US markets last week, even though no new fundamental news came to light. The negative sentiment was vastly exacerbated after the market fell abruptly in Thursday afternoon trade. Speculation that a trading error occurred saw a sudden drop in the market triggered a barrage of program stop-loss selling, which saw the S&P 500 index down 8.5% at one stage. Buying quickly returned but the market didn’t have enough time to pull back all the losses , eventually ending down 3.2% for the day. The sell-off also spurred safe haven buying in gold, US treasuries and the US dollar.

The reaction last week did spark panic and uncertainty, and with the memories from two years ago still fresh in investors’ minds, many people may be asking whether we’re going to have another massive sell-off. But economies are healing from the aftermath of the economic crisis. They’re in a much better position than they were, and markets have reflected this to a large extent, however, there is still much healing to be done and there will be bumps along the way, economies are well traversed on that recovery road.

The Australian market opened sharply lower last Friday but by close of trade it had progressively recovered some of the drop and has continued to recover this morning.

Markets, remain highly sensitive to both good and bad news, which will cause significant short term volatility, such as what we are seeing at the moment. Investors like to have a degree of certainty around issues and when that is not provided, fear can dominate investment decisions.

But an investment strategy should always focus on the longer term goals rather than reacting to short term market noise, which has been exacerbated by panic and the events over the last few days and needs to be put in context of the improving bigger picture.

If you have any questions about this email or your personal situation please contact Geoff Steer or Anthony Flapper on 03 9325 6300

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About

Matthews Steer say when it comes to business, owners and managers face significant challenges. Underpinning those challenges are 4 mindsets that often need work …

• the lack of peace of mind around their business
• the lack of confidence to grow their businesses
• the lack of confidence of their banker which stifles growth due to lack of access to capital
• an inability to translate business success into personal wealth

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When flying a plane rapid real-time feedback with up-to-date information is vital. This relies on executive skill being able to read the instruments with on the ground teams to support them to get evaluate and pass on other key information for zenith to nadir control and for external risk impacting decisions. In business, it is no different.

I recently saw a Business intelligence job going at News Corporation.  It is a new function to support the business there where the Executive say the sky is the limit. I know the National Information Manager at News Corporation so I dropped him a note and asked him about the trend for such information management roles.

Such jobs now offering were not even about 5 years ago.  And especially to work for someone with experience and depth of understanding and with a leader track record to use information to make it happen. In the past such jobs would have been posted under planning and would have reported to planning manager. The emphasis and difference now is that business intelligence is about information and driving the business with both strategic and tactical analysis to give planning real teeth.

In his reply to me Steve Bennett said,

Like you, I really hope that more of these roles will appear. It has been a long time coming.

The good news is that I now believe that more companies are joining the ‘information arms race’. It also puts the heat on people such as ourselves to deliver the results long talked about. So life will be interesting in the coming years.

If I have to live with pressure, then this is my favourite sort.

Steve Bennett National Information Manager at News Corporation

Here are key points is the job specification

1. Inspire those around you by excelling at the exploitation of information. Make it a core competitive capability of News.

2. Create the national information strategy and the infrastructure that is going to drive performance over the coming years.

3. Mentor national projects enhancing News Limited’s information management capability and ensuring the usefulness of information.

4. Enhance and maintain our national business analysis capability through highly structured thinking with a solution focus.
The substance of his note tells its own story about the responsibility for information and how it is used doesn’t it?

 

About Steve Bennett

Being no newcomer to business intelligence himself and someone who has been in strategic and sharp ends of BI and IT since its inception Steve Bennett has also kept company with heavy weights like Howard Dresser and other such notables as a fellow Gartner Guru based in Europe and North America. In Australia now and based on Sydney he heads up the information function of News Corporation, the Media giant, to spearhead and mentor its competitive performance.

I am an regular reader of his blog http://analytics.typepad.com/

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When learning the skills of selling, the hard way I might add being a finance man, my colleague and mentor at the time, took me aside and said,

“You have two ears, two eyes and one mouth. To be effective in sales you need to use them in the same proportions.”

I never forgot that lesson and when I fall behind, be-it in following, leading, presenting, selling or just trying to motivate myself or others on a mission, I check if I have that in balance.

This lesson resonated with me again this week in a discussion with the Mike Plaxton CEO at Krungthai AXA Life Insurance in Thailand. He carries the burden of Executive Leadership as part of this multinational Financial Services Industry Group.

To stay in touch with his sales force of nearly 10,000 direct selling agents and financial advisors in the well-organized Krungthai Bank, he has a luminous team who help them all deliver outstanding results. Last year for example, in the mist of all the gloom and dome Krungthai-AXA Life delivered a massive 30%+ growth and is maintaining that momentum again in 2010.

In the context of deploying a new performance based business intelligence system, we were talking about practical ways to generate more quality business and lift the momentum. My interest was in exploiting the business change value my organization Shernox Group had delivered with the implementation a data warehouse based system using INFOR PM as its centerpiece.

I asked him how he planned to use his new BI capability to drive sales and business development campaigns. In his response he gave some great best practice insight.

“I spend my time in conversations asking questions as I try answering none. My job is to listen so I can help people focus their efforts in discovering the answers they need to do their job from the data they collect on their job. And to engage their hearts and minds to focus so they know they are well supported.

When I talk more and listen less, I only engage their minds and my ego.

Having our up-to-date performance information on tap and in sync that we can trust and all share, means we can have very good conversations. And I can listen more to help them increase their momentum. My job is to get them to use the information they have by questions that help them understand our business.

Information is knowledge and knowledge is power – their power not mine.”

- Michael George Plaxton  CEO Krungthai AXA Life Insurance Co Ltd

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About: Krungthai AXA Life Insurance Co Ltd

AXA; the leading European insurance company is a shareholder and partner with Krung Thai Bank PCL of  Krungthai – AXA Life Insurance. In Financial Markets AXA is positioned as a Global Leader in Financial protection.

Krung Thai Bank PCL symbolized by the “Wayupak bird”, is one of the leading Thailand banks. It proudly boasts one of the most established and enviable branch networks and brings to the partnership a truly dynamic value with its Bank Assurance Channel, a key contributor to the business success.

With impressive growth under Mr. Plaxton’s leadership, in terms of New Business, Krungthai AXA is ranked 5th on the leader board in a field of 24 major players in the market.

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According to The Economist Feb 25th 2010, article headlined The Data Deluge, using data mining techniques credit-card companies lead the way to identify such things as fraudulent activity.

Using data this way Insurance firms too are more able to spot the scams. For example accident claims on a Monday are more likely to be staged as such claimants tend to assemble friends as false witnesses over a weekend. 

To do this rules based data crouching thru millions of transactions lets them see which cards that are likely to be stolen, and which claims that are likely to be dodgy.

This report in its full context is about the unchecked data explosion occurring

It reports on its value and use to include benefits of data mining, also known as business intelligence, and the risks to both business and personal information.

It is well worth a read…… “The Data Deluge”

 

Thanks to Steve Bennet at oz-analytics for alerted us to this.

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A new breed of manager is emerging to manage information. CIO teams who have provided BI tools to business departments are trending to use BI more strategically. Once a BI data warehouse and reporting platform is in place, if it integrates well with with Finance, CEO’s become quickly tuned in to the value of having reliable information to share to get momentum.

We all know as a team player being quick to score is important. But we also know the real game is played in the coaches’ box, where they have a full view. Here they have an ability to understand the total competitive state to plan tactics and execute plays. Being up to date and confident with good intelligence, as the runners bring back the field detail they can’t see, means they can control the game to win by handling things well as they happen.

With constant change being now such a part of life and post recession dynamics to contend with, the question is, ‘How do managers and coaches in business keep abreast of all this in a “win or die culture”. Like the game; those with a blend of strategic and tactical skills who have access to reliable business intelligence information are surviving well in the markets that no longer take prisoners.

My attention was raised on this subject by a question put David Brown, a business leader now living in Europe, as he talked of his real life experience in Asia; “Do today’s Managers have the skills to adapt to the current Economic Climate?”

His observation was that many in business still draw a blank when confronted by process metrics. A past CIO himself and now mentor, when speaking with CIO leaders his example highlights a concern about managers who don’t understand the value-add steps and risk that must be controlled to ensure money-in turns into more money-out.

 

I was constantly surprised by the lack of their knowledge of the tools that could help them better manage their Business. In one of my presentations at a Microsoft Seminar to CIO’s I used an example of an end-to-end process, “Cash-to-Cash”; and how the process could be decomposed into lower level processes allowing performance metrics to be applied to better manage their Working Capital. But I could see from the look on their faces that they did not understand and would not be able to communicate this approach to their Companies Management Team.

I repeated this presentation at a CIO Magazine event, where I was a keynote speaker, and once again could see a lot of blank looks on the audiences faces

                                                                         …. David Brown, Biz Performance

This got got me wondering if it is really is about knowing the tools or if it also about the focus of the managers who use them.

To most a Business Information (BI) specialist means the guy who takes care of the data and the systems that reports it.  And CIO’s, who often wear 2 hats do those jobs plus a whole lot more on technical infrastructure when IT is not separated out as a function.

On the other hand a Business Intelligence specialist (also BI), is the person who makes use of the data value to promote action to grow the business.  There is the dilemma as that person, who understands the outcomes and how to use and mange with information, lives in the business or in Finance.

Many CIO’s now recognize this BI Dilemma and when looking for for BI solutions they don’t just go to a BI Vendor for the answer. They are actually taking a more end to end approach by restructuring to blend with high end business teams to separate BI from the technical side. As they do they are also finding more demand for their time as BI redefines itself to focus on the information value to get and maintain that business momentum.

With this higher value by aligning business and IT to create intelligence centers, companies are now seeing the CIO move back more to coaches’ box. This is also seeing them reduce their time playing go fetch.

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There is so much conversation about social media, but it is not only network marketing media interested in exploiting iits potential. The criminal elements in our communities, it seems, are too interetsded to see how they can put it to use.

Are you one those people hooked on twitter who tells the world every time you leave home or go to some event.

If you do, think again before you this do next time. You may well be telling thieves to take advantage of you.

In his oz-analytics post this week headlined mining social media, Steve Bennett updated us on a site he found that detail how robbers can now see who is not at home using simple twitter stream search.

For many of us who have our emails on websites and public profiles, we may also seek to simplify our lives in the explosion of social networking. For this can join it all up on Facebook or similar sites. But beware what you include as it does not take super intelligence for someone to use this to put it together and then watch and wait till we tell them the coast is clear.

Any robber with a phone and a twitter account, may get an open invitation from to take what he likes because as we tell him we are not at home. A simple key word search on twitter give easily robbers the scoop on you . If you don’t believe me, do a search and see how many people say they are not at home. The web on the phone also provides maps and satellite photos of your street and your house to make the plundering job even easier And it is even easier with an alerting tool to send an email when someone says they’re not home.

The only issue then is it may get a bit crowded at your house if more than one robber turns up with the same idea.

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Continuing the theme on getting BI value,  a recent Forrester article  Getting The Most Out Of BI , warns against getting too excited about lower initial costs in deploying BI options.

Estimates are at least 80% of any BI effort lies in data sourcing, data integration, data cleansing and modeling,. "So while lower-cost BI alternatives will save you some dollars in building reports and dashboards, that’s only 20% of your cost and effort," Forrester says.

Forrester researcher also goes on to say  more effective use of BI tools can lead to more successful sales and marketing efforts. And the technology can also be used to motivate employees by creating performance management environments that reveal each worker’s productivity relative to his peers, stimulating healthy competition. "Not only does such information help workers make better decisions, it encourages them to to improve their standing in the organization."

Once you add a BI tool to an organization the bar is lifted as performance becomes transparent. Cockroaches, as many refer to them and some can be big ones, will always appear in the data as you lift the rocks in a BI implementation. They must be eliminated as they will undermine the value of the BI data and the worth of the tool. If a number is wrong or does not reconcile to another, in a BI environment it gets quickly challenged  As a result the organization ends up with higher quality at all levels.

Underestimating the data cleaning effort is folly and must seen as part cleaning things up that have also been previously hidden. Housekeeping to harmonize data is a constant process and part running the business and not a just a once off. But getting it focused and under managed control is critical and takes time. 

BI projects may well be constrained by data quality at first. But they get the issues in the open very fast and very well so they can be seen. The added cost of resolving then must be recognized and born, but the payback in the end is much higher too.

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Harmonizing organization data and getting easy access to information are mission critical values for IT.

These are also quite often hard to meet without a high risk investments to create a data warehouse.

BI tools can achieve this in a low risk way as a natural outcome of seeking business benefits, like increased quality in managing sales growth.

In many organizations IT strategies champion and support BI implementations. Their aim is  to enroll the business to improve this critical back end service as a strategic way to remove constraints that limit achievement of business performance objectives.

It is interesting that our poll, so far, sees responses largely on the business values with these two high value items lagging. (Ralph Eastman – Poling the BI Value)

Perhaps business leaders should consider how they can align IT on the value of BI to IT and challenge this critical function to consider the value they can bring with BI on a wider scale.

Without a solid foundation of harmonized easy to get to data, none of the other values are possible.

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Do you struggle to get the numbers you need to manage your business? Many others do too!

Dashboard reports are of great value when they always reflect the reality of the here and now.

And when they come to life with always current information and an ability to rotate perspectives and drill to detail in moments it gives a buzz that, for some, is better than sex.

This week in our firm, our professional team in Asia at Sherwood Group Consulting using Infor PM. rolled out the preliminary design and a working prototype of a BI tool for a large sales force based organization.

Impressive, beyond our expectation, excellent and just what we need were some of the comments, along with it can do this that and the next thing on analysis.

It made me feel good to hear that, but the truth is, all we did was assemble their data and present it in an homogenized way in a BI web tool.

In this early adopter stage in their business, with warts and all and unfinished screens, this had people just so pleased to see their data assembled and in a meaningfully presented way, in their familiar organization structures. In the end, despite any effort it may take to clean up the data, that is all that matters.

They were also excited that  it presented as useful information and that they could drill down  immediately. This meant there was no need to go elsewhere for more information. Canned reports can be reduced as people will already have what they need to run their operations.

With much of the hard work done, as this BI tool gets more populated on a daily basis it may never get past the design stage . Why so? Because it will likely be constantly changing as the business learns how to manage with it and matures its use. No issue there, as reflecting the most up to date view of both the data and the organizations is what BI tools do well. Things like products, as they are added to the database, then appear in context, as the numbers come in. This also occurs without any need to change the reports.

Over time, in any business, everyone knows that the dynamics that created a report in the first place will mature as intuitive understanding of the base level data evolves. This often leads to legacy reporting being no longer focused properly or even being relevant.  As for the myriad of reports that have been specified, in our BI rollout, there are now many questions as to their need.

For example on any given day in the month a business typically needs to be able to see a single value of its sales.

  And then to be able to drill down into the lower levels and the details, like products, the customer or group, the business and channel it was sold through and even the salesperson who sold it.

Being able to see the invoice detail may be useful too.

And to be sure sales are profitable, operations need product gross profits all at the same levels,

Canned reports typically only report at the end of the month and then only in summary, which is far too late to stop any real time attrition.

Vital information like the component cost and who suppliers are plus breakdowns of department activity costs that went into to production and getting things delivered is a nightmare to get hold of.  Even Blind Freddy knows that a canned reports only tell us to go looking. But with BI tool it does the looking too and  it is a snap.

Canned reports simply fail to deliver at the levels needed to run a business. And even if they get half way there they are slow to produce and clumsy to use.

Using traditional reports can be as unwieldy as the middle ware process that prepares them. In larger organizations this is typically the cause of much of the frustration where the dynamics of matrix cross functions see lags dilute focus and time to take action.

So why do so many organizations persist with traditional dashboards and summary reports that just focus on fixed or functional areas?

And why do they persist in spending valuable time to dig for the detail, by going to another report or a listing of the raw data, to do further analysis?

At the grass roots, getting sales information may be quite easy, just by listing the invoice detail. And if your supply chain and costing people are on the ball, costing sheets will be there as well to show supplier and department activity and costs for each product.

If you think BI is new then take a look around. The tools have been there for decades but are often lost in the functional Sales Hype or in IT speak.  You will find managers using sales invoiced and sales order lists to get sales information! And if they don’t have a decent system to roll it all up and group it, a personal spreadsheet will likely be  doing  the job and it will also work for analysis. But what ever way they do it, linking product sales and cost information will mean they can calculate gross profit on each product sold, as it occurs.

With  this information, even in such tools as an Excel  pivot table, it can easily show total sales for the day month or year for any business by channel customer and salesman etc.. And by adding a dimension for budgets and agreeing on targets, performance can track that way too.  So you see, BI is nothing new.

In large and small organizations alike it is that simple. Bigger guys have more resources to access their database directly with enterprise BI tools that allow this “business intelligence” to be applied directly to the raw data. But the process is no more or no less the same. They use the raw information to first rollup then drill down and analyze in detail so they can ask questions that allow them to take actions to correct matters of concern.

But even for small guys, having disparate systems and processes still leaves a quandary. Organizations who have flattened to cut out middle managers who once did the analysis, see direct access to detail no longer a choice but an imperative. Small guys need it too as middle managers have always been a luxury so they generally only do BI  themselves the hard way.

These days with efficient and well organized transaction systems, adding a simple BI tool on the top allows executives and mangers to see the big picture then get straight to the detail.

Managed the same way, information like sales activity can mean sales people can see the value of their weekly activity such as lead generation and lead conversion and so on.

Here are a couple of examples

Sales Activity

By collating sales activity for example, lead generation and conversion can be measured weekly. With numbers of leads generated, calls made, meetings booked, and prospects qualified, sales closed, and sales completed added to tracking information, the performance can be measured to focus time on helping the back enders .

This is vital to ensure sales numbers are achieved even for small teams but even more so in large widely spread sales forces. For  good salespeople they do this anyway and they also keep track of commission they will get.

Sales Development Impact

For cross functional activity measuring  the value of sales force development and customer service impact is vital to know where to focus to grow the business. By tracking these activities to a salesperson’s results makes it much easier to focus on   areas that need development to improve.

Pre and post training evaluations are also very easy to see once you connect the development activity to the sales person’s results.

Managing business is not about chasing reports but about systematically managing the numbers on  sales and operational aspects that drive the business.

Large or small, without good business intelligence, access to data  is still seat of the pants or intuitive management, despite the plethora of static reports that continue. In large organizations with thousands of players, reactive response management is too slow. So the need for a BI tool is a “No Brainer”.

Dashboard reports too are of great value if they always reflect the reality of the here and now. And when they come to life with always current information with an ability to rotate perspectives and drill to detail in moments it gives a buzz that for some is better than sex.

In the past as we focused on speeding up or reporting processes our aim was  spend more time on analysis and less on the preparation.

These days with the business intelligence transparency maturing in organizations, it is letting managers and operations alike get to the heart of their issues on a day to day basis. This means they spend less time in analysis more time in action.

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Sherwood Group Consulting        Performance Management matters Since 1993. Sherwood Group Consulting has been advising business on best practice in reporting and business performance management. As specialists, Sherwood Group Consulting has high expertise in key aspects of business management and finance across a wide spectrum of business domains. Using leader software and working closely with vendors we add change management and project delivery services to the mix to make it all work.   Australia – Executive Director – Gordon Wood Essendon Fields House, Level 2, 7 English Street Essendon VIC 3041  +613 9018 5302 Facsimile: +613 9438 4278  Thailand -  Director – Kitipan Kitbamroong Level 29, Offices at Centralworld 999/9 Rama I Road Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Phone: +66 2207 2340 Facsimile:+66 2 207 2626 . Singapore – Director – Larry Russell Level 42, Suntec Tower Three 8 Temasek Boulevard Singapore 038988 Phone: +65 6866 3340 Facsimile:   +65 6866 3636 Europe / Germany Director – David Brown Springiersbacherstrasse 10, 56862  Punderich, Germany. Phone: +49 6542963578  Mobile: +49 1578 497 8614

 

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I recently had a chance to join a Kickoff meeting of a very interesting BI project.

Normally stakeholders and key players are invited to join such meetings as they share an interest in the outcome of the project.

Stakeholders also bring a unique value to the project, especially in the beginning, aligning together to support it to get off to a good start.

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According to an interview with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz by Suttichai Yoon of National Multimedia, Asia itself has a huge domestic potential by having a large population base with savings and a wide demand for investment.

This is extremely true especially when your business is a service base and revenues are generated from services. Services business more or less focuses more on domestic economy compared to international trade like US or Europe.

In an article “THE CFO’S ROLE IN THE DOWNTURN”written by Colin Walter from PWC. He mentioned

Cash is king: Companies that came out of the last recession on top had an average net debt-to-equity ratio before the downturn of half that of the companies that were not successful. They also had more cash on hand.

and Taking out the wrong costs can be worse than taking out no costs at all.

I’ve meet business owners that focuses on cutting cost no matter what, the question is “where in the company should we start focusing?” Confidence on these questions comes from a reliable management information as cited by Colin that;

Reliable Management Information: The more volatile the market, the more you need to be able to trust your information.

Curiously, most companies stick with their same old reporting templates and key performance indicators (KPIs) because "this is how we’ve always done it". Forecasting and scenario modeling are critical in volatile markets.

Service companies are now likely starting to invest in building their data warehouse and investing in Business Intelligent to support their business needs in volatile markets.

Those already served or underway will benefit especially now as the economy is showing signs of up turn.. Those who don’t begin  to address this and get this capability will surely have difficulty to sustain

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Business Intelligence is like an information scratch pad. Many people  struggle with the concepts of business Intelligence, the activity of gathering business data in a sensible way that can be used to make decisions

Like most things abstract, the process and outcomes may differ from person to person so in the end it is a personal definition.In a business performance sense however it is useful to decompose it into the activity rather than the process or science it covers.The process of reporting data is called reporting e.g. the printed phone bill. The process of analysis of data is called Data Analysis The ability to do both in combination to provide analytical reporting is generally the same as Business Intelligence  Here are some examples of business intelligence related to an improved financial proposition

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 Poor decisions are most often caused by lack of understanding, not lack of data. But another challenge is unquestioned acceptance of the business processes being measured.  At times many appear very logical, but are often obscured by the very data itself.

I notice when managers look at unacceptable results, they often do one of two things. Me too!! They either pick up the phone to call someone to ask for more information on why. Or they  pick up the mouse to dig deeper for the reason.  Once the answer comes,  corrective decisions are made. This tram line management style is a norm and the bias of most Performance Management systems. It works well to make sure the process,  the “tram”, stays on the tracks.  But many fail to follow the learning rule that to improve you need to look around at things nearby that may be obvious.

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Figures can lie but lies cannot figure. That was a saying our business school lecturer would throw at our class to make sure we presented correct numbers in our stories.

There are many variations of this. Possibly the most nauseous, but still very useful is what we hear still being trooped out by IT people and software vendors is their aim to give us “The same version of the truth“.

But to be fair, these days in the transparent world of information and behavioral influence you need good systems for recall. Or to use another well warn cliché , “To remember your last lie”

Here is something out that makes this point.  Headed Obama Quietly Killed Two-Million American Muslims, the piece refers to conflicting estimates of Muslims living in America.

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Stephen Few and Nigel Pendse, are examples of business experts, each with quite distinctly different styles and modes of working. Both call it as they see it without fear or favor .

They can do so because they do the ground work and run their business in a way they can claim that right.

Pendse, is widely known and respected by all in the performance management business community that he serves on all continents,

Stephen Few, is a US based consulting specialist and author. His style is no nonsense to the point and he calls a  spade a spade.

Something each wrote recently under a clever headlines got my attention.

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Last month I visited a large retailer, who had asked our company to help them with a problem. Their diminished response to market capability had been magnified by key information not being available until way past the use-by date. This was  threatening their ability to make timely business decisions and remain competitive.

This was the picture I got when I looked at how useful their information was when it was ready 3 weeks into the month.

Best Response Time Value

Getting a handle on timely, accurate and useful data is a big issue in many organizations. I face this over and over again with clients. Even the very good ones, with lots of resources to solve the issues. still have problems. Those with large well organized data warehouses are particularly vulnerable as disparate information needs place demands on data delivery such that flexibility for change shrinks in time.

As we went about the discovery process to identify bottlenecks, I was reminded of an experience I had at Unoval now Chevron in 2002 when a project there uncovered some big issues in what they thought was good data. In that instance Chevron, had commissioned us to implement a large performance management system with planning workflow for their complex upstream exploration and production operations.

Early in that project we loaded 15 years of detail data into a backend analytical database. This included the next 3 year plan that had just been completed.  Although valuable data was visible early in the project, no formal business use was made of it until sign off and rollout strategies were completed. That meant it had it wait until all processes were competed nearly 5 months later.

About mid-term in the project,  as a routine, I was discussing progress with  the CFO.  He was the project’s chief sponsor and very switched on. At that meeting I tested a concern that buy-in was taking too long.

He just laughed and said, “Your team  have uncovered so many problems in our data, I am not surprised people are hard to engage. They are so busy chasing the bugs that have come out from under the rocks you turned over “.

That was my moment of truth in what went on to be a most successful project. It also set the mould for delivery value management of many similar projects since.

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A business colleague recently told me a success story of a small business. His client had acquired it and then significantly improved and transformed it. 

His  philosophy was, Small business survives only three 3 things namely (1) customer service feedback (2) well managed trust in your products and the people who deliver them and (3) care with planning and managing the cash. To manage and plan improvements, he used a simple fact based analytical  measurement methodology.

The background of the business, a restaurant, was that it was doing well with meals and refreshments in a good city location with a good mix of clients throughout the day and evening. It had reasonable turnover and was profitable by any standards.

The story begins when he took over. And It tells of the approach he took and the tools and methods he used. Incidentally his ideas up until recently were seen by many small operators as being out of reach and for big business only.  But as a professional businessman, our man saw it as just plain common sense and with experience, a must.

Initially as our new owner started to understand his new business, one thing he noticed was it had large swings on cooler days and he wondered how to fix that.

My colleague actually went there for dinner with his wife and his client told him about this. That lead to a short discussion on what information was in the Point of Sale (POS) cash register that had come with the business. It seemed it may reveal quite a lot, so they made a plan to meet next day to check it out.

When my colleague called for his bill he noticed quite a good POS information collection.  He wondered how far back the database went that kept the history of transactions. Typically, as his bill was itemized he knew it had products sold. He noticed too that it had a table number, ordered items, number of people in party, date, time bill paid and the waiter number plus more. All these were native facts collected that could help. He also found out when he asked the waitress about the process, that the systems could also record meal ordering and delivery times, and was designed to check kitchen lead and lag times.

He was then pleasantly surprised when his credit -card came back with a message saying  no charge. He thanked his host and confirmed their plan for the next day as he joked, about the ambient temperature for that service  time not being recorded and needing to look at that.

The next day when my colleague returned he found the database had information going back nearly 3 years. Interesting too, the prior owners, who rigorously trained their register staff to collect this information, but never used it except for daily tallying and checking customer transactions.

One problem he saw was the reports it gave were mostly static and screen based although they could be printed if you hooked printer. Of course being a front of house device it had limited access, which also limited opportunity to get any value from it.

The software package included was quite good, but functionally was workflow and transaction oriented for order recording and billing etc. One useful function in the database was a backend stock control and forward ordering interface.. But that had never been used if for no other reason than restaurants typically buy daily. Typical as with of most transaction based system, this too had no analytical reporting capability and comparative reporting was not possible.

By now the owner who was already good at planning and watching his key numbers, saw great value for this new information. He also realized this data could tell him a lot more than just how to cater for weather effect on his business. So he followed my colleague’s advice to invest in a business intelligence tool and some guidance on how to use it. He also networked the front desk machine so he had ready access in comfort to look at the information it held.

With this new found power and surprisingly with little effort to use it, the data he found was also quite good. Sadly still no temperature information showed up and the order and delivery times were not collected. But it did reveal a great deal about menus and time of day sales. With his analysis charts and comparative tables he could actually see the ebb and flow of the business activity through the day and over time periods. Some, like the daily and monthly revenue, he flagged to a dashboard for regular ready access.

Being able to simply compare what happened on a day to day basis or by week or same time last year and so on, was insightful and simple to interpret to make improvements. He even started trending daily activity looking for patterns, then walking about to see how he could improve things. Looking back at what sold well on certain times he found was also extremely valuable for planning menus.

As he learned more he had questions about his customer’s profiles and their habits and other external things like weather that drove business. It was by then he really began to understand what made his business tick.

One early step he took recording local weather information in his database> He also downloaded history from the weather bureau to look back on past patterns. Curiously he found just a few degrees change in day time temperature saw a big differences in demand for some items, while others had no weather correlation. He learned to understand this and switch his fair-weather only products to be, his quote, “LEMONADE STAND or CUP-OF-SOUP” and be more consistent.

In effect, he used his new business intelligence tool effectively to analysis and report on his business activity and be fully business aware of certain times, conditions and events in combination. He later added a modeling module, that further allowed him to set up and model his operational and business game plans in advance with great confidence.

The ability to recall menus in the database also removed doubt and memory issues. Succeeding chefs and the front of house staff could use this plan and be confident on menus that had worked best in the past. And importantly, they knew what had not performed, so did not make the same mistakes.

As he refined the business intelligence analysis he walked around and saw other influences on buying behaviors. Things like adjacent ambient noise levels he tested on his data and he then made format improvements to reposition things. He also looked at seat turn, location preferences and optimum occupancy mix (parties of 2′s and 3′s etc) and made changes to seating and service levels accordingly to increase volume.

One critical action from the weather analysis was to install clear plastic wind breakers and gas heaters on external areas that previously only favored fair weather. He also added cooling mist filtered overhead fans for hot days.

And being astute to maximize capacity he sought permits to have tables on the curbside for added fair weather coffee stop trade. This also enhanced visibility of the business. The extended area was a catalyst to him next acquiring the adjacent premises to open a complimentary sandwich and light refreshment bar. Incidentally that took food services from the same kitchen for hot take-outs. By now he had implemented stock control & was able to report profitability on each part of the business to see where to improve.

The owner continued to make observations as he refined his watch and correlated product behavior patterns. He even gathered loyal customer information and tested new products and services predictions using his data analysis approach.

In what had become a highly successful business, his planning model focus provided him with credible expectations based on factual experience and statistically supported assumptions and judgments. When he presents his business plans to the Bank for funding to expand and acquire more businesses that is never been and  issue,  He has since gone on to acquire more businesses to transform.

Thrilled to also be able to tell me this story my colleague also told me his plan to continue advising on his Managing “Business by Business Intelligence Model” And for this he recommended ramping up managed services to support business plans like this one.

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Climate change is an accepted fact, as are measured temperature increases over the last 50 years that are causing it. And C02 emission is well understood to be causing the planet overheating, with potential to destroy life as we know it. Energy depletion is a issue too, so cutting C02 by reducing energy is clearly a good thing if only for that reason.

As facts the understanding seems irrefutable. But is it possible there are flaws in the information intelligence that drives them?

This graphic oddly is against popular expectations telling us polar ice has actually increased so surely this must be a fake.

I am not saying one way or the other but if you are sailing you should watch your dashboard to be careful not to also hit an iceberg.

Understanding what put measures on the board in the first place, is important. But also is being alert to question and challenge is what good Business intelligence is about. So we need to be open to the unusual.

So when you get some information that challenges conventional thinking. It may be flawed. but don’t just ignore it.

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