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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Here is something to ponder. The Corporate Executive Board Company, says five years ago, less than 25% of business leaders rated their IT function’s effective to deliver the capabilities they needed. They go on to say in 2010 the number has not changed.

IT functions have strived tirelessly to understand demand, set priorities, deliver effectively, and capture value, yet the results still disappoint. Business and IT leaders alike feel they should be getting more—more efficiency, more innovation, and more value—from technology.

In their recently published study of the IT role its findings cover  5 levels of shift.

1. Shift 1: Information Over Process

2. Shift 2: IT Embedded in Business Services

3. Shift 3: Externalized Service Delivery

4. Shift 4: Greater Business Partner Responsibility

5. Shift 5: Diminished Standalone IT Role

At a practical level, in my work in business intelligence and information, I find so many business enabling discussions these days hinge on good information. This invariably leads to a discussion on the capability or lack thereof of IT, as the traditional owners, to deliver it. 

Being in the business end of business intelligence, I also observe the shift in the tasks to set up and coordinate information. As an activity that is now largely falling to the end user business functions like finance, marketing and operations with software vendors and specialist implementers working with them to make it all happen.

Like process applications that have long since been commoditized with highly advanced process packages, management information is now being delivered the same way. In large generalized database applications with configurable end users web tools for both administration and end user use now to deliver the information. There in is the issue for IT as they have become just environment managers with limited skill to be involved in the business strategically.

In many organizations I see significant investments that have occurred on complex systems, are, aside from being in use in the core process, scarcely understood technically by IT. The fact that IT defers the information based deployment task to market system vendors means they also devolve a once hallowed territory of process change management with it. So the argued best placed leaders on joining all the dots of the business processes, being IT, is now scarcely even aware.  

Among all the talk of engagement, alignment, and “being part of the business,” one assumption is never challenged—that for information technology to grow in strategic importance, so must the IT function.

But what if this is not the case?

What if a dedicated, standalone IT function is no longer the best option and the function’s resources and responsibilities were better located elsewhere?

What has occurred is vendors have become de-facto managers of change and are more often than the resident experts in inner workings of their client’s organizations. As cost pressures increase they have also becoming less tolerant and less willing to withstand the continuing conservative commodity based thinking of now quite limited in-house IT functions who try to hold onto power with things like the control of security. For this they are still needed to manage things networking and authentication although even that is changing. There is so much more to IT of course including redundancy standards and communications but the relentless shift continues to vendor services for IT and to cloud based computing for delivery of infrastructure management. With this being cut away from IT it is fast moving the direct control of the business functions who will naturally rely on end to end serviced IT models more and more.

Typically now applications all have their own infrastructures (servers etc.) with communication and hardware to fit the internet generally. And With major vendors are now spending huge sums investing in cloud infrastructure change is now inevitable and one-way from in-house IT. This totally new world of computing in the next few years will also see business knowledge based IT skills move to the  business to work in service based mode. As is the case with most small to medium sized business now who use low cost and even free service based models the big end of town businesses will also be fully outsourced to the service providers as a demand based service.

As to the timing and transition, the huge cloud based investment vendors like Microsoft and others speaks volumes. In the last three years the massive deployment of resources now sees Microsoft, for example, emerging as a high end hosting company. Of the 40,000 or so Microsoft based developers around the world it is estimated that 90% are currently focused on cloud based applications. This rapid move of the Microsoft business too, from traditional mass markets of desktop and database services to an infrastructure provider, will be seen very soon at all virtual levels

“The IT function of 2015 will bear little resemblance to its current state.  Many activities will devolve to business units, be consolidated with other central functions such as HR and Finance, or be externally sourced.  Fewer than 25% of employees currently within IT will remain, while CIOs face the choice of expanding to lead a business shared service group, or seeing their position shrink to managing technology delivery . . . This study argues that the changes will be rapid, permanent, and radical.  We have advocated for a decade that IT leaders become demand shapers, not order takers.  Similarly, we now recommend that IT leaders devote the time, energy, and resources to actively shape the coming transition.”

The quotes are taken from the paper that you can download here, entitled The Future of Corporate IT . Authors are The Corporate Executive Board, a consulting firm. This provides research and analysis to business executives and professionals around the world. In addition on my recommended reading list is a post by   Irving Wladawsky-Berger called IT in the Age of the Cloud In this he makes balanced comment of these issues.

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This week in Melbourne, I had a great lunch with my son. He talked abut his city based vocation as a building construction manager It is not without hazard when it comes to parking he told me. Later he sent me a very funny letter written to the Melbourne City Council about a parking issue written by one of his aggrieved mates.

I send it to my very good friend, Lawrence Berezin for an opinion, being he is Lawyer in New York. He in turn sought  wider views in his regular web publication “New York Parking Ticket”. In this he very kindly added some great publicity about our National Song Waltzing Matilda. Plus he got some great comments from his readers including some nice ones about us Aussies. Here is his post that included my son’s message. He headed it The-Wacky-World-of-Parking-Tickets

In this fun site Larry takes what to most is an emotive subject and makes it not only advisory and educational but practical too. Although about New York City Parking,  it has huge appeal with everyone who parks their car in any city anywhere in the world.  Go and make yourself known to Larry (as he prefers to be called by his mates) and let him know what you think about the things he writes. He always replies so you wont regret it.

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A popular myth in business and life is that it is only money that motivates. Consider why you go to learn to play a piano or join a speech club and why you find so many professionals doing more creatively work for others for free when their employer pays them for the same type of work.

End user tools such as Gmail plus backend server tools like Lynx and Apache are some of the world’s highest used technologies. These are examples of things that would have never happened were they not motivated to be created by something other than money.

It may be true that the more money works to get better results when the task being done involves mechanical skills based on a set of rules. Then the more you scale up the pay as the  reward the more likelihood there is for a better result.

However MIT and other studies conclusively find that once a task calls from even rudimentary cognitive skills, the results most often get worse when you use more pay as the incentive to get more results. Profit motive then gets unhinged from purpose and bad things start to happen.

This is discussed in this Royal Society for encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) Animate Video – “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”

This calls into question that if you reward something you get more of the behavior you want and if you punish something you get less.

The video that is has had extensive viewing since it was published on you Tube in April 2010.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and the workplace. www.theRSA.org

It bears no more comment except to say it may the best 10 minutes of essential information you can get to help you understand and pass your next creative leadership challenge.

Here also is the live version of Dan Pink’s RSA talk if you prefer to see him in action.

I wonder what others think?

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In my CFO Network Group recently there was a great discussion that gave so many useful ideas and insights about cutting costs.

 There a question was posed by Riyaz Lalani, Business Development Manager, BC at Canadian Traffic Services Group Ltd

Reducing costs? Why is there hesitation to make a change when it impacts the bottom line?

Here is my two bob’s worth:

Reducing costs is one thing which may just mean tightening the belt or asking a supplier to reduce. That is called “running the business, which should always include knowing the potential value of low hanging fruit”.

Change is another thing that is more difficult to make even though change itself is a constant in the day-to-day world of business that must be handled. So combining the two in a continuous improvement culture with transparent feedback support and operational measures in place can let everyone work out how to keep up as a way of life. A great business axiom too is “Plan=Success No Plan=failure”. So making cost cuts does need some thought.

With suppliers and customers included that can take care of a lot of issues and your business will grow organically and often at pace. Efficiency cost reductions too fall into in balance so risk issues and relationships don’t burn you later on.

Making step change for all the same reasons as many people have stated, is actually much more difficult without taking a step. And that takes commitment, resources and often a catalyst to bring it about.

When integrating businesses cultures and/or changing software platforms to re-focus business processes, you will most often see strategic growth as the aim.  Then culling redundant processes will also deliver cost reductions as one of the benefits.

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A list of Bank SWIFT codes is something you may not think is useful until you need one. I am going one to our resources page for you to book mark for future reference, when you do. 

What are SWIFT codes you may ask and why would you need one?

Today a client asked us for the Swift code so they could pay us. Not having it handy meant the funds transfer was delayed. In a nutshell the SWIFT code is a unique bank code used for all interbank messaging.

If you have need to send money from one bank to another especially for international transfers, a SWIFT code is required. 

Sometimes when you send money, bank staff may look them up for you so you may not be aware.  But if your asking customers to pay you via bank transfer they may request it.

When you send an international SMS. you need a unique country code before you add the area or provider code which is part of the phone number. Sending money to a bank is no different. There you need specific bank and its code, before you include the branch and beneficiary account information so the funds can be sent.

In our case our bank, DBS is in Singapore and our client’s sending bank is in another country. Here is what we gave them, based on a format you can also find on the DBS bank website …..

Account Name: (your name as in bank’s records)
Account Number: (your bank account number)
Bank Name: DBS Bank Ltd
Bank Address: 6 Shenton Way, DBS Building Tower One Singapore 068809 
DBS SWIFT BIC Code: DBSSSGSG

For a more expansive list of the codes go to our resources page : >> SWIFT BIC CODES List

For the technically minded and/or trivial pursuit exponents here is a summary of SWIFT facts.

Read more…

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In the competency stakes there are several stages to achieving mastery. To understand this is to understand your value and what you must do to maintain it. As you become more capable the ground will likely shift as you realize what it means.

Consider the cobbler starting as an apprentice. When he begins his indentures, even the smallest task needs someone to teach him the skills. He is understandably quite unaware of how to even approach competency, let alone what it may look like.

You might say he is unconsciously incompetent. But his next stage, not surprisingly, is being conscious of his incompetence as he accepts, on faith, what his mentor and teachers say he still needs to know.

Once he develops skills he moves to an unconscious state once again as he makes it. But it still takes time and effort for it to sink in that he is is actually there. Consciousness does not return until the next emancipating stage clicks in, which may well be the point that sees him graduating as a qualified craftsman.

But what of the final stage to achieve mastery?

Read more…

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Recently, I was helping a business understand some proposals offering services for implementation of management performance reports together with analytics capability. What we found, at the end of the day, was unit pricing was the major “criteria” for selection of implementers, regardless of the application, solution, experience and confidence in making the project successful.

If you have ever been to a doctor, which choice would at the end of the day cost you more? An experienced doctor or a “fresh” out of college doctor? For a doctor rookie, stomach ache could come from various causes, so to make his assumptions solid, he will send you to do several lab testes, which more or less would be included in the final bill. Compare this to an experienced doctor who’s been in the field for a long time. He could almost conclude (from conversations and statistical background of the area and patients behavior) the likelihood of the cause without the need for lab tests.

Another example is in the construction business. Which choice would cost you more between an experienced carpenter and a plumber who also said he can do the carpenter’s job? A construction friend of mine tells me that for every project he handles, he only relies on experienced workers, for in the long run it costs him less. Being able to manage parallel tasks and calculating the amount of concrete and finishing the project within the deadline is the critical requirements that can’t be learnt from college.

Although the solution cost seems cheaper while only measuring from the proposed price, experience tells me that they’ve made the wrong decision and will have to pay the price.

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In a context of  understanding the next generation of performance management thinking, to overcome behavioral change barriers using social networks, a recent Wikinomics debate on relationship limits got my interest.

This debate asks the question:

If its true our neocortex has a finite limit to have only approximately 150 meaningful relationships, then what is social networking achieving? Read more…

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As we focus on making it all happen it is easy to forget to enjoy the lighter side of life. Just to kept it in perspective. “The Ride of Your Life” by George Carlin is worth taking time out and reading every day.

George Carlin’s view on ageing is brilliant. He Begins with a question.

Do you realize the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids?

 

Read more…

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This story has been around a while but always worth recanting.

Bruce Sansome, Chairman of Natex Engineering Group in Australian shared this with a TEC Group in Melbourne recently.

As a  lightheaded refocus he prefaced saying

"When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee."

Here is the story:

Read more…

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With limited time available in the quest for productivity, we multi task. Or do we? If this is not true what is it that we do?

Multi-tasking I just learned it  is a myth. Something you do when you drive home and then wonder who drove.

This week I was challenged as I juggled my priorities and my personal life.  Having already reduced my to-do list to something sensible, it still looked foreboding.

To make it worse,  the unforeseen political agenda in Thailand where I have done business this month has thrown normality into chaos. Plus,  my daughter just announced she was arriving early to  visit me this week from her India trip, before we then head home to Australia together next week .

So it was time to step up my skill in multi tasking.  But before I did I decided to do some research on just what that was.

Read more…

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