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March 30, 2006
Business Hierarchy of Needs
March 29, 2006
In the previous blog entry I proposed the existence of the business hierarchy of needs pyramid, one that specifically pertains to information. The concept directly parallels that of Abraham Maslow's Theory of Human Motivation. The drawing below shows the business hierarchy pyramid. 
The way the pyramid works is a firm must first have a product or service to sell, and the base of the pyramid is represented by the data that identifies the product in all its attributes. No product, no business. Then a firm must have customers. The firm manages customers through the customer data. The data is, of course stored in files, databases, or systems. Once these first two needs are met, the firm now focuses on how to do business more efficiently and effectively. In our business information pyramid we consider how a firm improves operational effectiveness by analyzing customer and other data via business intelligence (BI) applications. The problem is data must be aggregated and integrated for BI to be effective, hence the data integration layer. Understand that I am being necessarily brief in the explanations as this is a blog entry after all.
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Posted by Frank Dravis at 4:35 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2006
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
March 27, 2006
Most of us have heard of the pyramid developed by the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow that graphically depicts the hierarchy of human needs that we all progress through in rough order.
The theory postulates that people will seek to satisfy basic needs, like obtaining food and water, before they pursue less "immediate" concerns. If the person, for example, can not attain enough physical safety in their life, Maslow asserts they will have scant energy, time, or resources to devote the next level, love, or even the level above that, esteem. In essence there is a natural order of needs in our lives that must be fulfilled before we will seek higher order values. Some people, because of their social, economic, or geographical situation may never be in the position of truly attaining self actualization.
I was having dinner with Paul LaRochelle of Business Objects, who gave me the idea that Maslow's concept can be applied to business, and specifically business information.
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Posted by Frank Dravis at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
A Personal DQ Problem
March 21, 2006
I was in the emergency room on Sunday with two broken ribs, a bruised kidney, and other injuries I suffered in a fall from a ladder. A dirty little secret about falling from ladders, it's not so much the fall that will get you, it's what you land on when you hit the ground, like the ladder. Lesson to self, next time jump clear of the ladder rather than grasp for the gutter.
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Posted by Frank Dravis at 9:01 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
The Perception Gap, A Factor in the Data Quality Paradox
March 20, 2006
Imagine one day you walk into the VP or Marketing's office and you tell him, "Bob, we've suffered long enough, we need to clean up our data because we just can't reach the customers we need." Bob looks at you with a blank stare and says, "What?" Then you say, "Yea, it takes us forever to scrub our output marketing lists, and even then they have scads of duplicates in them. It's a real mess."
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Posted by Frank Dravis at 9:38 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Data Quality ROI Case Study #3
March 16, 2006
Yet another style of data quality ROI case is the story of the pizza restaurant chain. Their goal was to encourage the top 20% of its customer base to eat at its restaurants one additional time per calendar quarter. The first question I always have when I'm engaged in this type of project is "how did you identify your customers?"
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Posted by Frank Dravis at 3:17 PM | Comments (0)
