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April 27, 2007
Dealing with Dilemmas, Last Part
In previous posts, I shared a lot of thoughts around how to deal with dilemmas. There will be lots more of that later, I hope, but for now there are a few new projects I am working on, that will feature in the blog.
A great way to end this series for now, is a few links. The papers published on http://smartbi.hyperion.com have now been translated in other languages as well. Here are the links:
France
Germany
China
So if you want to learn about CIO Dilemmas, or if you want to learn French, German or Chinese ;-), go there!!
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 4:44 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
Hyperion Solutions 2007
Between the 22nd and the 25th of May, Hyperion held its annual user conference in Orlando, attracting several thousands attendees. It was good to see so many organizations and people that are using Hyperion for a wide variety of purposes. Over 300 presentations, of which a very large part were submitted case studies, ranging from global dashboard implementations to focused strategic finance deployments, from large scale reporting to integrated risk and performance management, from operational planning to financial consolidation. It was also the begin of a new era, being part of Oracle. During the opening session, symbolically, Hyperions use of the color orange, changed in red. During his opening keynote, Thomas Kurian, in charge of Oracles middleware group, showed great passion about BI and Performance Management, and showed a very much aligned Oracle and Hyperion vision. A very encouraging start.
One observation. Even more encouraging than what was presented during the day, was the dynamic in the evening. Having gone around various receptions and dinners, I saw lots of staff mingling, whether they were wearing an Hyperion or Oracle shirts. Last year, in my blog, I came up with some metrics to show the success of Solutions 2006, heres my key metric for Solutions 2007: number of decibels of laughter in a room, while sharing a beer, a glass of wine, or just a glass of water. Whatever the target on that metric, I think we overachieved it.
Next Stop: Hyperion Solutions EMEA 2007, 20-22 May in Lyon, France.
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 3:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2007
Helicopter View
Last week, the Dutch office of Hyperion had a seminar, organized in one of the old traffic control towers of Schiphol airport. Quite an interesting location. Every attendee received a small token of appreciation, a very simple remote controlled helicopter, with the remote control only having one trigger: up and down. Changing direction is a question of playing with the trigger. The message, as intended by the local management, was clear: Hyperion would bring you a helicopterview.
I spent yesterday evening playing with the helicopter (would that count as working hours?), and it started to dawn on me there is another quite powerful parallel ,when we define the helicopter as the organization, the launching pad with the batteries to charge the helicopter as Hyperion System9 and the remote control as the discipline of performance management.
First of all, it requires a certain team. I decided to try it out together with a friend -- a very strong project manager with a background in application integration, need I say more.
Then there is the question of TCO. The helicopter set was for free (Ok, so the parallel with Hyperion software is not 100% accurate), but that doesnt mean the total cost of ownership is. I had to put for about 22 euro of batteries in it, 8 large ones in the launching pad, and 6 penlights in the remote control. So only after doing that, I started to have an idea of the overall cost.
The batteries had to be put in in a certain order, and I made a mistake doing that at first. So understanding how to install the system really is relevant, it takes some expertise (it helps to read the manual, blush blush).
So, Ok, after we had finished the technical part of the project, we were ready to start flying, to go live. We knew how to operate the system, having read the manual, but now it was time to move from theory to practice. Yes!! The helicopter went up in the air, it worked!! But did it mean we had it under control? Hardly... Like with an organization, pushing the buttons doesnt mean we fully steered it. The helicopter partly had its own path in mind, often in an unintended direction (Tree! Tree!). The buttons had impact, but it wasnt always entirely clear what impact exactly. We quickly found out that by letting go of the controls a bit, we increased our control. What a discovery!!
Also, the battery power isnt endless, the helicopter had to be recharged in the launching pad after about 2 minutes. It needed a break once in a while...
Bottom line: performance management is all about timing, about knowing when to push a button and when to let go, and about recharging the battery once in a while. And when you do a good job, people will stop and admire what you are doing...
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 5:23 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2007
What is an organization?
Sometimes it takes 20 years or so to return to the basics you learn in school, or maybe I am just not that fast. Recently, I started toying with the question What is an organization?, and I only now feel this question has become meaningful.
Effective Performance Management will look different,based on how you view an organization. Many of the current methodologies are aimed at an organization as being a vehicle to maximize shareholder value. Although this definition may work for many people, somehow it doesnt work for me. I need a more inspiring definition.
The most common definition of an organization, if you look around a little, is a group of people, sharing the same objectives. That one is better already. Its about people and what they would like to achieve. One problem though: shared objectives may sound logical in the definition, but in practice, the various stakeholders rarely share the same objectives!
Ive recently been studying the field of transaction cost economics (TCE) a bit, and found a very interesting definition. According to TCE an organization consists of all activities where the costs of internal coordination are lower than the costs of market transactions.
What I like about this definition, is that it is open. The definition suggests that organizations interact with other organizations via markets. This definition suggests that next to the command and control model (how our performance management currently looks, usually), there is the need for an approach to collaborate and communicate. TCE takes a very cost based approach, but we can easily broaden that focus, to also include innovation, market access, economies of scale and other themes that are important to business. Where it is easier or better, or more efficient to interact with others, than to coordinate activities yourself, relationships should be forged.
This all leads to the definition that I like best, it defines an organization as a katalyst between stakeholders:
An organization is a unique bond between stakeholders, through which each stakeholder can achieve objectives, that it could not achieve alone.
In other words, stakeholders need each other. They may not have the same objectives, but through the organization, they align them. Some bring capital, others supply labor, others are business partners, or for instance society provides us with an infrastructure to do business. This definition requires quite a bit of change in our current ways of thinking about performance management.
What is your favorite definition of an organization?
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 8:28 AM | Comments (0)
Atoms of Business Intelligence
Check out this link to www.taodata.com. Author Robert Mehldahl comes to the conclusion that OLAP lies at the very foundation of financial information. He says that the accountants journal has always been an OLAP historical database - unfortunately heretofore implemented with fifteenth century technology.
Interesting line of thought...
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 8:20 AM | Comments (0)
