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January 26, 2008
BI and SOA for Analytical Smorgasbord
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and its closest identifiable alter-ego "Web Services" is an example of hyped-up, much maligned technology buzzword that takes at least 2 or 3 slides in any "bleeding-edge" technology presentation. Having said that, whatever I have seen and heard on Service Oriented Architectural concepts till now, is enough to warrant its listing as one of the key enablers for Business Intelligence Utopia.
There are many powerful ways through which SOA can add significant value to the BI environment. The kind of BI, performance management and data integration artifacts that can be developed and published as web services include: Queries, Reports, MDX queries, Scoring and predictive models, Alerts, Scorecards, Budgets, Plans, BAM agents, Data integration workflows, Federated queries and much more. You can get more information at the link: http://www.b-eye-network.co.uk/view-articles/4729
But the idea that fascinates me with respect to BI on SOA, is the concept of "Analytical Smorgasbord". Imagine a scenario where the business user can assemble their own analytical components from a mélange of available ones, resulting in complete customization of information for the user to take his/her decisions. Each of these available analytical components is self-contained and performs a particular piece of BI functionality. These components are 'Web-Services' and the SOA in such an enterprise is all about:
a) How are these components created?
b) How do the components interact?
c) How is the information published and consumed, in secure manner?
The concept of "Analytical Smorgasbord" truly empowers the business users and is a powerful way to enable, what Gartner terms, as "Information Democracy" in the enterprise. It is important to note that the concept of analytical aggregation changes the Data Warehousing paradigm in a profound way - From one of "Pulling data" to "Seeking data". In more simplistic terms, the end-user analytics should go and fetch data wherever it is rather than expecting all data to be consolidated into one data repository (typically a data warehouse or data mart).
The true intent of this post is to encourage the BI community to start looking at SOA from the end-user analytical standpoint, so that web-services does not remain a mere technology toy but really helps in "Putting the business back in BI" - http://www.tdwi.org/Publications/display.aspx?id=7913
I have intentionally left out the technology details related to SOA. You can find wonderful resources on the web like this one: http://www.dmreview.com/portals/portal.cfm?topicId=1035908.
It is becoming increasingly important for BI practitioners to acquire/develop knowledge on Web technologies, XML, SOAP, UDDI, etc. as different domains are converging at a rapid pace.
Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at 2:30 AM | Comments (2)
January 22, 2008
"What Management Is" - The crucial link between Business and Intelligence
Let us for a moment accept the hypothesis that the true intent of Business Intelligence is to help organizations manage their business better. Better in this context tends to be a rather elastic adjective as it straddles the entire spectrum of firms using BI for simple management reporting to the other extreme of using BI to "Compete on Analytics" in the marketplace.
"Managing business better" presents the classic question of - What aspects of business can BI help manage better?
The primary reference for listing down the different areas of business is the best management book I have ever read till date - "What Management Is" by Joan Magretta and Nan Stone. (http://www.amazon.com/What-Management-Works-Everyones-Business/dp/0743203186).This book really helps in drawing the boundaries around management concepts and for BI practitioners, like me, shows the direction for the evolution and applicability of BI.
In this post, I would just list down the different business areas that ought to be managed for the better and drill down into the applicability of BI for each of these areas in future posts.
1) Value Creation - BI can help in providing the critical "Outside-in" perspective
2) Business Model - Is this the right business to be in?
3) Strategy - Validation and tuning of Strategy through BI
4) Organization Boundaries - BI can help solve the Build vs Buy conundrum
5) Numbers in Business - Really the sweetspot for BI applications
6) Mission and Measures - Connecting the company mission with the measures
7) Innovation and Uncertainty - Domain of Predictive Analytics & its ilk
8) Focus - Realm of Pareto Law versus the more recent "Long-Tail" phenomenon
9) Managing People - Human Resource Analytics is one of the most happening analytics applicability areas at this point in time.
To me, the list above presents the most comprehensive high-level thought process when confronted with implementation of BI in organizations. In my consulting engagements, the litmus test is to really see whether the BI strategy covers the aspects of business as noted above - "More the coverage better is the BI vision".
Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2008
The BI Triumvirate - Technology, Process and People
With the advent of a new year, let me set some direction for my thoughts, which would be reflected in future posts on this blog in 2008.
To me, BI is about 3 things - Technology, Process, People. I consider these three as the holy triumvirate for successful implementation of Business Intelligence in any organization - Not only are the individual areas important by itself but the most important thing is the link between these 3 areas. Organizations that are serious about 'Analytics' should continuosly elevate their technology, process & people capability and more importantly strengthen the link between them - afterall, any business endeavor is only as good as its weakest link.
Theory of Constraints (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Constraints) does offer a perspective, which I feel is really useful for BI practitioners. I will explore more of this in my subsequent posts.
To summarize, my direction in 2008 for posts on this blog are:
1) Present readers with thoughts on Business Intelligence along Technology, Process and People dimensions
2) Provide a "Theory of Constraints" based view of BI with focus on strengthening the link between the 3 dimensions mentioned above.
Almost every interesting business area - Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, System Dynamics, Business Modeling, Enterprise Risk, Competitive Intelligence, etc. has its relationship with BI and we will see more of this in 2008.
Please do keep reading and share your thoughts as well.
Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2008
Business Intelligence Utopia - Gazing at the Crystal Ball
Circa 2015 - 7 years from now
CEO of a multinational organization enters his corner office overlooking the busy city down below. On flicking a switch near his seat, the wall in front of his/her seat is illuminated with a colorful dashboard, what is known in CEO circles then, as the Rainbow Chart.
The Rainbow Chart is the CEO’s lifeline as it gives a snapshot of the current business position (the left portion) and also figures/colors that serves as a premonition of the company’s future (the right portion).
The current state/left portion of the dashboard, on closer examination, reveals 4 sub-parts. On the extreme left is the Balance Sheet of the business and next to it is the Income statement. The Income statement has more colors that are changing dynamically as compared to the Balance sheet. Each line item has links to it, using which the CEO can drill down further to specific geographies, business units and even further to individual operating units. The third part has the cash flow details (the colors are changing far more rapidly here) and the fourth one gives the details on inventory, raw materials position and other operational details.
The future state/right portion of the dashboard has a lot of numbers that can be categorized into two. The first category is specific to the business – Sales in pipeline, Revenue & Cost projections, Top 5 initiatives, Strategy Maps etc. and the second category are the macroeconomic indicators across the world. At the bottom of the dashboard is a stock ticker (what else?) with the company’s stock prices shown in bold.
All these numbers & colors change in real-time and the CEO can drill up/down/across/through all the line items. Similar such dashboards are present across the organization and each one covers details that are relevant for the person’s level and position in the company.
This in essence is the real promise of BI.
Whether it happens in 2015 or earlier (hopefully not later!) can be speculated but the focus of the next few blogs from my side will zero-in on some of the pre-requisites for such a scenario – The BI Utopia!
Posted by Karthikeyan Sankaran at 5:00 AM | Comments (2)
