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I know these are no brainers in ensuring a successful project delivery but core success factors often come from no brainers. What we need is a simple reminder.

Scientific research claims that a regular person needs about 10,000 reminders before a concept naturally turns into action and starts to capitalize.

Hope this blog becomes one of 10,000 for your delivery excellence.

More about Text BI

BI powers:

[RAW DATA]->[INFORMATION]->[BETTER DECISION]->[MORE MONEY]

With BI, raw data (that once used to be overhead) becomes an asset that generates profits.

Any other opinions?

Executives do mainly two things. S/he uses left brain to develop business strategies based on sound data and then use right brain to execute the strategies, which involves motivating and mobilizing people. Great plans often fail, bcause many executives neglect to develop their right brains to improve emotional intelligence.

Read Daniel Goleman's "Primal Leadership" and learned how emotional intelligence plays a critical role in improving business performance of every organization. He explains that research shows significant strenghts in analytic reasoning abilities added just 50 percent more profit, while those with strengths in EI competencies added a whopping 390 percent incremental profit.

What's the implication?

Use BI tool to replace your left brain and allocate more of your time in cultivating right brain and improving emotional intelligence. BI can perform most of your left brain functions - analyzing data and making evidence-based decisions. Let BI streamline this for you.

Instead, executives can spend more time in coaching and working with people. They can spend more time to get to know their people and truly feel their needs. Empathize them, motivate them, develop them, and influence them. Resolve people conflicts and promote teamwork and encourage collaboration. Set an optimistic tone for your entire organization so that people feel good about their work, and they will give you a fierce loyalty.

School has taught us more than enough technical skills. Perhaps young professionals like myself should stop reading books and instead, get out on the street to develop emotional intelligence.

From here point on, I think it is EI to win.

Something happened when I was listening to a Cognos instructor in the training. At the moment the Cognos instructor became an IBMer.

IBM acquired Cognos this morning.

because decision cycle is getting shorter as executives are getting more relevant information in real-time on their portable devices today. Faster decision is driving everything faster and as a result this world is changing at an unprecedented rate. Sometimes it is just hard to even breathe because there are just so much to catch up so quickly - just get back to your inbox and you will see what I mean.

All this speed mania is caused by innovation in BI - real-time dashboard, information democratization, predictive analysis, and so on. It is no surprise why BI is at the top of most CIOs' agenda. Not only they have to embrace BI but innovation in BI to stay current with the market change.

Size does not matter as much. See all those wondrous battleships from the World War II getting retired and becoming museums. Unfortunately, their size creates competitive disadvantage in today's fast-paced world.

Speed Wins.

Once you achieve an elite status in a particular component you can select the next adjacent tool, industry, or practice to find further growth opportunity - e.g. "Hyperion" specialist in "healthcare" industry building "performance management" system.
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Here is one trend seen in TDWI conference.

"BI consulting companies popping up - The trade show had more small integration and consulting companies than I've ever seen at TDWI. Based on the number of these companies, the BI market has to be growing. It's also a reflection of the maturing software market. More complex tools, tool integration challenges, and new technology are all feeding the need for specialists."
Source

Perhaps we will see a growing number of BI specialists in the near future.

The trend is well aligned with the emergence of "specialized enterpise".

One important advice given in the webinar is to stop looking at historical measures and start looking at leading KPIs (Key Performance Indicator).

You cannot do anything about the historical financial measures but by focusing on the leading indicators you gain good feel about what will happen in the future and have opportunities to take corrective initiatives if any of leading KPIs indicates RED.

If one does this consistently, he can increase profitable growth and shareholder value for his organization.

View the webinar at:
http://www.bettermanagement.com/attend.aspx?L=14520

Solution: Relevance.

When Lou Gerstner took over the troubling IBM on April Fools' Day of 1993, he told his executives about his management philosophy - he manages by principles, not by procedures.

One major principle we, as BI professionals, need to keep in our mind in designing and implementing BI solution for our clients is relevance.

Relevance will save managers from indiscriminable data tsunami everyday.

1) Increase Expertise. Our service area will further deepen its expertise in BI. Senior consultants will take an ownership for each BI topic, and they will get a chance to further refine their BI expertise during the process of preparing and teaching other fellow, entry-level BI consultants. Having an expertise in BI field is a must, and by simply increasing the level of expertise, we can build more trust from our clients.

2) Best Selling Tool. Expertise attracts more potential clients. McKinsey and Company's does not put its name in any of the ads such as newspaper, online banner, television, etc. What they do is to publish books, journals, and organize conferences. Namely, by focusing on their expertise and adding values to others first, it indirectly attracts its potential clients. McKinsey does not approach them. They do. Like old saying ... don't chase after this fickle bee, focus on being a beautiful flower, then it will come.

3) Networking Opportunity. This educational initiative provides a great networking opportunity for our BI professionals. We perhaps have more than 100 consultants in our BI division yet people in our service area do not know one another well unless they are in a same project. This educational program will attract people with similar interest and provide a natural environment to let them get connected.

We are still in a very infant stage of preparing this educational initiative and perhaps could get some invaluable insights from BEyeBlog experts here. So far we are planning to offer the following courses. If you see any other important BI/BPM topics missing or have other important advice in running this program successfully, please provide your insight here or to willcho@yahoo.com. Very Grateful.

1) Activity Based Costing Management
2) Intro to Performance Management
3) Planning and Budgeting
4) Financial Modeling
5) Earned Value Management
6) Cognos General Training
7) Hyperion General Training
8) Hyperion Performance Based Budgeting Training/Demo

Short term thinking might see such BI task force as an extra, unnecessary overhead to the company, but long term thinking sees such task force as an essential ingredient to BI success, which will eventually reward the company handsomely.

SAS further enhances the importance of BI task force.

"Organizations with Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICCs) exhibit a significantly higher commitment to information management best practices, which in turn leads to improved financial results. BICCs comprise cross-functional teams from IT and business and drive consistent BI deployments; ease BI management and implementation; support BI and performance management initiatives that span multiple departments; help standardize methodologies, definitions, processes, tools and technologies; and enhance BI skills." - SASCOM (third quarter 2007),

Many BI projects lose its initial passion and ambition because no one really takes the BI ownership until the end of the BI deployment. They often fail to realize that each BI implementation requires a constant effort in pushing the project forward while ensuring a smooth communication between IT and business.

BI task force can ease the process.

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Resources:

COGNOS BICC - http://www.cognos.com/solutions/projects/bicc/index.html
SAS BICC - http://www.sas.com/consult/bicc.html

One thing I realized, this church group is no different from any other organizations (government agencies, private sector companies, etc.). Our congregation has a clear vision and goals to achieve. There are many functional units (outreach, bible studies, new member program, etc.) and those three hundred members are divided into smaller units, each headed by a trained small group leader.

Too bad for some KHYS members to have a president who also happens to be a BI consultant. Why? Because they are measured. I find our group a perfect place to apply BI practice. We have a clear vision and 10 distinctive goals. Each goal is linked to KPI where its progress is quantitatively measured. Each goal has a unique set of action plans where we hold people accountable for the outcome of their actions. Every 3 month, we organize an off-site retreat where all leaders gather for two days to review our organizational progress. Doesn't this sound familiar? This is what a lot of private sector companies do in order to manage their organizations.

At first, people thought this whole thing was a joke but applying these BI concepts to manage our 300-member church group worked well. Only reason people are not complaining about experiencing this new cultural shock at our church is because our group has been steadily growing since last year, when they first started to become KPIed (from 150 members to 300 members over the last year and I know behind the growth scene those systematic approach to manage our organization played a handsome role).

There are many mega churches around the world - one church in Korea has over 800,000 members. Managing such big organization is indeed a mega challenge. Churches must focus on management issues as well as religious issues in order to grow healthier.

Churches, especially those mega ones, could present plenty of lucrative opportunities for BI consultants.

We already see some mega churches employing full-time management consultants who hold MBA degrees.

Not only we will witness more intelligent enterprises through BI in the future, but also more intelligent churches.

1) Gaining an executive sponsorship
2) Implementing and managing the project

Many BI project often starts with the second part, yet skipping the first is a sure way to failure ... like jumping off the plane without parachute.

Before starting a BI project, the project team must be backed by a senior executive who understands the profitable values behind BI system and also has the power to drive the project to its completion.

So what can he do for you?

1) When an obstacle arises during the implemention, this is the person who can remove or neutralize the obstacle for the project team.

2) The high-level executive can open the door for the team to reach out and win mid-level managers and staff, who will become the actual users of the system.

3) Strong executive sponsorship ensures continued funding required to complete the project.

To convince a senior executive, the key is to show him the money. Through cost-benefit analysis, clearly show how much money his organization will make and/or save over the long haul.

Show him the money and he will show you the money.

News at: http://www.businessintelligence.com/ex/asp/id.2679/xe/binewsdetail.htm