getting information outdownload.101com.com/pub/tdwi/files/sap100412.pdfdata scientists, bi...

Claudia Imhoff

Intelligent Solutions, Inc.

October 4, 2012

Getting Information Out: Establishing High Business User

BI Adoption Rates

Sponsors

3

Speakers

Claudia Imhoff President and Founder,

Intelligent Solutions, Inc.

Keith Metcalf VP, Sales and Marketing,

WCI Consulting

Copyright © 2012, Intelligent Solutions, Inc., All Rights Reserved 4

Agenda

Is Your BI Environment Stagnating?

Today’s BI Architecture

Getting Information Out Best Practices

Getting Started

Copyright © 2012, Intelligent Solutions, Inc., All Rights Reserved

Stagnating BI?

Slow, untimely delivery of BI components

Construction takes too long

Business requirements constantly changing

Complex or confusing BI technologies

Too many BI tools

Tools don’t match users’ skills – too complex or wrong

technology for task

No consistent approach to delivery of BI to

business users

Haphazard delivery cycles

Partial (and unusable) deliverables

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Stagnating BI?

No self-service capabilities

Users frustrated by inability to create own BI

components

Ineffective dashboards and/or reports

Wrong level or information for user skill sets

Hard-coded, can’t be changed

Multiple tools, multiple outputs, wrong technology

or too much technology

Enough said!

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Stagnating BI?

Understand the information workers*

Many users have problems finding info because:

Data discovery, access and analysis tools assume user has

detailed knowledge of business data involved

Worker doesn’t know where to find data

Worker is unable to use fairly sophisticated software tools for

finding and using business data they require

Many don’t really know what BI is

May not even know their requirements or success criteria

Two main types of information workers

Information consumers

Information producers

7 * From Knowledge and Information Workers: Who Are They?, http://www.b-eye-network.com/channels/1138/view/8897


Information Consumers

Information Consumers – use discovery techniques to find

information they need to do jobs

Information discovery – locating, retrieving and filtering info, and

organizing it to navigate and explore

Information consumers are found in all levels of enterprise – senior

mangers to call center staff

Characteristics

Often don’t use corporate info or IT info-handling tools

Information helps them do their jobs but is not sole focus of job

Represent majority of information workers, and are the most

unhappy with current capabilities for discovery

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Information Producers

Information Producers – create info used by consumers

Use info creation and discovery tools plus analysis techniques to

enhance, aggregate, report on info

Info analysis extends discovery by applying producers’ knowledge

/ expertise to discovered info, put into business context

Such enhanced info is easier and faster to use by consumers

Characteristics

Data scientists, BI specialists, business analysts, skilled workers

for whom discovery process is easy due to detailed understanding

of info

Can quickly locate and explore data, have good understanding of

data meaning, and can perform simple to complex analyses

Info producers and IT can be a bottleneck for consumers

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The Information Worker

―Being an information worker is a bit like being a

hunter-gatherer. Instead of hunting for food you are

hunting for information. The life of the information

hunter-gather is not easy. For instead of wading

through swamps and climbing treacherous mountains,

this info hunter-gather wades through search results

and stumbles through data fog.‖

Jerry McGovern, New Thinking Newsletter

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Agenda




Getting Started


Architectural Objectives

Understand how functional, procedural and

technical aspects of business and IT

environments pertain to BI effort

Gauge company’s state of preparation to develop

and support a BI environment

Look for specific risk mitigation recommendations

to improve potential for success

Extended to embrace new BI capabilities (e.g.,

Big Data, advanced analytics, self-service BI)

Assessment


Integration

Availability

Quality

Capability

Usability

Security

Business Intelligence

Getting

Data In

Getting

Information

Out


Integration

Availability

Quality

Capability

Usability

Security

Part 1: Getting Information

Out

Getting

Information

Out

Getting

Data In


Architectural Objectives

Part One – Getting Information Out:

Make BI results easy to consume and

enhance

Make BI tools easy to use

Part Two – Getting Data In:

Make BI/DW solutions fast to deploy & easy to

manage

Make access easy to all sources of data – not

just data warehouse data

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Make BI Results Easy to

Consume & Enhance

Enables information producers to be become more self-

reliant and make faster decisions

Allows information producers to improve information

content and enable more informed decision making

BI requirements:

Easy to discover, access and share

Published to a device and through a user interface of choice

Personalized, actionable and easy to use format

Clear business definition and data lineage

Increase information content and context through IW interaction

and feedback, track IW interactions & decisions

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Make BI Tools Easy to Use

Improves productivity of information producers

Enables BI by allowing motivated information

consumers to become information producers

BI Requirements:

Make it easy to report on and analyze data

Support more sophisticated analyses

Make results easy to publish in the required format

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BI Should be as Easy as Using

the iPhone

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developers produce applications using a standard Ajax framework

Apple App Store governs distribution

users personalize & consume applications & content

unofficial applications

other content

Users share knowledge about applications using

social computing


BI Should be as Easy as Using

the iPhone

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IT developers and information workers produce analytics-driven decision objects

managed repository of reusable decision objects

information workers personalize & consume

decision objects & content

unofficial decision objects

other content

Information consumers share knowledge

about decision objects using social computing


Agenda




Getting Started


Focus – Appropriate BI

Technology

Reduce and standardize BI technologies

Determine need for different analytical techniques

Reporting and querying

Multi-dimensional

Mining

Statistical, predictive

Experimental or exploratory

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Focus – User Interface

Easy User Interface

Interface best suited to user: desktop UI, web browser,

info portal, e-mail

Device best suited to user: desktop PC, mobile device

Format best suited to user: advanced visualization,

desktop widget, office document, PDF file

BI objects (e.g., analyses) and BI results easy to find:

search

Business context: business glossary, data lineage

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Focus – Dashboards

Create dashboards that reflect user skills, level of

interactivity required

Pull approach: search for & consume results; search

for & run analyses; drill-up/down & slice/dice results;

use BI automation (decision workflows)

Push approach: consume results, drill-up/down; use BI

automation (alerts, recommendations)

Appealing, attractive dashboards with access to

details when needed

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Focus – Metadata

Business Glossary

Puts BI results into a business context

Developed jointly by IT and the business

Taxonomy could be a starting point

Tagging and folksonomy can help extend the glossary

Data Lineage Tracking

Enables results to tracked back to source systems

Should ideally be connected to the business glossary

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Focus – Customizable BI

Components

Parameterized reports that can be tailored to change the data content of the

report contents, but not its layout

Report templates that can be tailored to change report contents and layout

Stored analyses for reuse by other users

Stored analytic models that are used at runtime to produce predictive analytics

Dashboard analytics that can be customized and manipulated by users

Web widgets are small applications that can be installed and executed within a

web page by a user

Mashups that blend and analyze data from multiple sources and present the

results using a web widget

Analytic functions that provide sophisticated analytic capabilities for use in BI

analyses

Removes need for specialized skill sets!

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Focus – Self-Service BI

Allow self-service for information producers and

consumers

Extend reach and scope of BI applications to address a wider

range of business needs and problems …

… while at same time enabling info workers (IWs) to become

more self-sufficient by making BI more usable, more consumable

Note: Self-service BI ≠ BI self sufficiency

Building silos of data is not self-service BI

Giving information workers extracts of operational systems is not

self-service BI

Promoting data priests is not self-service BI

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Agenda




Getting Started


Best Practices for Getting

Information Out

1. Don’t assume that simply installing easy-to-use BI tools

will make your environment easy to consume and use

Support WYSIWYG design functions, create a semantic layer to

hide complexity

Create interactive reporting as a starting point; for many business

users, interacting with cached report data (exploring a result set

quickly and flexibly) is good, useful form of basic analysis

Bottom line – your job is to make functions look easy, appealing

and understandable

2. Don’t give information consumers too much responsibility

Most really do not want entire responsibility for generating

information and reports – It is NOT part of their job

Strike a balance between self-service & IT-generated information

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Information Out

3. Support collaborative business intelligence

Enable information consumers to easily share BI results and work

together to define new ways to view and analyze data

Use technology that they can understand and use easily – mimics

something familiar (Microsoft Office, for example)

4. Understand requirements of information consumers,

provide appropriate tools/reports/dashboards

Understand what consumers want to accomplish with BI –

motivations, skill sets, interests in SS BI

Most information users are consumers with little interest in

creating or generating own reports/queries, etc.

But be aware that information workers change roles frequently

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Information Out

5. Create a starter set of standard BI components

Determine requirements to create library of standard BI

components

Make these customizable – these can replace 100’s of hard-

coded, customized reports and analyses

Makes consumers feel like they really are self-sufficient – allows

them to pick / choose attributes, KPIs, etc., to include

6. Create appealing, personalized dashboards, distribution

mechanisms

Easily configurable dashboards using graphical drag and drop

interfaces

Easy mechanisms to distribute personalized information to right

users

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Easily Consumed BI

Encourages Innovation

Corporations, and people that work in them, need be

innovative & creative to compete effectively in world

economy

―Those with the imagination to invent smarter ways to do old jobs,

attract old customers or to combine existing technologies — will

thrive.‖ Tom Friedman, New York Times, October 2009

Workers need personalized, collaborative BI

environments to improve business processes

Focus on Getting Information Out to stimulate BI adoption

– Part 1 (this webcast)

Focus on Getting Data In to create a manageable

environment – Part 2 (October 16, 2012)

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Keith Metcalfe, VP of Sales and Marketing Chris Hagans, VP of Operations

WCI Overview

Operations team are FTE’s; no contractors

BI experts: Since 1998

Range of expertise: BI, dashboards, EIM, SaaS, Mobile, Data Cleansing, Data Warehousing

Creator of real time BI consulting offering www.instantaccessbi.com

www.wciconsulting.com

SAP PartnerEdge Global

Fastest Growing

Reselling Partner of the

Year

What is success with Business Intelligence to your organization?

Enterprise BI End Run Around-Friend, Foe, or both

Pro’s- quick, impactful results Con’s-All the reasons organizations work toward an enterprise strategy

Why is the Business Layer the most promising thing to BI

-Reuse (avoiding object proliferation)

-Decreased development time

-Commitment of the business to KPI definition

-Security

-Exposure to more visualizations off the same platform investment

-Data lineage and documentation

-Ability to deploy quickly to mobile devices

Let the self service user learn and evolve

-Self Service BI has been hard to establish for many

-Many companies have provided tools without direction

-Self service is a high reward, high risk investment

-It takes time and success

-Like any learning event users have to experience success

-Build on success and show business impact

-Expose self service environments in a graduated way off of the same semantic layer infrastructure

-Gear training rollout to real life scenarios with pertinent data

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Part 2 of Webinar Series Oct. 16 Webcast Title: Getting Data In: Answering the Challenge of Growing Sources of BI Data

Analyst: Claudia Imhoff

Date: Oct 16

Data, data everywhere… Today’s BI implementation experts are faced with increasing volumes and

sources of data – on premises and off – new and innovative technologies, more complex data

integration and quality issues, and difficulties in maintaining and enhancing these diverse BI

architectures.

Part Two of our series will examine the architectural components needed to support robust and

easy-to-maintain access to all the data needed for effective BI. We will discuss the challenges

involved and the best practices to ensure easy access to, and deployment of, these data sources.

And, we bring it all together with a segment on the successful combination of the two halves

(Getting Information Out and Getting Data In).

Attendees will learn:

• The new architecture for a modern BI environment

• The critical architectural pieces that ensure successful access to and deployment of BI data assets

• The best practices for providing easy access to data sources and easy, fast deployment of data

warehouse solutions

• Final best practices on combining these back-end assets with the end-user assets aimed at

improving business user adoption

To register for this webinar, go to: http://tdwi.org/webcasts

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Questions??

Contacting Speakers

• If you have further questions or comments:

Claudia Imhoff

[email protected]

Keith Metcalf

[email protected]

Sponsor

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