Business Intelligence Dashboards – Horse meat or beef? 

BCS Data Management Specialist Group - 21st March 2013

Derek Murphy, National Grid

A 30 Year Perspective on Business Intelligence Projects

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A 30 Year Perspective on Business Intelligence Projects

Derek Murphy

Agenda

National Grid

Me

I Solemnly Swear…

I’m not paying for that….

20 Million…..

Lego or Origami…..

Two Nations….

Slips, Trips, Falls and Driving

Big or Small

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

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National Grid

International Electricity and Gas Company

One of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the World

Vital role in providing energy to many millions of customers across the UK and Northeast USA

Efficiency, Reliability and Safety are critical to us.

Committed to safeguarding the environment for future generations.

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Derek Murphy

I have worked in the Gas & Electric Industries for over 30 years

For the first 5 years I was given gas, air and matches to play with.

For the last 26 years I have worked in a variety of technical, strategy and management roles within successive IS departments.

The following examples are taken from my experiences during that time.

Where relevant I will seek to protect the identities of the innocent.

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I solemnly swear……

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I Solemnly Swear……..

A post-Year 2000 Project – Single Version of the Truth

A single source of information across the company

Start with an easy area – how many people work for us?

Well first of all, what do you mean by ‘people’ and what do you mean by ‘work for us’, and what is the context of the question?

Very quickly realised this was far from an easy choice, in fact it was probably one of the most difficult choices

As we began to answer the questions we began to realise our data maintenance processes weren’t up to speed.

Lessons: The IS element was the easy bit. Gaining business agreement about data definitions and understanding the robustness of our data sources were far more difficult, and were probably where we should have started. Oh, and don’t forget the Turkeys

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I’m not paying for that……

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I’m not paying for that….

Does anybody still use an IBM Mainframe?

In the late 1980s we moved onto an IBM mainframe, but had to internally re-bill processing time since it was so expensive.

One day the Customer Services Manager approached me, protesting against his charges, and telling me to get rid of this new email thing if that was what it cost.

It wasn’t email at all, actually it was his staff running multiple “Filetab” queries against copies of the Customer Service Database.

Lesson: Don’t underestimate the desire for information. Hardware has become very cheap in recent years, but as we inexorably move towards Cloud-based services are all the controls in place to prevent runaway charges?

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UK Gas De-regulation

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20M

UK Gas De-Regulation 20M

The end of the British Gas monopoly in the mid 1990s saw 20M people able for the first time to choose their Gas Supplier.

The data and processing volumes were beyond anything we or our partners had previously experienced. At the time it was believed to be the largest Oracle Database in Europe.

We built an add-on ‘Operational Data Store’ that was refreshed from the eight production databases every night to support data queries because the transactional systems couldn’t have taken the load.

We used Business Objects as the front-end

The system was superseded in 2011, albeit having had a few facelifts in the meantime!

Lesson: If the goal is clear enough and the prize big enough, man can move mountains.

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Lego or Origami

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Lego or Origami

Honeywell DCS – Control System (Lego)

Honeywell PHD, pre-defined integration, standard reports, wealth of additional capabilities, desktop reporting tool, complex decision support capability, roadmap maintained by supplier.

GIN/GSIS – Commercial Systems (Origami)

3rd Party transaction system supported by custom-developed reporting system.

Two different developers, keeping the interface up to date, dealing with data fixes, differences in availability specifications, fault finding, is it in one system, is it in the other, or is it between? Continual need to develop and maintain own roadmap.

Lesson: Both routes can and do work successfully, but if you can, buy it, it is a lot less effort and you will get more as a result.

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Two Nations, separated by…..

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I know, you said “Bough”

I know, you said “Bough”

I said “Bow”

I said “Bow”

Two Nations, separated by…

For a Utility, efficient management of their assets is key. Condition-based maintenance is one technique that can potentially assist with this..

Intelligent Control Systems monitor condition data, so are a potentially rich data source for Asset Managers.

One of our businesses decided to investigate this, so the Control and Asset Teams set about discussing type of assets they wanted to monitor and the data that they wanted, e.g. running hours on pumps.

But, were the two teams really talking the same language?

Lesson: This has now all been fixed and Condition Data flows automatically, but don’t just assume everybody is speaking the same language even if at first they appear to be.

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Slips, Trips and Falls

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Slips, Trips and Falls

As you might expect, Safety is a priority agenda for National Grid.

Those of you familiar with the DuPont Triangle will be understand the need to report Hazards and Near Misses, which we have done for many years.

National Grid has recently started to collect “Effective Safety Discussion” data in its main Safety System. We have also started to post updates about what is ‘trending’ in the discussions and reports.

IS can be perceived to be a relatively safe occupation, certainly by comparison with say live working on a 400Kv overhead line.

However, what do you think are the most frequently discussed items in the main operational business? Yes, they are slips, trips and falls, all things that are common with the IS department. So is the IS department really that safe? It gives us all food for thought.

Collecting and collating data is great, but insightful feedback can really make a difference.

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Big or Small

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Big or Small

So the perennial discussion, should everything be in an Enterprise-wide data warehouse, or are we better off with lots of business-specific data marts.

I don’t think there is one right answer, but my personal experience / preference tends to favour data marts:

Engenders local ownership

More flexible to change / more resilient to failure.

Lower cost, local systems typically cost less per head than enterprise systems

Ability to exploit vendor-provided solutions, e.g. example of Honeywell PHD

Against that is limited ability to report across data marts, and

Potential solution duplication and application proliferation

The most important thing is to understand what it is you are trying to deliver. In the right circumstances an Enterprise solution may well be best, in others multiple Data Marts may be the answer..

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Who wants to be a Millionaire?

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I Phoned my friend - Ian

Very easy for these projects to get over excited and dream up all sorts of reports that never get used;

Strong change control and Robust business case challenge

Sort out your data model early and incrementally build capability;

Data is key – rubbish in rubbish out. Get some early wins – think big, start small (i.e. big data model, incremental capability and value)

Strong business engagement from people who really understand the challenges and opportunities – not expert hobbyists.

Look for BI requirements that manage real risks, offer real, deliverable efficiency/opportunity

Data quality is essential.

Don’t waste time cleansing your data until you have processes in place to keep it clean

Data cleansing will always take 3 times longer than you think it will.

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I asked the Audience - David

So what is the Investment Case for Business Intelligence?

Externally it can be around the way you engage with your customers, it is part of the experience of dealing with you as a company

Internally it is often a leap of faith – if you understand more about your business you will be more efficient.

In my experience the former is difficult to deny, but the latter can be equally difficult to justify. It takes great commitment, and even then may not get past the Finance Director.

How do you measure understanding?

What is the track record / reputation of BI – mixed at best?

BI can be (very) expensive, it may never deliver an ROI

When budgets come under pressure, BI is an easy target.

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Conclusion

So, in conclusion I hope you have found the last half hour or so interesting, and that you may have learnt something.

To my knowledge National Grid and its predecessors have invested in Business Intelligence Projects of many different sorts over the last 30 years.

Like many companies we have had major successes, but on other occasions things haven’t always worked out the way we expected.

Business Intelligence can provoke strong reactions. It can provide great value and stunning insights. Equally however it can be very expensive and fail to deliver on its original promise. I would suggest a key skill for BI practitioners is identifying the former, and avoiding the latter.

Thank you.

Any Questions?

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