The Jelecos Blog

Lunch Seminar: Website Usability

Sarah Tucker — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:45:37 GMT

The team at Jelecos is having a blast hosting IT professionals for informative lunch seminars!

If you missed our February date on website usability, check out the presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/JohnStuifbergen/website-usability-11516397

John's presentation included action items that you can do before 5PM today to improve the usability of your website!

We are planning our March lunch seminar now - watch for updates on topic & place! Email Sarah to be sure you are on the invite list: stucker@jelecos.com

Welcoming Toby to the team!

Admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:52:47 GMT

Jelecos would like to welcome Toby Korensky to the team as our Director of Service Delivery. Toby has over 20 years of information technology, customer service, operations management, project/program management, and business consulting experience.

Korensky started his career in information technology in the U.S. Marine Corps. Following his service he was hired as the Director of IT Operations for Inacom Corporation. He has also been a cofounder/principal in two companies, eFrame and 3EP, a program manager with Physicians Mutual, and most recently served Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska as a consulting program manager.

He brings diversity and a wealth of experience to the Jelecos team and oversees the delivery of the company’s infrastructure as a service and web application offerings. We are excited to have Toby onboard; his presence has already made an impact on the growth of Jelecos as a company!

Business Intelligence Project Challenges

Jules Clement — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:27:00 GMT

When a company first embarks on the journey to build a business intelligence solution, there are predictably several unexpected and unplanned for challenges. I’ve worked with several companies in my tenure at Jelecos and have always come across the same scenarios that can be frustrating if you’re not braced for them. So, be forewarned…

You will discover your data is very dirty.

Chances are, you will be working with source systems that have been around a long time. Business rules naturally change over time and there will be existing data that does not conform. Many times I’ve encountered current data that does not conform to current business rules. All of this data will need to be managed.

You will need to make business process changes.

A lot is written about the collaboration between business users and IT and this is one of those moments when it is critical. Typically, there is a report requirement that will require a view of the data that just doesn’t currently exist. This generally is due to a lot of manual manipulation of data sets. The reason the manual manipulation exists is frequently because a change in the process is needed. Now is a good time to make those business process changes. Sometimes these business rules can be managed through the data cleansing process, but that’s not always the case.

You will need to store data that is not being captured by any existing system.

This data can range from public data sets like commodity prices or internal data that is currently being manually collected in a spreadsheet or through email. There are generally some data elements that are not collected but are static that will be needed to slice the data into a product or business hierarchy, for example.

IT involvement will be greater than expected, despite all efforts to minimize their role.

Most businesses look for a solution that will remove IT involvement in the analytic process. These efforts are not in vain especially if you involve the business throughout the project. However, for about the first year, you will see more effort put in by your IT department as the buzz for more data and new views of the data are requested.

Data validation will take much longer than you think it should.

Partly this happens because the reports that you are using for validation (the reports that are currently used to track business activities) contain filters you are not aware of and need to be tracked down. The validation process is generally where many of the business rules are discovered. It’s not unusual to have to rebuild parts of the ETL during the validation process; however, typically minor tweaks are all that is necessary.

You will have a difficult time getting the business users to trust the data.

People are naturally suspicious of change and you’ll be asking business users who are deeply involved in creating current reports with reports that come from a black box. They will need more hand-holding than you expect to get comfortable with the new process. The first few months are critical to prevent them from regressing to their old processes.

What all of this means is that you will have scope creep. Unfortunately, convincing budget managers that progress is being made can be difficult since nearly all the creep will happen before you get to creating reports. Tackling a small subset of data first and setting small milestones along the way will minimize the scope creep and you’ll have something tangible to show. Also, plan for extra effort for the challenges I’ve mentioned here. In the end, you’ll have happier business users and a solid platform to build on.

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

How to deliver BI to executives

Jules Clement — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:26:00 GMT

Executive support is one of the biggest factors that predict your BI initiative’s success. They should also be some of your most loyal users, so it’s important that you present them with a successful product. Unfortunately, this group of users could be the hardest to please; they are unique and require some additional consideration. In my experience, I’ve found a few key actions that will help win them over.

Executives’ time is precious, everyone wants time with them and they frequently travel. So, you’ll want to avoid giving them free range of all the reports that you’ve just built. They likely won’t take the time to log into a system and search for multiple reports to get the answers they need and this could just frustrate them. Their reports should be in a single spot, easily accessible, clearly titled and contain only the information they need.

The reason Dashboards and Scorecards are so popular is because they display exactly the information needed, in an easy to decipher format. It’s a very good idea to first build them a powerful dashboard that they can review on a mobile device that within 3 minutes of looking at the report, provides them a complete picture. Dashboards should be subject-specific and should guide the recipient to actions that need to be taken. It’s through mobile dashboards that business decision makers will be managing their business. Scorecards are also a great reporting tool for executives as they are the primary monitoring tool of the business. A weekly or even daily report that will instantly highlight problem and success areas will provide enormous value for your execs.

Finally, don’t forget to ask them what they want! You can build the most amazing mobile dashboard or a perfectly useful scorecard, but if it doesn’t provide him/her with the information they need, they won’t use it and you will potentially lose their support. Keeping them involved while you are building and implementing BI will result in a more successful project in the end.

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Who is winning, you or your goal?

Jules Clement — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:24:00 GMT

"To measure is to know."

"If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."

Lord Kelvin is the orator that is credited with uttering these two quotes. Logic follows that “If you measure it, you can improve it.” This premise has the been at the core of many new businesses and initiatives. I am an advocate for this philosophy. I liken it to having a race where the runners are separated from each other. During the race, none of the runners know how they are doing in the overall race. It’s true that you perform to the strength of your opponent. If your opponent is better than you, you play better as you strive to play as good as them; if they are worse than you, you make less of an effort knowing that even your low effort will win in the end.

Many businesses operate without knowing how they stack up against their competitors. Businesses generally set business goals each year. These goals are generally broken down into smaller parts, monthly, quarterly, etc. These goals play the same role as a competitor: if it’s a tough goal, you work harder to reach it; if it’s an easy goal, a minimal effort is all that is needed.

Now imagine an employee that doesn’t know how they are performing compared to their goal or don’t even know what their goal is; they are just like the runners in a race with themselves. They perform at a reasonable level, but not at their peak performance level. However, if you tell them what their goal is and how they are measuring up against it on a regular basis, the employee will work as hard as they can to reach the goal.

There’s no question that “to measure is to know” and “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Indeed, it’s not magic, even Lord Kelvin might say “it’s physics!” Do you know what your goals are? Do you know who is winning?

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Benefits of a Data Warehouse

Jules Clement — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:21:00 GMT

The typical organization these days has data all over the place; in some cases, it’s strewn across the globe and in multiple languages. While these ERP systems are essential to keep your business running, reliance on the data they generate and the need to access it quickly is critical to your overall success. Even more desired is having peace of mind that the data you are delivering is accurate, timely and actionable.

There’s really only one way to reach this level of utopia: a central data store. Consolidating your data into a single system will accomplish several goals.

Your odds of delivering the right data to the right people improve considerably. When you have a central store for all your data, you have a single point of failure for data being delivered. Your ETL, managing your business rules and auditing, gives you piece of mind that the data is correct. This means that you can easily generate the right reports for the right people.
The overall quality of your data improves dramatically. Managing your business rules and applying them through an ETL will streamline much of your data. This ensures that your data sources plays nicely with each other. The auditing of data quality and data cleansing through your ETL ensures that no data is being left behind. Confidence in your data increases.
The application of your business rules will be applied consistently across the enterprise; so when you see “Profit” on a report, you know all the reports are showing the same definition.
You’ll have a much easier time staying on top of the activities of your constituents and will be able to compare them with each other in a simple format. Your reports can put each location’s sales side by side in a graph and with centrally applied business rules you know you are comparing apples to apples.

A side benefit of having a data warehouse is that through your ETL, you have a daily view into the operations at all your locations; if a process isn’t being followed at one location the data will reveal it. Audits will alert you to problems in a timely manner. This is a side benefit because the primary purpose of a data warehouse is to centrally manage data and by doing so you give yourself a strategic, competitive advantage over your competitors.

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Three things Site Catalyst can do that Google Analytics can’t

Jules Clement — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:01:00 GMT

Real-time data

Site Catalyst can report on activity within seconds of the event. With Google Analytics, you could wait up to 24 hours for activity to show on your reports. You can also schedule and send hourly reports through Site Catalyst; this is handy when you are tracking a specific event and need to stay on top of hourly activity.

Importing external data

If you have an ecommerce business this feature could prove invaluable. Instead of having to export your web stats, you can import external information that isn’t being collected from your site and have a complete BI system within Site Catalyst. With Google Analytics, you would have to export the data and then rebuild the same reports in an external system if you wanted to see a report like “sales by region.”

Custom variables

Continuing on the theme of building a BI system within Site Catalyst, you are able to create nearly 200 custom variables. You get just a handful in Google Analytics; not enough to completely customize a reporting solution to meet all the needs of your constituents.

In conclusion, if these three functionality are vital to your web site analytics, you should definitely be checking out Omniture’s SiteCatalyst. If these things don’t matter to you, then a free Google Analytics account is probably the way to go!

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Surprises in a first-time BI solution implementation

Jules Clement — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:44:00 GMT

Data cleansing. Data is notoriously “dirty” for just about every organization. The extent to which data needs to be cleaned up seems to catch people off guard. This could be due to changing processes, poor management of the data or a lack of controls on the database or ERP. When you are planning to implement BI for the first time, include extra time to clean up your data. You just never know what you’re going to find.
Changing processes. Along with data cleansing, there could very well be some core processes that will need to change. Once you put that spotlight on your data, you see how dirty it is, and you find processes that are broken or non-existent.
Business rule definitions. I had a client tell me once that before we started their BI project they’d never even heard of business rules, and now they find themselves using the term all the time! Understanding how business rules effect your BI data is a surprise to most people. A deep understanding of business rules and processes is a critical component for architecting your data warehouse and making sure the right constraints and processes are in place in the organization.
User trust. Your users won’t trust your data. They are used to seeing their reports in a specific format, typically spreadsheets, and a more visual report that cuts out the data set will be intimidating to your end users. You need to prepare them very early on in the process; this is why it’s so important to have stakeholders who are not in IT. Then you need to check in with your users frequently to gauge perceptions and fix problems early. Your BI project relies on the users trusting you and the data you are putting in front of them, so be certain you spend a lot of time making them happy.
“Net sales” doesn’t always mean “net sales”. Reports that are currently used to make business decisions nearly always have obscure and unexpected filters on them. So while everyone believes they are looking at apples to apples metric comparisons between departments, turns out to be an apples to bananas comparison.
It’s not an IT project. IT is heavily involved in a BI project implementation, but IT is there to help the business users through the process. The real stakeholders, users and benefactors of BI aren’t in IT, it’s the business users and executive team.

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Dirty data doesn’t mean it needs to be dusted

Jules Clement — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:07:00 GMT

A term thrown around a lot in business intelligence circles is the concept of “dirty data.” People frequently ask me what dirty data is, where it comes from and what to do about it. I will address these questions at a high-level in this post.

First of all, let’s define it. In a nutshell, dirty data is data that doesn’t meet the business rules for its data element. For example, let’s say the “Customer State” element has a business rule that every customer address must have a 2-digit US state abbreviation that matches a pre-defined list. Dirty data refers to those Customer State records that:

a.   Are missing a state
b.   Have a state code that is something other than 2-digits
c.   Are not on the list of state abbreviations

Now you’re asking yourself, if the business rule exists, then how can there be records that violate the rule? This happens all the time during data warehouse implementations. It’s possible that the business rule has changed over time, so historical records will still be stored following old rules. Since the data comes from multiple sources, there could be limitations and differences to how the data is entered; in one application the end user may select the code from a list, in another it’s entered manually. There are numerous ways data can become dirty and in most cases, before it can be loaded to the data warehouse, it needs to be cleaned.

When I come across dirty data I generally go through a step-by-step process. My first choice is to “fix” the data in the original source system. This isn’t always possible due to restrictions in operational applications and the various roles they fulfill. If a process is causing the bad data, then I recommend that the process gets fixed. Sometimes this is as easy as sending a memo to educate those who enter the data of the business rule or adding load restrictions to the application. Other times it may require a larger initiative that the business isn't able to tackle right away.

My second choice is to fix the problem during the data transfer. There are many ways this can be implemented depending on how the data is getting transferred: as the data is selected, as the data is being inserted into a stage table or a similar process.

Finally, if none of the prior options are feasible--updating the source system, changing the process or cleaning the data as it is being transferred to staging--then the ETL is where the data must be fixed. The final resting place for the data, the data warehouse, must be corrected or you run the risk of errant reports.

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Four BI tools for success

Jules Clement — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:30:00 GMT

To have a successful business, you have to have complete knowledge of your competitors and understand your strengths and weaknesses in comparison.

In BI, there is a method called SWOT analysis. It measures the following:

Strengths: characteristics of the business or team that give it an advantage over others in the industry.
Weaknesses: characteristics that place the firm at a disadvantage relative to others.
Opportunities: external chances to make greater sales or profits in the environment.
Threats: external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business.

You need a strategy, and the ability to measure the success of your strategy.

The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals

You have to know where you are currently and monitor your progress.

The executive dashboard provides a quick, visual perspective of where you are on a project, a time period or overall for the company.

You need to be able to predict future moves

Predictive analytics is the branch of data mining concerned with the prediction of future probabilities and trends. The central element of predictive analytics is the predictor, a variable that can be measured for an individual or other entity to predict future behavior

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Core Value #10: Deliver More Than Expected

Sarah Tucker — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:00:00 GMT

We are what we deliver. Be sure you understand what the customer needs and wants. Then blow away those expectations with brilliant customer-focused solutions that make their day, and their business, better than they ever thought possible.

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At the end of the day we are in the service industry – please take a moment and read through this conglomeration of service related goodies.

Customer service (VERB): The degree of assistance and courtesy granted those who patronize a business. (credit)

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“The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”

- Jerry Gregoire, CIO, Dell Computers

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.”

- Lewis Carol

Do you dazzle?

Seth Godin always has a unique perspective.

Be Remarkable – GREAT tips!
(Personal favorite from the above blog: #2 Suggest blowing out the dust … :) Love it!!)

Don’t do this!

Core Value #9: Initiate the next great idea

John Stuifbergen — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:24:00 GMT

When you get right down to it, it’s all about results. In reality, last week’s results are like last year’s newspaper - nobody remembers the headlines or the box scores. To stay relevant and win long term, we must actively seek out new ways of doing and thinking. Every day. Never stop.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

- Wayne Gretzky

“The Gate of Change is Locked on the INSIDE.”

- Margaret Ferguson

“Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong”

“Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.”

- Denis Waitley

“Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.”

- Will Rogers

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future."

- Brian Tracy

“When you can’t change the direction of the wind — adjust your sails.”

- H. Jackson Brown

In any organization, continuous learning means growth through learning events and experiences. It can be applied to individuals, team, and organizations- a process that will help them to achieve their overall objectives.

Undergoing a continuous learning process entails change; one cannot learn and still be the same person, team, or organization. There is a constant evolution in the way we think and act, brought about by new understanding, new knowledge, and new skills.

One of the worst phrases that any person or entity can say is “I already know that” because this can very well destroy any chances of continuous learning. And when there is no learning, there is no growth.

Read more

Core Value #8: Invest & trust in the team

Eric Karmazin — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:00:00 GMT

Trust and a common purpose – things that make good teams great. Our teams are strong because they are built with people who know their stuff. Refrain from working in a silo. Bring your experience and knowledge to the table, and know that you can expect the same from the rest of us.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

- Henry Ford

“When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”

- Joe Paterno

How to build trust with your team.

Three ideas for building trust in your team.

What makes a good team great.

Core value #7: Show respect and be real

jstuifbergen — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:07:00 GMT

Be fearless, show respect and be yourself. Make it easy for others to do the same. Bottom line – don’t be a jerk.

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”

- James F. Cooper
(assuming this applies to women, too :) MB)

One of my very favorite work bloggers approaches this subject head on.

Be yourself at work ... mostly.

Are you working with energizers or rotten apples?

And how about a quiz?

Core Value #6: Be open & get on the same page

Sarah Tucker — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:00:00 GMT

What matters most is that we communicate openly and honestly. It’s up to each of us to share the knowledge and information we have, and to seek out what we don’t. We won’t always agree, but pulling in the same direction is an essential component of our success. So speak up!

Best communication song of all time

How technology has hurt our communication skills – and – what we can do to get those skills back

Great blog post on meetings at the office

And if your interest is high, I have seen Joseph Grenny speak in person (Very inspirational & great tips) – his book, Crucial Conversations is reviewed highly for improving communication skills.