Talk DIG

Worst Practices in Business Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:49:00 +0000

I came across this white paper from Information Builders on worst practices in BI. Aside from having to register to download the white paper, Kevin Quinn does a good job highlighting the 4 key areas of failure:

Worst Practice #1: Assuming the Average Business User Has the Know-How or Time to Use BI Tools

This issue is very accurate. Even with the advances in user interfaces and hiding of the complexity to aggregate and join information, the tools are still overwhelming. What is interesting is what people are usually migrating from is desktop productivity tools like MS Access or Excel (see worst practice #2).

Worst Practice #2: Allowing Excel to Become the Default BI Platform

Excel becomes the default BI platform inherently because of worst practice #1, meaning the tools are too complicated. The simplicity, flexibility and ease of use along with the overall ubiquitous familiarity of Excel makes it the default tool of choice. Typical organizations at some maturity point will move from something like Excel to a standard tool (see worst practice #4). Nothing can be more frustrating then purchasing a BI platform and having to fall back to the legacy solution, which can be error prone and unmanageable.

Worst Practice #3: Assuming a Data Warehouse Will Solve All Information Access and Delivery

Data Warehouses are meant to store data, in whatever preferred design approach that makes sense (hub and spoke, data marts, enterprise warehouse, federated, etc). The BI application implementation should leverage this single view of the organization's data. The point that is made in the white paper is that the information needs typically go beyond what is housed inside the warehouse. The BI platform should have the flexibility to consume these non-warehouse sources. As much as I agree with this point, it can be inherently dangerous to use sources of "unknown nature". That's not to say that all data outside the warehouse is not trusted, but consistency in the usage of this information across the enterprise needs to be assessed.

Worst Practice #4: Selecting a BI Tool Without a Specific Business Need

Absolutely (see worst case #1 and #2). From my experience, the most successful selection and implementation processes have happened when both the business users and the IT group run the selection process together. I have also seen where one group runs the process independently from the other, the "opposing" group rejects the selection. So it is not just the business users that need to make the selection.

What additional worst practices have you encountered? The list is endless, but it would be great to start sharing other experiences individuals have.

Calling all data quality software vendors….TDWI needs your help

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:08:00 +0000

I couldn’t resist posting this one, but I want to start off by saying that I am big fan of The Data Warehouse Institute. They provide great information, their conferences are extremely valuable and their training classes provide the right level of practical learning.

But, their CRM system is in desperate need of some cleansing. Much like how Glyn Heatley discussed Data Quality Going Green (btw – until that post I didn’t realize that Glyn was a tree hugger. You think you know someone), TDWI needs to clean up their registration records. I received 3 emails from Wayne Eckerson (it wasn’t really from Wayne Eckerson) asking me to participate in a TDWI Benchmark survey. The emails all arrived within a few minutes of each other. The first one starts by addressing me as “Dear Graham”, while the second two start with “Dear Peter”. Now, on further inspection it is clear that this is partly my own doing. Each email was sent to a different email address since over the last 3 years we have internally changed our emails here at Palladium. But, that is the whole purpose of organizations house holding their data and identifying duplicates. I just find it entertaining that the organization (TDWI) that espouses having quality data is an offender. And it’s costing them money.

I did a quick search on the TDWI site to see if I could find any whitepapers or studies that I would recommend they take a look at. I found the following best practices report on taking data quality to the enterprise. The great thing is that if they are looking for some software vendors who can help, they can just take a look at the sponsor list for the best practices report.

I am hoping they won’t take away my membership based on this posting.

DIG Bits & Bytes

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Some items that have fallen on the blogging scraps floor from the last couple of weeks:

BEA AquaLogic Product Future

There have been a lot of rumblings of the future of the AquaLogic product suite, primarily because of the rumor that the professional services group from BEA is folding into WebLogic team. A component of the platform, among other things, is a set of Web 2.0 technologies and Enterprise social computing. It would be surprising to see these products go away based on the current market, but stranger things have happened.

Sharing Information to Make Decisions

After September 11th, the intelligence community was chastised for their lack of information sharing. The “need to know” culture impeded sharing nuggets of knowledge that could help the different intelligence departments make better decisions. To change this mentality, the CIA developed the Intellipedia platform. The CIA will be sharing their story at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in Boston. It is certainly an interesting case study of how an organization, public or private, can leverage social computing to improve information sharing and collaboration.

And Finally, For the Artistic Crowd

I happened across this site “Dashboards by Example”, which provides a wealth of information for those considering implementing a dashboard within your organization. There are some great examples and best practices crossing a broad range of subject areas including web analytics with Google Analytics (we are a user and big fan) to an IT related dashboard. The author provides his perspective on Dashboards versus Scorecards which is always an interesting topic for debate.

Making Business Intelligence more “Social”

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:23:00 +0000

A couple of months back, I had written a post on the idea of Using Business Intelligence in E2.0. In the post I discussed how to bring BI into the social aspects of Enterprise 2.0. George Veth also posted on the topic of Social Objects, which is the concept of the “topic” that two people have a conversation about, opposed to the discussion just being about two people talking. There are many examples of this, both in personal and business settings. Wine is a good example of a social object that spurs a lot of dialog. My wife and I had dinner on Saturday night at a Portuguese restaurant, where a good amount of the discussion with our friends was on the topic of the sangria that we had ordered.

So, in the continued quest to figure out how to enhance the value of Business Intelligence I am looking for suggestions, comments and ideas on how to make BI more “social”. Much of today’s BI systems are what I would consider one-way, meaning a majority of solutions produce content to consumers and it stops there. There is no doubt that people are socializing what they are seeing, but not in a way that we are seeing other social computing being applied inside the enterprise. It can thus be said that BI is like Web 1.0 in the sense that a majority of the content is produced by a small group of “users” and consumed and that’s it.

So how can we make BI social?

The Bloglines are open and there are no bad ideas here. I am hoping to spur some discussion and ideas to advance the cause. Maybe we can get to BI 1.5 by the end of the summer.

For those interested in the topic of Enterprise 2.0....

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:34:00 +0000

I just received the final evaluation from the DIG conference and the feedback was great. Across the board we had positive scores and commentary from attendees. Here are a few snippets that I wanted to share:

What valuable insights are you walking away with?

I now understand E2.0 and its possibilities- Andrew McAfee was excellent.
Predictive markets, social networks can have lots of potential positive impacts, could use it to solve a MDM problem.
I have learned master data management concepts. I wanted to get a better understanding of how business intelligence fit into their organization. Learning about enterprise 2.0 and making me aware of some of the new technologies.

Did the Conference Exceed/ Meet / Not meet your Expectations” Why:

It met my expectations on the first day and exceeded on the second day. I was looking for new things and found it the second day with E2.0.
I would have liked to have some formalized network opportunities with other speakers wither during or prior to the conference.
This met my expectations, although I wished there were more technical components and that the attendance was higher.

All great feedback and certainly will help us shape next year’s conference. Any additional thoughts from those who attended would be appreciated.

One of the big takeaways for me was the level of excitement on the topic of Enterprise 2.0. Going into the final day, I was a bit concerned. Not because of our speakers, but instead based on our preconference survey results. We had asked our delegates two questions prior to the conference on the topic of Enterprise 2.0.

As you can see from the results of the first question, we had a limited number of organizations (<5%)>

For those still interested in the topic of Enterprise 2.0, there is an E2.0 conference in two weeks here in Boston. I believe this is the second year (I could be wrong, so don’t hold me to that) and they have a great lineup of speakers, including Andrew McAfee who was our keynote on Day 2. Professor McAfee will be moderating a panel discussion on the topic of “Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check”.

Dashboard Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:02:00 +0000

For all of those Tufte wannabes out there, BonaVista Systems has created an interesting dashboard competition. There are some requirements to enter, such as the dashboard must be developed in Excel and use their Microcharts product (great marketing move). Seeing that I am like a caveman when it comes to visually designing a business dashboard, I figured I would share the competition with others since there is no chance I can win the first place prize, an Apple iPhone.

Let me know if anyone submits an entry. I will provide some free publicity to those daring enough to jump into the competition.

Example of Data Quality Gone Bad

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:34:00 +0000

At the DIG conference, Glyn Heatley introduced our data theme with an entertaining example of data quality gone bad. The story was told through a YouTube video. I had stumbled across this story in an industry magazine a few years ago, but I can’t seem to find the original article. Thought I would share the video so people can use it any time someone questions the quantifiable value of data quality initiatives.

Business Intelligence:”I’m not dead.”

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:15:00 +0000

If you are a fan of Monty Python, you will recognize this line from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.

I had a bit of a positive experience today with a client that caught me a bit off guard. It may be because there are times in this industry where you feel business intelligence has become a commodity. Seems like every organization owns at least one, and in most cases, multiple BI tools. There is pressure in the consulting industry from offshore resources, which I am personally not convinced about for BI applications. So needless to say, at times I am a bit jaded.

So that brings me to today. I am working at a client to build out a new reporting architecture. It’s a pretty significant size initiative and will replace numerous disconnected reporting packages that are managed through a hodge podge of manual processes. We are using the Cognos 8 reporting platform, specifically Report and Query Studio. As part of design, we have been prototyping a reporting package that is currently being done in Excel and packaged into PowerPoint. There are a lot of charts, formatting and commentary that goes into the package. Thus far, I have been thoroughly impressed with the Cognos tools to replicate the current set of reports. But the shocker was the level of excitement from business users who are currently saddled with creating these reports manually. And on top of that, the flexibility to expose the dimensional model would support a majority of the ad-hoc requests that the group receives.

So the point is I guess people are still not getting what they can from their investments in business intelligence and corporate performance management technologies. A majority of organizations are still in the 80/20 position of spending 80% of their time gathering data, creating highly formatted reports manually. If that is the case, it is hard to be called a commodity. I guess the software could be since the tools are there, but organizations haven’t yet realized the value from the investments.

There is another scene from the Holy Grail that draws parallels to the current state of BI.

King Arthur: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
French Soldier: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he will be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see.

(Replace King Arthur with software sales rep and Holy Grail with BI tool)

Back in the Saddle

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:44:00 +0000

After taking a couple of days off, I have found that I have a bit of writer’s block. Between responding to the mountain of emails that piled up last week and getting back into the blogging groove, I am a bit stuck. That being said, I came across a couple of articles that I wanted to post some thoughts on.

There seems to be a lot of chatter around mobile BI. I came across 3 separate articles in the last week related to analytics being delivered to mobile devices. The first was an announcement by IBM that they will deliver business solutions through new BlackBerry devices. This includes the Cognos 8 Go software. The second article was from Intelligent Enterprise and had three case examples of businesses that are using mobile devices to deliver BI. The interesting thing I found with this was the simplicity of the applications, which seems critical when dealing with a small interface and only needing specific KPIs. The final announcement is a clinical specific application built by Vaultus Partners and Covisint that delivers patient dashboards to mobile devices.

One trend in all three of these articles is that BlackBerry is the device of choice. Not surprising since RIM has a strangle hold on the enterprise mobile market.

If you read through these and are wondering “How the heck can I be thinking about mobile BI?” when you can’t even get desktop-based reporting, don’t worry. Eventually, you will get to the point where these type of solutions will be possible.

Day 3 Highlights - Conference Wrap Up

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:23:00 +0000

Well, DIG 2008 wrapped up yesterday. I just got back from Vegas and have finally recovered from the long flight back to Boston. It was a great event and some of the informal feedback from attendees confirmed that feeling. It would be great to get some comments from attendees on what people thought was valuable and where we could improve for next year.

Day 3 was focused on Enterprise 2.0. If you aren't familiar with E2.0, our keynote for the day was able to level set the group on the definition, usage and benefits. Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School, who coined the term Enterprise 2.0, provided his perspective on E2.0. From his presentation he provided the following definition:

"Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within
companies, or between companies and their partners or customers."

He also identified a list of representative technologies below this definition: wikis, blogs, prediction markets, social networking software, RSS, links, search, tags.

After Andrew's keynote, we then moved into our case study presentations with R. Todd Stephens, Mat Fogarty and Euan Semple. We followed up the case study presentations with Q&A. I was happy to see that we got a lot questions from the group, since prior to the conference a large majority of the attendees (70%) had no plans in their organizations to adopt E2.0 technologies.

We concluded the DIG conference with an entertaining talk from Jeff Ma. If you aren't familiar with Jeff, he is the real life character from the book "Bringing Down the House" and subsequent movie "21". Aside from the challenge of being the final presenter at 4 pm, Jeff kept the crowd entertained and was peppered with questions by the group at the end.

I haven't had a chance to step back and try to put the different presentations and dialogs over the week into something coherent. I took a ton of notes during the 3 days and we have the audio recorded, so it will be good to go back and listen to the presentations and discussions. We are hoping to make some of these great assets available through the blog. Stay tuned.

I want to finally thank everyone that attended the conference: the speakers, delegates and sponsors I was happy to see that even with all the distractions of Las Vegas, everyone stayed engaged throughout the entire week.

Day 2 Highlights from the Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:03:00 +0000

We had a great second day at DIG. We covered our first two themes of the conference built around "Creating one version of the truth" and "Insights from advanced analytics".
The Boston Globe and Central Intelligence Agency discussed data management topics for their respective organizations. There was a lot of great discussion with the attendees on governance, which seems to be a hot topic for many organizations. Dan Power from Hub Design also spoke on the topic of Master Data Management.

Infosys, Reliant Energy and Kelley Blue Book each presented for the second theme. It was interesting to see that both Infosys and Reliant use the Balanced Scorecard to frame their dashboard and operational reporting. Most of the panel discussion questions were on the topic of ROI, which was interesting. Bruce Hoffman from Kelley Blue Book didn't need to answer that question since the KBB business model is based on selling the data and analysis on the automotive industry!
We also video taped our megavendor panel discussion with our platinum sponsors SAP, Microsoft and Oracle. We will be posting that discussion once we have a production copy available. Stay tuned.

One last comment. Jevon MacDonald put a nice post on his blog on the conference thus far.

Day 1 is in the books!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:02:00 +0000

Just finishing up day 1 of DIG. We had a great first day with the clinics and a cocktail reception to welcome the conference attendees. I have a couple of observations from the day I wanted to quickly share:

1. Glyn Heatley delivered his CPM overview clinic in the morning. He had a pretty diverse group of IT and business functions in the room, which was great. There were a couple of observations from the group that I found interesting. One was the lack of statistical capabilities in a majority of the BI vendor platforms. I found this interesting and is something that I would like to research a bit to see where the gaps are. I am not in anyway knowledgeable in the area of statistical packages like SAS, so it would be interesting to see how big of a functional gap exists.

2. I sat in the Enterprise 2.0 clinic with Jevon and Thomas in the afternoon. This was a great session with a ton of learning. It was a bit like drinking from the fire hose. There were a couple of things that came up that we discussed in the session. The first was the concerns around privacy and sharing of certain types of data. I was surprised to hear that there are some E2.0 software vendors that are focused on becoming SOX compliant. The second interesting discussion was the differences between business taxonomy and folksonomy. Business taxonomy is the practice of establishing structure around things like enterprise data, while folksonomy is the practice of allowing the collective group to describe "objects" as they see them. An example would be tagging of content, like this blog post. The two worlds are very different but when done correctly, specifically creating the appropriate linkages between taxonomy and folksonomy, will enhance an organizations collective ability to describe information.

3. The reception was a great informal setting to meet and great with attendees. I had an opportunity to spend some time with our platinum sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. They will be participating in our "megavendor" panel tomorrow. Looking forward to the discusson.

That's it for me. It's been a long first day. The good news is that I am even at the tables thus far. The same can't be said for a couple of other folks who will go unmentioned.

Heading to Vegas for DIG

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Well, the week of the DIG conference is finally here. Looking forward to the three days. My guess is that the week will go by quickly. Here are some random thoughts and things to look forward to:

1. The clinics on Tuesday should be a good opportunity to roll the sleeves up on some great topics. I will be helping out Glyn Heatley during his clinic on CPM and BI architecture. I took a look at the content this afternoon and there is a lot to cover in the 3.5 hours, but it should provide people with some follow up actions for their organizations! Mark Lorence's talk on analytics is great, especially if you are struggling with what are the right measures for your organization (one thing to note, Mark's clinic will be in the afternoon on Tuesday, not the morning). I am very interested and will be attending Jevon MacDonald's and Thomas Vander Wal's clinic on Enterprise 2.0. If you aren't currently signed up for a clinic, there is still time to register!

2. If you didn't notice the Twitter update box on the right side of the blog, take a look at the talkdig Twitter user. If you aren't familiar with Twitter, it is a "micro-blogging" technology that uses text messaging to make posts. I have been using Twitter for about 3 months and it is a fun way to communicate with friends and colleagues. We are hoping that DIG attendees sign up and use it as a way to receive conference updates, ask questions during the Q&A, or simply try to informally organize with colleagues while at the DIG conference. It will also be a way to stay connected after the conference ends. Signing up is free and all you need to do is start "following" the talkdig user once you are setup.

3. We have one speaker change for Thursday. Bo Cowgill from Google will unfortunately not be able to join us, but instead we will have Mat Fogarty presenting on the topic of prediction markets. Mat is the founder of Xpree, which focuses on providing enterprise prediction market solutions. Prior to starting Xpree, Mat was the Director of Financial Planning on Electronic Arts where he was responsible for running prediction markets forecasting key metrics. Mat's session will be titled "Using prediction markets to tap employee wisdom". We are excited to have Mat speak at DIG!

4. On Wednesday, we have a "mega vendor" panel planned with our three platinum event sponsors Oracle, Microsoft and SAP/Business Objects. I am looking forward to have all three vendors on stage together in a moderated discussion on future technology trends. Since this is a bit of a unique opportunity to have them all together on stage at once, we are going to video tape the discussion and make it available in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

5. Go Celtics - could you at least win one road game during the playoffs!!!

That's it for now. Looking forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for updates during the week. We plan on blogging at the end of the day and hopefully get some pictures posted.

Composite Metrics

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lorence) — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Here are some interesting examples of composite metrics - metrics whose values are determined by a mathematical formula involving other metrics. Composite metrics can be very effective in dashboards and scorecards, as they can quickly represent high-level information with a single number based on multiple underlying values (think Dow Jones Industrial Average).

The first is from traffic.com and is called the Jam Factor, which sounds like the name of a bad 80’s rock band but is an extremely useful metric.

The Traffic.com Jam Factor is like a Richter Scale for traffic. It’s an overall measure of the traffic intensity on a roadway, or on a section of a roadway. Because the Jam Factor calculation uses real-time and historical speed data from our digital sensors and those of our partners, as well as our detailed accident, construction and congestion information, it’s a comprehensive measuring tool that is unique to Traffic.com.

The Jam Factor is measured on a scale of 0-10, with 10 representing the worst traffic conditions. This numerical scale also provides color coding to give you a quick, at-a-glance picture of conditions on the roadways.

The second is a software analysis tool called WKO+ from TrainingPeaks. WKO+ provides a variety of tools that cyclists can use to monitor data from heart-rate monitors, power meters, and GPS devices to analyze their training. Working with exercise physiologists, TrainingPeaks developed two metrics that are used in their product: Training Stress Score (TSS) and Intensity Factor (IF). TSS tells you how much stress you put on your body during a workout, and IF tells you how intense the workload was compared to last months’ similar workout.

According to Gear Fisher, Chief Technology Officer at TrainingPeaks:

“The beauty of TSS and IF is that, combined, they can tell the amount of physiological stress put on a person’s body. They are all based on an individual rider’s threshold. So unlike heart-rate or even power zones, where 400 watts is 400 watts but if I weight 300 pounds and the guy next to me weighs 150 pounds the end result is something dramatically different in terms of velocity. If I go out and do 200 TSS points, or Lance Armstrong goes out and does 200 TSS points, the relative effect on each of our bodies is the same. So he put his body through the same amount of stress as I did, even though it only took me 2 hours to get 200 TSS points and it might take Lance Armstrong 3 hours – or even an hour, depending on how hard he’s going.”

The third is from a co-worker, who’s Slapdown Index is calculated from the number of hours of sleep she had the night before, the length of her commute that morning, and the frequency of annoying email requests she gets before 10:00am. A high Slapdown Index is a leading indicator of her propensity to inflict bodily harm on those who dare approach her cube.

I’ve started using Jam Factor, TSS, and Slapdown Index to optimize my daily performance. What composite metrics have you found to be useful?

DIG countdown begins

noreply@blogger.com (George Veth) — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:22:00 +0000

The DIG conference begins next week. Personally, I can’t wait to be part of a three day conversation that focuses on DATA, INFORMATION, and KNOWLEDGE as key enablers to better business decision-making. For sure, the “fast company” of my concern is the one that marries solid business facts with the mobilizing energy of mass collaboration. The possibilities are quite exhilarating!

I will be the facilitator of the E2.0 (knowledge) theme of the conference. In this theme, we will be exploring the opportunity and the application of E2.0 tools to drive business value within our enterprises. We are fortunate to have E2.0 veterans, Euan Semple and R. Todd Stephens, joining us to share both their practical experiences and their seasoned insights on the business value of E2.0 tools and applications within world class corporations (ATT and BBC). Both have success stories to share but, of even more interest to me, they have the battle wounds of practical experience to really dig into the topic. Also, we will have a keynote presentation by Andrew McAfee who is recognized for coining the term E2.0! What a line up.

Noting the fact that we plan to have a Twitter event connection to post everyone’s live comments and questions, I hope that we can really have an open and honest dialog that enables each of us who attend to come away with a deeper perspective on E2.0 and an expanded network to draw upon down the road.

Here are the some of the topics that we will discuss.
1) Business value of Social Computing
2) Integration of Analytics within E2.0 – Are we doing it? What is it yielding?
3) Is E2.0 bringing us closer to our Customers?
4) What is the dependent relationship between Culture and E2.0?
5) Is there a maturity model to E2.0 adoption?
6) Can a company really ignore the onslaught of Web 2.0?
7) …and what are the success stories that we should be studying!

Our only task is to bring a good attitude into the dialog. I hope that you will come with an open and inquisitive mind – a mind that is ready to listen, to poke, and to prod. The bottom line is that this conference is all about being “part of the dialog” so let’s have some fun with it.

See you there and please introduce yourself. Safe travels if you are coming from out of state. Let the conversation flow.

See Data, Feel Data, Touch Data...for free?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Imberman) — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:42:00 +0000

Much has already been said about the growth of free alternatives to Microsoft Office - between Google, Zoho and others, the competition leads predictably to questioning the incumbent as well as continued innovation from Redmond.

Meanwhile, Google may also be seeking to make a dent in the area of data visualization. Building on last year's acquisition of Gapminder's Trendanalyzer, Google released a data visualization API, essentially a platform to create interesting displays based on structured data stored in Google Docs.

Initially, there's simply a "cool" factor at work here - "If I could get that salary list, I could post a piles-of-money gadget around the office!" But are there competitive implications? It's interesting that for as many years as it's taken for real on-line competition for Office to emerge, there could be a viable alternative in the much younger data visualization space much sooner.

There are so many questions - What are Google's long-term intentions in this space? Will it be a drag for the leading BI vendors, or will it help popularize the concept and "raise all boats"? Will Google's experience in search engines mean we can expect it to lead the way with unstructured data visualization?

Quality Data helps us go GREEN!

noreply@blogger.com (Glyn Heatley) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Yesterday was another day of coming home from work late and having to force the door open to get past all the junk mail inside. After picking up, taking into the kitchen and spending 10 minutes going through I was yet again presented with another fine example of poor data quality (i.e. the majority of organizations really don’t have a grip on their customer data let alone the ability to household).

3 copies of a news letter from the same software company (no names mentioned!), the exact same letter from a State Insurance agency for both my wife and I, and then two copies of the Crate & Barrel latest summer catalog addressed to me (how on earth I became registered on their list I’ll never know!).

I wonder what the impact to the environment would be if organizations simply got a better understanding of their customer data and improved their marketing functions alone?

So once I finished my nightly chore of “shredding” I did some quick research to see what sort of impact to the environment today junk mail has. Check out the following facts listed by New America Dream:

More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrive in American mail boxes each year – that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. (New American Dream calculation from Conservatree and U.S. Forest Service statistics)

In 2005, 5.8 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 450,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Less than 36% of this ad mail was recycled. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

The production and disposal of direct mail consumes more energy than 3 million cars. (New American Dream calculation from U.S. Department of Energy and the Paper Task Force statistics)

Citizens and local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to collect and dispose of all the bulk mail that doesn’t get recycled. (New American Dream estimate from EPA statistics)

California's state and local governments spend $500,000 each year collecting and disposing of AOL’s direct mail disks alone. (California State Assembly)

With companies trying to put on a more “Green” face you would think this would be a nice eco friendly place to start. Imagine the impact of cutting bulk/junk mail in half by just knowing who your customer is and the fact that you may have multiple that live at the same address?

Even though the challenges surrounding customer data are not new, more is being spoken in the industry around Customer Data Integration. Check out Tony Fisher’s article on TDWI for an introduction on Data Quality and the Emergence of Customer Data Integration as well as go directly to such vendor sites as DataFlux and Trillium Software for innovative solutions that work to address data quality challenges, deduplication and relationship identification.

Lastly while not being one to solicit an audience, if you do have any interest in helping the environment and stopping all that junk mail look at GreenDimes. I signed up last night… I’ll let you know how it works out!

Information and Trust

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:42:00 +0000

In topics like business intelligence, we typically discuss “trust” from the perspective of the data being provided. Is there “one version of the truth” that creates trust in the results? Much of the focus is around structured data, meaning transactional data that is aggregated, consolidated, cleansed with context applied. This is the focus of the first two themes of the DIG conference around structured data and information. Now move to the third theme, collaboration and Enterprise 2.0, and you quickly have a different interpretation of trust…or do you?

I came upon this topic of trust in two ways this morning. The first was during my morning commute and listening to the local sports radio station. There was some back and forth about mainstream sports media bashing blogs as a form of real media. The argument was mostly centered on credentials associated with reporters versus someone with little education (their words not mine) writing a blog post. The focus was less on trust but more on the qualifications of the writer. I then read a blog post this morning by Bill Ives on the FastForward blog called “Are Us Bloggers to be Trusted” and it got me thinking. Bill makes some excellent points and the commentary from the readers make you consider the level of trust in what I refer to as an “unstructured” data set.

So that raises the question “Can content created with Enterprise 2.0 solutions, like wikis, blogs, prediction markets and social networks, be trusted?” From my perspective, I see this question being answered from two perspectives, internally and externally.

Let me start with the external perspective. What I mean by this is someone who is not a direct “employee” of a corporation but does have a relationship. An example would be a customer or a supplier of the corporation. Can that external party “trust” what they may be reading on something like a blog, where there may be considered less control then more formal communication vehicles? This question reminds me of an article in the NY Times about Wal-mart. If you read the article you will quickly realize that the Wal-mart purchasers have established trust with consumers. Product insights and predictions on topics like the future of Blu-ray versus HD DVD create a connection between the blogger and reader. Does it happen the first time a consumer reads a post from a purchaser? Doubtful, but do you ever trust something or someone upon first interaction?

So what about the internal perspective of trust? If we start to adopt the use of enterprise 2.0 to solve business issues, can we trust the “unstructured” information being provided? Remember how I started this post, with the discussion about the lack of trust in the structured data and information of a corporation. How quickly can an organization move past these challenges and trust “data and information” from an outlet like a blog, wiki or social network? Instinct says never, but if you look deeper into how enterprise 2.0 concepts can be applied to areas like business intelligence and corporate performance management, I would argue what’s the difference? When you have a hallway conversation with a colleague or a meeting to discuss quarterly results, do you “trust” the discussion? Do you trust what someone is saying to describe results and recommendations around business strategy decisions? The answer may be not always be yes, but if you don’t, the debate continues as you provide your point of view to the discussion. So why can we not quickly considered the “unstructured” data in a blog or wiki to be trustworthy and if it isn’t or at least not agreeable, continue to push the bounds on the discussion that needs to happen?

This is one aspect (and barrier) of how Enterprise 2.0 can start to provide greater value to the organization. If you look at what we are going to be discussing at DIG, it is all about helping make better decisions. To do this organizations need to move past the inherit barriers that they have towards these concepts and focus on enabling ways to build a high performing business.

For those attending the DIG Conference next week...

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:10:00 +0000

If you are registered to attend DIG next week, we are going to try something unique as a way to communicate and organize during the conference. We have created a Twitter user called "talkdig". If you aren't familiar to Twitter, it is considered a micro-blogging technology that allows users to communicate quickly via the web, IM or text messaging. If you want to read more about the Twitter phenomenon, see this article in the WSJ. It lays out the good and bad associated with using Twitter.

So how are we going to use Twitter at DIG? The original idea was for the Q&A sessions with our speakers. Beyond that, you can decide how you want to use it. Looking to quickly organize some attendees to discuss analytics or data architecture? Use Twitter. How about a group to head down to the strip to take in some of the Vegas night life? Use Twitter. The point being don't let us hold you back from taking advantage of one of the new ways social technologies are changing the way we work together.

So if you are interested, you should signup now and start following! It's free and only takes a few minutes. Once setup, simply send a message to twitter with "follow talkdig" and you will be part of the group. Messages will be tracked both on the twitter site and the talkdig blog.

Lowering the Bar for Data Visualization

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Imberman) — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:20:00 +0000

The luxury watchmaker Romain Jerome has created a $300,000 watch. For billionaires to tell time? Not exactly - the watch doesn't actually tell you the time. What's more, it sold out in 48 hours!

So what does the watch actually do?

“With no display for the hours, minutes or seconds, the Day&Night offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night.”

Day versus night, huh? And it sells out for an unbelievable price?

I'm going to start working on a new dashboard project, directed at CEOs of multi-billion dollar firms.

It won't have KPI's, trends, links or navigation; all it will do is flash two words - either "MAKING MONEY" or "LOSING MONEY".

Next I'll develop a separate version to sell sports teams - a new scoreboard that flashes only whether the home team is "WINNING," "LOSING" OR "TIED".

Knowledge Harvests!

noreply@blogger.com (George Veth) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:10:00 +0000

Knowledge Harvests - what a great term! Authors Katrina Pugh and Nancy Dixon define a “knowledge harvest as a systematic, facilitated gathering and circulation of knowledge”. I stumbled upon their article on the topic in the May edition of HBR (Harvard Business Review). It was in the Forethought section of the magazine which looks at ideas and trends on the business horizon. Let me recap my now limited understanding of a knowledge harvest and then offer some thoughts on its challenge to us as we seek to leverage E2.0.

From their short article, I believe that a knowledge harvest is a simple but purposeful and interactive approach to a postmortem analysis or debriefing. The basic idea is that the intentional review of a business occurrence or process will yield helpful information or insights for the future; hence - a knowledge harvest!

However, there is a twist. The authors say that the first step in the process is to recruit a set of “knowledge seekers” who want to learn from the harvest. They go on to characterize these people.

Because seekers are self-interested, they ask tough, exploratory questions of knowledge originators, extracting important nuances – not only about how a project was executed but also about how costs built up, how knowledge might be applied elsewhere, what worked and what didn’t, and so on.

A knowledge facilitator leads these seekers through a process of interacting with the knowledge originators to derive key information and valued insights. The knowledge facilitator then works with the seeker to package the content and distribute it around the company.
My question is whether or not our E2.0 applications are focused enough on these knowledge seekers. Do we have people who are clearly articulating what they need to know in order to do their jobs better? Do our apps help to connect these knowledge seekers with the appropriate knowledge originators within the business? I have a feeling that a lot of our Web 2.0 content is produced by knowledge facilitators who are doing screen scrapes from knowledge originators with no idea whatsoever of the needs of knowledge seekers! What do you think?

I do believe that we have the tools and technologies but I’m not sure that we have them working together to support this interesting approach of a knowledge harvest.

Another example on how to visualize data...

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:55:00 +0000

Being a Boston Red Sox fan and always looking for new and intersting ways to visualize data, I found this tool on Boston.com very interesting. It tracks Manny Ramirez's 496 career home runs and provides different ways to visualize what could be some pretty boring data if presented in a typical grid (see the HR information grid at the bottom). As a baseball fan, it is interesting to see the distances and ball parks where he has hit his homeruns. As a opposing manager, the Pitch count graphic would certainly be a tool to use when facing Manny. Certainly this only scratches the surface on the different ways that baseball measures performance (see Bill James and sabremetrics).

Markets Rule, Even in Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:02:00 +0000

This is a line from L. Gordon Crovitz’s opinion article in the Wall Street Journal called “Trading on the Wisdom of Crowds” from April 28th. Prediction markets have been popular posts here on talkDIG the last couple of weeks and I apologize if I am sounding like a broken record. But the topic seems to be appearing every where. I rarely read the opinion section in the WSJ, but the title caught my eye. Crovitz discusses the topic of prediction markets and the deadly accurate Iowa Electronic Market. Now, if you think prediction markets are a fairly recent phenomenon, think again. According to Crovitz, some $165 million in today’s dollars were wagered on the 1916 election where Woodrow Wilson defeated Charles Evans Hughes.

One interesting topic that Crovitz raises is the difference between using the traditional form of predicting political results, statistical polling, and using a prediction market that trades future results like stocks. There are plenty of examples that prove that a properly formed market will provide more accurate results then a statistical polling sample set.

Are you convinced yet that prediction markets can be an effective tool for your organization? Have you identified any areas, either internally or externally where a prediction market can more accurately predict an outcome?

Taking the Heat Out of a Hot Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Lorence) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:38:00 +0000

(Long-time fans of the Pittsburgh hockey team will understand the title of this post. Go Pens!)

We’ve all seen ‘heat maps’ used as visualization tools. A heat map is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by the variables are represented as colors. Often, heat maps are used in conjunction with an actual map – like the weather map on the back page of USAToday, or the real-time traffic display at traffic.com. And while the information from these maps is useful - “It’s cold and rainy in Boston in April, and the traffic on the Mass Pike is really bad at 5:00pm” - it’s not particularly insightful.

Here’s an interesting application of heat map visualization. It’s from Purdue University’s Project Vulcan, which is quantifying North American fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at space and time scales much finer than have been achieved in the past. This 5-minute video provides an overview and shows several fascinating examples of the heat map visualizations used in representing the underlying data:

Again, some of the results are expected – "carbon dioxide emissions are high where there are lots of people spending lots of time in their cars" – but not overly insightful. More interesting, however, are the discoveries that researchers have made from analyzing the data in graphical form. There’s an excellent summary in the April 27, 2008 issue of the Boston Globe and two results stand out:

“When you rank America’s counties by their carbon emissions, San Juan County, NM – a mostly empty stretch of desert with just 100,000 people – comes in sixth, above heavily populated places like Boston and even New York City. It turns out that San Juan County hosts two generating plants fired by coal, the dirtiest form of electrical production in use today.”

And the heat maps shows a small, bright-red area (high carbon emissions) in the northwest corner of New Mexico surrounded by wide expanses colored green.

“Purdue researchers discovered higher-than-expected emissions levels in the Southeast, likely due to the increasing population of the Sun Belt, long commutes, and the region’s heavy use of air conditioning. According to Kevin Gurney, assistant professor of atmospheric science at Purdue and the project leader, this part of the map also overturns the prevailing assumption that industry follows population centers: In the Southeast, smaller factories and plants are distributed more evenly across the landscape. Cities, meanwhile, prove less damaging than their large populations might suggest, partly thanks to shorter commutes and efficient mass transit.”

Work is underway to add Canadian and Mexican data to the Project Vulcan inventories. It will be interesting to see what other non-intuitive conclusions will be reached with these analytical and visualization techniques.

Master Data Management at DIG

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Graham) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000

Last week I mentioned that Dan Power from Hub Solution Design will be speaking at DIG 2008 on the topic of master data management. Dan has over 20 years of experience in enterprise technology and is a frequent contributor on the topic of MDM in industry magazines such as DM Review. Dan recently added a post to his blog on speaking at DIG and the importance of master data management in the context of data governance, business intelligence and performance management platforms. I cannot agree more. Every reporting, dashboard and planning application is not only dependent on getting quality data like sales, but are also equally dependent on having common “hierarchies” of the business. Hierarchies may be a standard chart of accounts, products or organizational structure. Without a common way to consolidate these hierarchies, those sales numbers may not be right! Master data management and data governance practices start to address these common issues. We are looking forward to hear Dan’s perspective on master data management and its linkages to business intelligence and analytics.