BI for SMBs

I was just doing a bit of reading - catching up on some blogs written by friends and experts in the BI space. And I came across an interesting post by Wayne Eckerson called 'Purple People'. In simple terms, Wayne uses the term 'purple people' to refer to those exceptional individuals who can harness all the required resources (Business, technical, etc) for a BI project and bridge the gaps between them to achieve amazing results.

What makes this interesting? Well one of my other favourite reads is the blog and books of Seth Godin, and one of his books is called Purple Cow. Seth talks about a purple cow as something exceptional and memorable... something you'll never forget. See where I'm going with this?

Let me just say that it should be the goal of every BI consultant (and for that matter, consultant of any type) to be PURPLE!!! Be exceptional!!! Go the proverbial 'Extra Mile!' Deliver beyond your clients expectations and give them an experience they'll never forget!

As for me - I have a new favourite colour. Hope to share it with you soon!!!

:)

My father-in-law passed away just over a year ago. It was a sad event for all of us, but he had been ill for some time, and though we miss him a lot, it was not unexpected.

What does that have to do with marketing?

Recently, my now-widowed mother-in-law received a couple of marketing letters directed to my father-in-law. The first piece was from Bell Canada, and it said, almost verbatim, "Where is (my father-in-law's name) today?" We had moved my mother-in-law to a different provider when she moved into a new appartment.

Another letter recently arrived from a State Farm insurance agent, that read: "It's easy to figure out that you want home and auto insurance that fit how you live."

Now I'm not a marketer. I don't claim to have great knowledge in this area, or expertise in finding new prospects for my own business. But would this not be a great example of how companies waste millions of dollars on sending out marketing materials to people that aren't their prospects. And to make it a double-whammy, they have now alienated someone (actually several people) who were upset by their correspondences - all because they were using an out-of-date mailing list!

I wonder what Seth Godin would think of this?

Yesterday, I was part of a presentation to a mid-sized finance company with some big information problems. We (Dynamic Intelligence) had been asked to provide knowledge related to the BusinessObjects platform, while the company we were partnering with was focused on the back-end systems. In the room were various participants from the prospect including a VP and a couple of directors.

Anyway, the presentation began, and we discussed the many challenges and problems the client was currently facing that could be resolved by deploying a Business Intelligence solution - how there could be a vast saving in terms of staff-time looking for information, how having the right information could prevent bad decisions, etc. The prospect seemed to get it, and was understanding the business value.

Then, the coordinator brought up a slide showing the project timeline and phases. This is where (I think) it went off track.

Although our discussions to this point had been about the business value of the project, the slide seemed to reference all the 'neat' technical things that would be done for the project - Documenting data sources, defining mappings, blah, blah, blah...

What happened to the business? For me, looking at it, it seemed to say, 'Yeah, we know you've got some business problems to solve, so we're going to put in some really cool technology to fix it. We'll let your users know when we've got it done.'

So what's the issue?

Business Intelligence is about solving BUSINESS problems! The initiative should start with business users, be championed by business users, and it should be focused on having a thorough understanding of the business requirements before making it a technology project.

If you let technical resources drive a project/product to the user community, you end up with something that resembles Microsoft Bob or Sony Betamax.

As a footnote, I think the prospect understood the business value, and was going to ensure the project had the right team behind it. For my part, I learned not to let someone steer the ship I'm on, unless I really trust them! :)

I hate credit card companies. (Don't we all!) Seriously though, what are they thinking?

I received a letter today from one of my credit card companies telling me about a great opportunity for me!!! I could now arrange to receive me statements through an Online-Only" option! Whizz! bang!! Pop!!! Wow - ain't I lucky!

So if I sign up for this, I'll get my statement sooner, without all the muss and fuss of a paper statement. And of course I'll be able to access it any time online from a secure site. And... get ready for it... it's FREE!!!

To which I respond, "Who cares?" This is nothing new or revolutionary. In fact, I've been looking at this exact statement online for months now. The only difference is that now they want me to believe this is an added value to me.

If a credit card company wants to endear themselves to me, maybe, just maybe, they should consider that I'm a pretty smart consumer. I know a bit about this whole internet thing, and I realize that online statements are a great way for them to save money. I'm guessing it costs them (conservatively) about a buck per statement to process, print, and mail them. So what they're really telling me is, "Sign up to help us make some money! Won't that be great!!!"

My suggestion to this company (By the way, their name begins with "A"), is that when you want me to help you reduce your paperwork burden and cost, make it worth my while. Offer me a .25% reduction in my rate. Or tell me that every month, you'll contribute 25 cents per online statement to a charity of my choosing. Or do what my phone company did - be honest and tell me that ultimately this is about a cost reduction on your end, and if I want a detailed statement, you're going to start charging me for it.

You want me to help you? Then don't BS me.

For the last few years, I've been working with businesses across North America, as part of Business Intelligence (BI) projects and deployments. And yet I have always struggled to concisely explain just what BI is. But I think I'm getting close.

Business Intelligence is a great addition to the technology lexicon - it makes those of us involved in setting up this stuff feel like we're doing something new and revolutionary! But the simple truth is that Business Intelligence isn't really new; it's really just about something we chose to ignore.

Anyone can make a decision. But to make a good decision, we really want/need information. GOOD information. Timely, relevant information. And that's what BI is all about. Information.

So when someone asks me what I do, from now on my answer is going to be that I solve information problems. It doesn't sound so pretentious, and I think it's pretty accurate.

As part of my business, I spend a good amount of (too much?) time looking at the comments made by various companies about the need for business intelligence, and all the fantastic new products they have come up with: tools for dealing with 'unstructured data'; search-like query tools; semantic-layer tools... tools, tools, tools.

The thing that struck me is that these software tools are essentially just like the tools of a carpenter or plumber. Without the skill of someone trained to use them, they are at best inanimate lumps, and at worst, they're the keys to a misguided car, careening towards a cliff!!

So the point for today is that a tool is a tool. A wrench is a wrench, and software is software. It is the skill of the person using the tool that brings benefit to you.

(Oh, and don't call me to come fix your plumbing!)

Over the last six or seven years, I've been involved in providing and implementing Business Intelligence technologies to clients in small businesses. Sometimes, we didn't call it 'BI', but in most cases it really was.

In recent years, many vendors have come forward to talk about having BI 'solutions' (uuggh - I hate that term) for SMBs, but the problem is that they tend to forget the 'S' in SMB. What about the business that doesn't do $300M p.a. in sales?

The reality is that those (not so) small businesses, can definitely reap great benefits from a well thought-out BI implementation. The key is in finding a good place to create value.

Example #1: One of our clients is a distributor of Pet Foods to retailers across Eastern Canada. Their products are sold to independents, large chains, and to several buying groups. They have a team of salespeople, and seem to have order-entry staff working constantly.

The Problem: With such a diverse sales channel, how can you effectively monitor sales for allocation to the appropriate salesrep? Also, with a significant opportunity to receive Vendor rebates based on product and Geo performance, how can you create valid reports to support claims?

How did we solve this? Well, not suprisingly for a business of this size in this market, we didn't build a comprehensive Enterprise Data Warehouse. We didn't implement costly ETL technology platforms, nor did we develop a model requiring dedicated staff FTE resources.

Before recommending a large-scale project of dubious value and return, we took some time to understand both the client's business and the value that could be realized from automating this manual process - how much time was going into doing this manually? How many days per month? We worked with them to determine the repercussions of 'hiccups' in processing - what would be the implications downtime for the system? And we collaborated with them in finding the best balance between budget, timeliness, and fault-tolerance.

In the end, we implement a collection of easily maintained, highly reliable SQL transformation jobs, in conjunction with BusinessObjects Crystal Reports Server. Total cost to the client? Well, let's just say that over the past four years, they have saved the cost of implementing and maintaining this system several times over. They can consistently recover rebates from their vendors. And in addition, they now have a reliable sales information repository!!!

So how does this relate to my initial point, about BI for SMBs? Quite simply, it is not always a matter of considering a large scale project, spanning all aspects of a business, in order to achieve value from Business Intelligence. Implementing BI definitely has a cost, as does any technology. But the issue is to find appropriate ways to offset that cost by generating business value. At some later date, I will no doubt reference the intangible value of Business Intelligence. But for now, let's remember that it is quite possible to justify BI in any size of business. You don't need to be a global giant to find an ROI.