(by 3 people)
Where business people can find non-technical, big picture, practical information about Business Intelligence (BI), Performance Management, and Data Warehousing (DW).
Whether you're looking into BI for the first time or you want to take your organization to the next step. This lens will give you information unbiased by vendors and based on real world experience.
Strategize. Plan. Analyze. Report. ... and repeat.
Risks, Benefits, and Approaches (short version)
Approach.
"Think big; act in small, iterative cycles."
Benefits.
- Closes the management gap between strategy and execution.
- Enables shift to a performance-based, analytical culture.
- Attention to long-term strategy, not just short-term operational details.
- Financial savings from reducing manual efforts spent on reporting.
Risks.
- Results produce far too little business value after high development and maintenance costs.
- Internal IT departments creating 100% custom solutions and not seeking out BI experts.
"Think big; act in small, iterative cycles."
Benefits.
- Closes the management gap between strategy and execution.
- Enables shift to a performance-based, analytical culture.
- Attention to long-term strategy, not just short-term operational details.
- Financial savings from reducing manual efforts spent on reporting.
Risks.
- Results produce far too little business value after high development and maintenance costs.
- Internal IT departments creating 100% custom solutions and not seeking out BI experts.
Tom's Latest Blog Postings
On marketplace success, performance, and business intelligence.
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What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) leverages one of the largest company assets - information. Successful BI projects give organizations a competitive advantage that could increase revenues and improve operational efficiencies.BI has evolved past using departmental Excel spreadsheets. BI is now an important part of an organization's strategic decision making. BI systems address the challenges enterprises face when managing their reporting needs at all levels of the organization.
Done right, it can benefit everyone from top executives to front line staff.
Improve your bottom line.
Increase your business effectiveness.
Help you and your employees understand your organization better.
Help you be more effective as a manager or a leader.
Reduce or remove the manual effort spent doing reporting.
With Business Intelligence, you can move beyond viewing "customers," "workforce," "supply chain" or "finances" (for example) as separate functions, and begin considering all the core elements of your business as a single, integrated whole.
The result enables you to measure the accuracy and success of your goals and objectives from various perspectives, and make intelligent decisions based on quantifiable analytics.
This is more than simply reporting. This is looking at trends over time, analyzing by "location", "sales codes", and "product categories" (for example). This is moving from a summary-level down to the details seamlessly. This is allowing users to be self-sufficient in their business questions and for accurately tracking the organization's performance.
Have questions? Feel free to send an email and I'll try and answer them.
What is Performance Management?
Performance management allows organizations to achieve their strategic goals by transforming strategies into actionable indicators that give profitable insights to decision makers.
These performance indicators are defined and measured in a quantifiable way. They are measured against goals, target levels and industry benchmarks. What gets measured, gets managed.
Software is used to capture the measurements of the business and empower management decisions. A performance measurement system can stand-alone or be an integral part of a Business Intelligence system by pulling information from an existing warehouse for consistency and accuracy.
These performance indicators are defined and measured in a quantifiable way. They are measured against goals, target levels and industry benchmarks. What gets measured, gets managed.
Software is used to capture the measurements of the business and empower management decisions. A performance measurement system can stand-alone or be an integral part of a Business Intelligence system by pulling information from an existing warehouse for consistency and accuracy.
Are you prepared?
Being prepared when undertaking a BI project will considerably increase your chances of success and maximize your return on the time, effort and finances you'll be spending.
- Do you have a strong Business Sponsor willing to stand behind your BI project?
- Do you have the staff available to work on this project? Time from business users is a must.
- Where in your organization will see the biggest benefits from BI?
- What software toolset has the features that will meet your needs today? Going into tomorrow?
- Seek information from people who have "been there & done that". Find BI experts, consultants, or other companies with a track record and learn from them.
Links to Performance Management companies
- pm2 - Performance Measurement and Management
- Business consultants that focus on implementing performance management business processes.
- Balanced Scorecard Collaborative
- Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (BSCol) is a professional service firm that help clients use the Balanced Scorecard.
Sites and Blogs
When one site is just not enough. These are the better quality sites I've found.
- Business Intelligence for Business People
- Tom's blog for business people on marketplace success, performance, and business intelligence.
- B-Eye Network
- The Business Intelligence Network delivers industry-based content hosted by domain experts and industry leaders.
- Sandy Kemsley's Business Process Management (Squidoo)
- A collection of Sandy's favourite BPM references, links and daily reads.
- The SAP Professionals Network
- The SAP Professionals Network Working Knowledge for Consultants Who Lead.
- Business Management, Leadership and Decision Making Strategies and Resources
- BetterManagement provides articles and webcasts addressing Performance Management, Financial Management, Business Intelligence, and IT management.
- Business Intelligence - Wikipedia
- Business Intelligence from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics editorial from DMReview
- For business intelligence, data warehousing, data mining, CRM, analytics, integration and content management news, DM Review, is your premier publication. We deliver thought-provoking editorial written for corporate executives and IT managers.
Links to BI consulting companies
There are too many to list here. But here's a flavour of various types from large IS firms to smaller consultancies.
- Sierra Systems Consultants
- Systems integrators and business consultants with a business intelligence data warehousing practice.
- Fujitsu
- Fujitsu Group of companies with a business intelligence data warehousing practice.
- Knightsbridge Consulting
- Knightsbridge focuses exclusively on business intelligence data warehousing solutions.
- ::BI Scorecard::
- A business intelligence community for IT professionals. Focusing on data mining, reporting, queries, and other business intelligence disciplines.
- Open Source BI
- Serious alternatives to traditional proprietary licensed software with over 25 open source projects providing a wide variety of tools for data warehousing and full BI suites.
Links to Software Vendors
Not enough room to list all vendors, but here's giving you a headstart. In no particular order.
So, why would you want to use vendor tools, instead of building custom in-house? Why build from scratch, what others have spend millions of dollars and decades improving.
Suggestion: Use the tools that best suit your organization's needs.
So, why would you want to use vendor tools, instead of building custom in-house? Why build from scratch, what others have spend millions of dollars and decades improving.
Suggestion: Use the tools that best suit your organization's needs.
- Pentaho
- Open Source software for Business Intelligence, Reporting, Analysis, Workflow, Dashboards, and Data Mining.
- Cognos
- A complete suite of products from end user tools to backend developer tools for various platforms.
- Business Objects
- A complete suite of visual products with integration with Microsoft tools, such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
- MicroStrategy
- Business Intelligence Software Solutions Pixel-Perfect Print-Perfect Seamless BI Integration
- Informatica
- DW tool that focuses on the backend processing for large volumes of data.
- SPSS
- Products with strong predictive analytics and data mining software utilizing the IBM hardware, such as the iSeries.
- SAS
- Software tool vendor and systems integrators.
BI Consultant Jobs from Simply Hired
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Fetching RSS feed... please stand byBooks on Performance Management
When you're looking for more depth in performance management, be prepared to read. The books by Kaplan and Norton (these guys have been writing about this for years) give you an understanding of the methodologies. And others have written some excellent and recent performance management books too. Below are some good choices to start.
Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results
Amazon Price: (as of 08/30/2008)
The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment
Amazon Price: $23.97 (as of 08/30/2008)
Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business
Amazon Price: $29.70 (as of 08/30/2008)
Performance Management: Changing Behavior that Drives Organizational Effectiveness
Amazon Price: $49.95 (as of 08/30/2008)
The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance
Amazon Price: $21.00 (as of 08/30/2008)
Books on Data Warehousing
If you're looking for detailed information on building a data warehouse, here are some good technical books. People with an IT focus may find these of interest.
The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit : Expert Methods for Designing, Developing, and Deploying Data Warehouses
Amazon Price: $60.61 (as of 08/30/2008)
The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Second Edition)
Amazon Price: $41.58 (as of 08/30/2008)
Mastering Data Warehouse Design: Relational and Dimensional Techniques
Amazon Price: $29.70 (as of 08/30/2008)
