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Effective Visual Presentations In Performance Reporting
The spectrum of business intelligence (BI) users spans a group of professionals ranging from programmers, engineers, IT specialists, and scientists on the technical side to salespersons, marketers, accountants, economists, HR pros and operations types on the business side. Additionally, managers and executives are included, cutting across both. In some senses, the management and executive users are frequently removed from the "heat" of the BI battlefield, thus requiring special treatment due to the more generalized nature of their job descriptions.
Presenting business performance metrics to this user group is one of those cases where special treatment in often needed. Specifically, performance reporting techniques that are geared to more effective visual presentation. Stephen Few, in a White Paper prepared for the Cognos Corporation, discussed a number of interesting characteristics of effective visual displays. Graphs, he suggests, were invented to give meaning to quantitative data beyond that contained in a table of numbers.
He goes on to note that both serve a very different purpose and should be selected to present information very carefully. For example, tables are wonderful when the information to be presented requires the observer to choose values. Tables are also useful when precision in the values is required. Graphs, on the other hand, create relationships between values through the discerning of size, shape, or color. As such, there is no substitute for a properly designed graph when communication of trending, patterns, or exceptions is desired.
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Cognos Tip: Reporting And Analysis Software And Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Cognos.com Tip: In an article in the Web-based journal CRM2Day, Britton Manasco discussed a perspective on the customer intelligence community that demonstrates how intelligent analysis is setting trends for future economic activity. She notes that Customer Intelligence (CI) is defined as the technology of collecting, manipulating and exploiting information contained in a customer information database. This can include insights on a customer’s needs, decision-making, behavior, state of the marketplace, and trend directions. In order to effectively handle this most valuable relationship with the customer, the right information about clients is required and organized such that the information can receive proper analysis and action.
Use reporting and analysis software, like speech analytics, for this very technology-intensive business function. Some techniques, predictive dialers for example, analyze phone calls between supply chain components and then provide insights to the dashboards of senior executives and managers. CI is the macro-area of BI that includes tools like speech analytics and enables managers and executives to: · Define and measure the customer experience · Understand the experience of their customers · Identify the reasons why customers call · Maximize loyalty and retention · Gain market and competitive intelligence · Increase sales effectiveness
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Deploying Reporting Software
Deploying reporting or any other type of business intelligence software capability is a complex and difficult process that is often hard to standardize.Help in accomplishing this capability may come from a concept pioneered by the BI developer, Cognos.It is called the BI Competency Center and is based on three suppositions:
·The deployment must connect to senior management, users, and vendors.
·There must be adequate financial support from the CEO and CFO levels.
·Appropriate staffing must be provided by the CIO function.
In order for the deployment to be successful and lead to financial and performance gains, the following observations apply:
·The business reporting software must be used at every level of management.
·The functional business areas served must be data driven (retail, multi-site, or vertically integrated manufacturing are examples.)
·The functional engine must be provided from within the IT department.
·Corporate executives must be the ultimate users.
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Cognos Tip: The Role Of Performance Planning In Improved Scorecarding
Cognos.com Tip: Annual planning processes have long been beset with inherent inaccuracies in the numbers selected and used in the plans and forecasts. These inaccuracies fall into a number of categories: · Legitimate errors arising from mishap or difficulty acquiring data · Complexity errors resulting from difficult or poorly understood mathematical constructs · Calculated guesses · Overtly false or ‘gamed’ figures, etc.
Consider performance planning software because its approaches appear to provide solutions to some, if not all of these error sources due to one simple factor; deriving the organization’s key performance indicators, hence true business drivers from a dynamic and adaptive process drawing upon manipulation of real numbers from myriad sources. This has the effect of essentially ending inaccurate information. It therefore is an important side benefit of business intelligence and reflects the power analytical techniques, such as statistical error checking, provides when employed on a broad scale set of data.
Another valuable benefit is that a balanced scorecard solution is easily achieved because the underlying business drivers truly drive determination of the scorecard metrics. This avoids the pitfall of having bulky, traditional budgeting exercises choke the strategic value of the scorecarding initiative.
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How Performance Intensive Is Your Business?
The book “The Performance Manager,” Mosimann, et al, cited work by the McKinsey Quarterly that identified three characteristics of business performance:
Transformational – activity involved with extracting/converting materials into finished goods.
Transactional – processing materials from basic form to applied products.
Tacit – procedural activities, such as retail sales or performing services, requiring tacit or experience for success.
Among the observations made regarding these interesting categories of business, the authors note that there have been more economic gains in tacit work activities.Is this possibly an effect of technology?Then they note that investment continues to be heavier in transactional activities.Is this a result of the decades old trend of shedding labor in favor of automation or off shoring?Finally, it is suggested that it was harder to sustain a competitive edge in both transactional and transformational business.Does this follow the adage of: if it’s easy to do, everyone does it?These observations seem to raise interesting indicators of how intensity of work performance can help classify your business.
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Cognos Tip: Performance Keys Of Sales Reporting
Cognos.com Tip: The subset of business intelligence tools that address data access, manipulation, and reporting on the functional business unit level are generically known as performance systems. According to Cognos.com, these are sometimes referred to as transparency and/or regulatory compliance system and they are all forged from the same BI materials:
·Aggregated data from multiple sources ·Single, consistent version of data reality ·Data feeding consolidated financials and planning metrics fed from both ·Reporting that stands on top of the data and is user friendly ·Collectively, performance systems mean key metrics, plans, and reports that enable focus, understanding, and effective decisions
In terms of the sales reporting, this BI concept promotes a dynamic form of sales activity reports using the freshest data possible. Component segments of the sales functional area are also served by consistent reports that include temporal, tracking, retail, and pipeline varieties. If you obtain sales reporting of this quality your business becomes open to management, decision makers and other stakeholders. Furthermore, as accessibility and timeliness of operational and financial data increase, the ability to look forward with state-of-the-art techniques, like rolling forecasts emerges.
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Forecasting In The Supply Chain
Business intelligence is all about employing processes and tools to achieve efficiency in commerce. These technological approaches include all business functions that occur across the enterprise, including the supply chain.Assumed within this quest for efficiency is the ultimate goal of maximizing profit through minimizing operating costs. In order for this to become reality, the performance management-savvy organization must frequently rely on the application of analysis techniques like maximizing gross margin through measuring inventory return on investment or minimizing total operating expenses. Accordingly, supply chain optimization must look at the general problem of putting goods into the hands of one’s customers at the best cost and highest yield.
The classic approach to solving this optimization problem has involved traditional forecasting based on historic demand and prediction of future events. This approach is applied to aggregate data resident in smaller data repositories that require little manipulation. The analyst then manually manages any variability in the metrics. Using this forecasted demand, a plan is crafted that addresses the salient supply-related objectives, such as manufacturing rate, plant resource scheduling, re-stock strategy, or transportation modes.
The BI supply chain forecasting and reporting ability resident in today’s software solutions provides the technical ability to access and manipulate larger databases more swiftly. The metrics are gathered and manipulated using automated processes and key performance indicators using advanced capabilities, like scorecards and dashboards. Some vendors have integrated these features into their BI products and applying multiple modeling and analytic techniques to supply chain data to enhance the optimization problem.
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Cognos Tip: Functional Business Area Tools As A Source Of “Lessons Learned”
Cognos.com Tip: Business function areas (information, finance, human resources, etc.) certainly benefit from data mining and manipulation in business intelligence applications. Additionally, analytical processes contribute materially to analysis of the information to facilitate planning, forecasting, and decision-making. What else can management garner from enterprise planning and decision support tools?
A key benefit from such functional business decision support areas is the ability for gaining insights from historical information, even from negative experiences, such as failed projects. By seeing what was successful across many different projects, campaigns, and initiatives leaders can avoid future mistakes and resource misallocations.
This information is a form of an informational “sweet spot” and helps to manage expectations across teams, sponsors, and stakeholders. Decision makers and functional managers can avoid cost overruns, missed deadlines, and substandard quality deliverables. Beyond avoiding the adverse financial implications of failed projects, it also helps to avoid any potential impact on company reputation and credibility.
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