Who you, a Guru? After you read these 107 Business Intelligence tips, you'll be one. But we're looking to recruit a Guru to blog, write a 101 tip Business Intelligence book, and become a leader of this community.
Hot topics for both consumers and webmarketers on WebmasterRadio.FM
Every Wednesday, 4PM Eastern.
Some Financial Connections To IT/BI Project Investment
One BI analyst/developer, Foster Hinshaw, has estimated that 10 percent of corporate IT spending may be related to BI technology. With such an estimate, it is no wonder that BI vendors have devoted development resources to providing solutions directed to areas like Software Development Life Cycle management tools. One developer, Cognos, has devoted an entire segment of a product offering to decision aspects of project management decision support.
That application identifies some key financial metrics related to IT/BI that may shed some light on the efficacy of such project related uses for BI software products. For example, in order to monitor key project indicators critical to managing scope, unplanned changes, and normal path adjustments, Cognos provides the ability to set planning goals and scorecarding metrics for:
· IT project completion
· IT project lead time
· IT project ROI
· External & Internal resource days
· New initiatives & Initiatives rejected
· IT project cost & Value
· Project duration & Variance
As with all information, context is important to full understanding. In BI terms, context is roughly equivalent to placing dimensions on the metrics. Examples of dimensions in IT/BI include investment level, complexity, dynamics state, scope and risk. The Cognos SDLC Management Decision Area provides the capability for IT professionals to ask questions, or query the system as to:
- Project duration: Where are the greatest percentage and absolute variances for projects based on department and project team?
- Internal/External resource days: What is the trend in internal and external resource days for project complexity—how are we using our own team?
- IT project ROI: What return do we see on projects based on their cost, complexity and risk level?
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Cognos Tip: Enterprise Planning Software
Cognos.com Tip: If you aren't sure if enterprise planning software is right for your company, try viewing a demo on a vendor's site. For instance, Cognos.com offers a 19 minute demo on how you can transform your business using enterprise planning software. It will show you how to improve your company's performance through planning, budgeting and forecasting.
Enterprise planning software can help you respond quickly to the pressures of the market, as well as organize financial and operational plans.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Some Price Points On BI Software
Finding pricing data on business intelligence software offerings is somewhat difficult.Other LifeTips have looked at product offerings by a number of vendors, yet within the constraints offered in this forum; only two price points were uncovered.The first was Microsoft and contained deep within their Website.The other was Cognos and was uncovered in an article reporting Cognos 8’s award as the top BI software for 2005.The following details the price information uncovered (please note there is little consistency in price scope and installation complexity):
·Microsoft – SQL Server 2005 Workgroup, with one processor license - $3,899; and a server license with five CALs - $739.If extended to a server with about 200 CALs (scale discounting unavailable) it is - $29,560, or about $33,459 total.
·Cognos – A typical Cognos 8 BI deployment for 150 users, 15 authors, 15 analysts, 10 managers, 5 BI/IT Professional, 2 BI/IT Administrators - $220,000
There are a lot of apples and oranges here, but the secrecy contained in finding price points suggests that there is wide disparity in pricing, deployment options and context in these figures.Gain what knowledge you can from this and good hunting!
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Cognos Tip: Forging the Foundation for Performance Management
Cognos.com Tip: Of the major BI vendor offerings that address this area, Cognos 8 Business Intelligence attends to corporate performance management with coordinated information. The systems help to determine budgets, plan targets and manage both effectively. This aided by:
·Scorecards have selectable targets to measure progress against corporate goals. Previously, companies manually created scorecards from various data sources, but lacked the ability to dig deeper on a metric without recreating and recalculating reports.
·Draw targets defined into your scorecards. With this tool, targets are set that guide future performance; and with scorecarding, you measure relevant progress towards your goals.
·Reporting and analysis from plans and budgeting software using multidimensional data sources in addition to published plans.
·Event management applied to the planning and budgeting process permits coordination of a variety of contributor’s input and development of the plan.
With these performance management technologies driving the business, understanding the classic BI and decision-making questions - what is happening; why; what should happen – becomes easier.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Legacy Systems And BI
Imagine how beneficial it would be if a long-established business could call ‘Scottie’ and get beamed to a new dimension.No legacy systems or resistance to adding new technology to worry about.Well, maybe that can happen sometime, but for the present, we will just have to do it the old-fashioned way – use our heads.
Many are the decision-makers that when considering new investment, look to what they already have and ask:“Why don’t we just use that Oracle product?It’s free and has hooks to all our systems!”The answer is relatively straightforward.Analyze the roots of your business; gain an in-depth understanding of what drives your business.You will most likely find that in order to achieve a true level of performance management and accrue the benefits (profit and growth) it offers, you will see that enterprise data is too varied in form and function and too spread out in location to cobble together an easy solution.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
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.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Overcoming Resistance To BI From Financial Executives
Finance professionals, especially at the level of CFO, were the driving force and main beneficiaries of the development of information technology (IT).This marriage started in the post-WWII era and accompanied the advent of the mainframe computer.Today, these traditional systems have given way to more powerful and sophisticated IT tools, and BI is one of the foremost.But do these financial professionals embrace these changes?The answer is mixed but one key tip to consider in your organization to “grease the skids” in your BI deployment is to marry that CFO and/or principal deputy with a business intelligence power-user.This would be the equivalent to a chief-of-staff.In other words, a facilitator who makes the transition work better and helps the executive embrace change.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Success And The Corporate CFO
In a Cognos White Paper on Performance Management, a comment by Dan London of Accenture is quoted where he observes that the “average lifespan of an S&P 500 company is now only 15 years.”The implication: performance management must be hardwired into your company’s approach and practice if you want to establish and sustain your leadership.Size today is no guarantee of keeping the top spot.And senior financial executives know what they want from a performance system. Among the various capabilities of performance systems, CFOs generally select these four elements as key pieces they are missing at present:
An ability to focus on key business drivers.
Ability of business users to view and analyze performance reports at will.
LifeTips is part of ideaLaunch, the hub for a group of websites offering
solutions that help clients improve mind share, market share and profit online.
