The Intelligent Pathway blog is an informal channel for sharing our ideas and experiences in the areas of business intelligence, performance management, analytics, and data warehousing. We’ve written a book (The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence) and many articles – and this blog is intended to supplement those sources of information and provide our business and technical perspectives on new developments and future directions.
Like all consultants, part of what we know is based on our direct experience, and thus our blog posts will reflect a pragmatic bent that balances business and technical perspectives. Business intelligence, performance management, analytics, and data warehousing are broad, complicated and fascinating fields, and we’re happy to share what we’ve learned over the years from working with a wide variety of companies across many different industries.
As always, feel free to contact us or add your perspective if you wish – we’re always willing to hear from people who may have had different experiences or who hold different opinions.
Feb. 17, 2012
Analytics In – Business Intelligence Out?
We recently conducted a survey of business users, IT executives and BI teams on their use of business data. We posed the following question to all business users: “Different terms are used to describe the analysis of business information to support better decision making and improve business results. Which of these terms do you use? [...]
Feb. 10, 2012
One Perspective on a BI Challenge: Nobody Cares About the Plumbing
True story: last night, as I headed home, I was all set to write a blog post about our forthcoming research brief on the use of business data for analytics: essentially looking at how business people and IT people view the adoption and application of business analytics very differently. Once home, though, instead of staring [...]
Feb. 2, 2012
The Super (Bowl) Success of Analytics
The role of analytics in sports isn’t a particularly new story. Back in 2003, Michael Lewis – in his book Moneyball – chronicled how the use of analytics helped baseball’s Oakland Athletics win a World Series. The story became so popular that it was made into an Academy Award nominated film in 2011. While the [...]
Jan. 26, 2012
CIOs to Business Analytics: Sorry We Neglected You
Last week, I posted “Can Organizations Get Business Analytics Strategy Right?” which looked at a recent Gartner report that predicted that more than 70% of companies wouldn’t be able to successfully connect analytics and business strategy. Gartner followed up this report with their 2012 CIO survey. One of the interesting findings was that business intelligence/business [...]
Jan. 18, 2012
Responding to the Nontechnical Challenges of Business Analytics
Can Organizations Get Analytics Strategy Right? In a new report released by Gartner last week, the most salient finding was that more than 70% of BI initiatives will consist of analytics metrics that lack synchronicity with overarching business strategy. According to the report: “Organizations often develop and deploy hindsight-oriented reports and/or query applications focusing on [...]
Dec. 15, 2011
Pragmatic Business Intelligence
Earlier today, Merriam-Webster announced that pragmatic was their word of the year and the most searched word on their site in 2011. According to their press release “Pragmatic is not associated with any one event but instead describes ‘an admirable quality that people value in themselves and wish for in others, especially in their leaders [...]
Dec. 8, 2011
5 Steps to Solve the EDW Puzzle: Consolidating Line of Business Marts
Part of the evolution of a company’s business intelligence (BI) maturity is the ability to implement a true enterprise data warehouse. But, as we’ve often seen with our business intelligence consulting clients, that is not what the companies typically start with, for cost and time reasons. More likely, in an effort to realize faster BI [...]
Nov. 23, 2011
How Are You Using Business Data? Last Chance to Participate
We’re grateful for all the responses we’ve received so far in our survey, “How are Companies Using Business Data?” and we’re getting ready to close the survey on Monday, December 12. So far we’ve heard from a wide variety of companies, ranging in size from below $100M to over $5B in revenue, and represent fourteen [...]
Nov. 8, 2011
How Are Marketers Using Business Data?
How do you quantify the value of an impression? How much is your brand worth? These sorts of challenging questions have often made it hard marketing departments to be taken seriously at companies with data driven cultures.
Oct. 18, 2011
The Data Savvy Business User
I recently came across an interesting article on GigaOm entitled “The six data-savvy work personas.” The post examines the research project done by Dow Jones’ Factiva, in which business user behavior is broken down into six personas – each of which gathers, shares, and collaborates with data in a different way. These personas are: The [...]
Sep. 26, 2011
How Effectively is Your Company Using Business Analytics?
Last year’s analytics study showed some interesting results on how BI is being used with companies. This year, we’re expanding our research…
Sep. 13, 2011
How to Speak Business Intelligence like a Sales Person
We’ve been fortunate enough to have an article published in the upcoming issue of TDWI’s BI Journal, due out later this month, that *spoiler alert* examines the qualities a successful business intelligence program though the lens of an Operations framework. Since there is often a disconnect between the business and IT functions of a company, [...]
Sep. 9, 2011
Big Data in the Federal Government: No Small Feat
The latest buzz in the Business Intelligence (BI) Data Warehousing (DW) arena is “Big Data”. Visit any BI/DW software vendor website and you’ll see “BIG DATA” splashed everywhere and how their product supports/implements/leverages big data. (Not that long ago, the “cloud” was all the rage). What is behind the buzz of big data? And more [...]
Aug. 30, 2011
Faster BI Execution: Four Practical Approaches to Improving BI System Quality
This post is third in a series about BI teams executing faster. Do you have to write the dreaded entire company system-not-available email? Do you spend most of your time fighting fires? Does something break every week? These are often symptoms of organizations not spending enough effort on quality. Counter intuitively, quality efforts often reduce total implementation [...]
Aug. 25, 2011
5 Nuggets for BI Success – Newly Released BI Research
I just finished reading a couple of new business intelligence/analytics research reports: Business Analytics: Benchmarking the Analysis of Data to Gain Insight, and The Analytical Masses: Building Self-Service Insight for Line- of-Business Decisions, by Ventana Research and the Aberdeen Group, respectively. Both provide good insights into BI adoption and in some cases the lack of [...]
Aug. 9, 2011
Federal BI Roadmaps: Smash through BI Roadblocks
The frustration of hitting roadblock after roadblock is all too real for the federal business intelligence manager. The BI landscape is littered with abandoned BI projects, stopped by a roadblock the federal BI manager couldn’t get around.
Aug. 2, 2011
Speeding Up Business Intelligence Execution with Better Project Management
This post is second in a series about best practices for how business intelligence teams can execute faster. How productive is your team? Is your team working on the business’ priorities? Do bug fixes and manual system operation crowd out new development? BI Productivity: Measuring productivity is difficult. As a developer, I often looked at requirements [...]
Jul. 19, 2011
Big Data – The Next Frontier?
A May 2011 report by McKinsey Global Institute provides compelling arguments that “big data” is the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. It’s a long read, so if you’re time-constrained I’d suggest you read the 13-page Executive Summary. If you’ve been around business intelligence for any length of time, you’ll probably recognize many of [...]
Jul. 12, 2011
5 Barriers to BI Success: July 2011 Strategic Finance Cover Story
I was fortunate enough to have an article of mine featured on the cover of the latest issue of Strategic Finance magazine. The article “5 Barriers to BI Success (and how to overcome them)” looks at the importance of linking business and BI strategy. The full article is available on Strategic Finance’s website. However, since [...]
Jul. 6, 2011
Federal Business Intelligence Roadmaps: The Way to Go
Now that the summer vacation season is upon us, many federal managers are taking some well deserved time off and hitting the road. The most successful travelers are the ones best prepared. They plan the best route and anticipate the slowdowns along the way. In the end, they reach their destination and enjoy its benefits. [...]
Jun. 30, 2011
Building Confidence in Your BI Solution
I was recently involved in a message board conversation on Focus.com where the question was asked “How do you build confidence in the information being provided by a Business Intelligence Solution?” There were some pretty interesting responses there that suggested greater human intelligence and other possible solutions. In my response, I thought it boiled down [...]
Jun. 23, 2011
Using Business Intelligence to Optimize Performance Management
To date, few organizations have recognized and leveraged the potential that business intelligence (BI) offers to support the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and other business-sponsored Performance Management (BPM) programs. Many organizations approach BSC/BPM as business initiatives and support the business performance metrics associated with these programs with manual methods, commonly Excel spreadsheets. Why should your [...]
Jun. 17, 2011
Federal Information Management: Glue, Get or Move IT.
As any federal IT manager knows, managing data within their own agency is difficult enough. Image trying to accomplish this across all federal agencies! Fortunately, the challenge can be met by starting with an enterprise information management strategy.
Jun. 9, 2011
Key to BI ROI: Linking BI Requirements to Business Process Improvement
I read a great TDWI Flashpoint article by Dave Wells the other day about BI requirements. It is a key subject, and one that I have given a lot of thought to over the past 10 years. The process Dave recommends is a good one in my view, and one that I would build on [...]
May. 31, 2011
5 Common Mistakes in Implementing Pre-Built Analytic Applications
In our previous post on pre-built analytic applications, we described a framework for choosing between custom and pre-built business intelligence. This post describes common pitfalls in implementing pre-built applications. Pre-built analytic applications are sold by their vendors as a BI strategy that is very quick and easy to implement. This often causes user organizations to [...]
May. 24, 2011
Government BI: Reference Data Management – Beyond Technology
Federal IT managers get the thankless job of trying to untangle this mess because almost everything is reported by organizational structure in the federal government. And finding the “right” organizational structure is harder than agreeing on a federal budget.
May. 17, 2011
BI SaaS – What Does Deloitte’s Acquisition of Oco Mean?
I was intrigued by the recent CIO.com article about Deloitte’s acquisition of Oco, and found myself wondering what it might mean for the future of the SaaS BI business model. As BI strategy consultants, we’ve evaluated the offerings and technical architectures of Oco, Pivotlink, and other providers so we can advise our clients regarding BI [...]
May. 11, 2011
Creating the Ideal BI User
As BI consultants, we’ve worked with a lot of front-line BI teams: the people who design, build, and implement business intelligence (BI) systems, and one recurring theme we frequently see, they have a love/hate relationship to their internal customers (i.e. “users”). When the pendulum swings more to the hate side of the relationship, we often [...]
May. 5, 2011
What’s the value proposition of a pre-built analytic application?
In recent posts, we’ve examined various ways that companies seek to get faster returns on their investment in BI, from better defining the value proposition of BI to using software as a service (SaaS/cloud) BI applications. Another method we see a number of companies explore is leveraging pre-built analytics. Pre-built analytic applications are designed to [...]
Apr. 26, 2011
Reexamining the Seven Deadly Sins of Performance Measurement
The challenge, we often find when working with our consulting clients, lies not with the BI but with the underlying performance measurement system. After all, if the organization is measuring the wrong things, even perfect BI won’t yield better business results.
Apr. 20, 2011
Predictive Analytics in Government: A New Spin
No one can foretell the future with certainty. However, careful analysis of the past combined with logical reasoning can produce a range of potential outcomes.
Apr. 19, 2011
Understanding (and Applying) the Styles of BI – Part 3
In part 3 of this three-part blog series, we’re examining the final two (of seven) styles of BI, and will discuss how to apply them. If you’re working with users/executives for whom BI is new, this may be a great primer.
Apr. 14, 2011
Understanding (and Applying) the Styles of BI – Part 2
In part 2 of this three-part blog series, we’re examining three more styles of BI. If you’re working with users/executives for whom BI is new, this may be a great primer.
Apr. 12, 2011
Understanding (and Applying) the Styles of BI – Part 1
Last week, we wrote about how various styles of BI can be used in our post “Business Intelligence Strategy: Clarify the Value Proposition” Following up on this, we’re going to be breaking down the styles of BI into several posts. If you’re working with users/executives for whom BI is new, this may be a great primer.
Apr. 5, 2011
Business Intelligence Strategy: Clarify the Value Proposition
Because business intelligence (BI) is a multi-dimensional tool – like a Swiss army knife, and because BI can be used in so many different functional settings, its value propositions for a specific company can be unclear.
Mar. 29, 2011
Technical BI Strategy: Get Proactive about Data Quality in 4 Steps
There are a lot of utilities that do data cleansing and data checks on the source side, but there is always something that can cause a data quality issue or more appropriately an information quality issue in a data warehouse. As they say, the devil is always in the details.
Mar. 22, 2011
Government BI Strategy: Turn Critics into Champions
While IT spending is predicted to remain fairly stable, according to a recent IDC Government Insights report, IT programs are subjected to increased scrutiny by critics in their ability to deliver value to the agencies they support. An important goal, then, for BI managers is to transform these critics into champions.
Mar. 15, 2011
Leveraging Business Intelligence to Achieve Strategic Priorities
I ran across a recent IDC study of corporate priorities that drive the use of consulting firms, and I was not surprised to see that the top three were improving operational efficiency, creating a more effective business model, and reducing costs. In our surveys about how companies are leveraging business intelligence, we get similar results.
Mar. 10, 2011
A Look at Business Intelligence Adoption and Use
Here’s a short and somewhat lighthearted look at the difference in language between IT (a BI manager in this case) and business people, and the frustrations that sometimes accompany that difference.
Mar. 8, 2011
Faster Execution for Business Intelligence Teams
Common complaints are a data warehouse team that misses deadlines, business folks grumbling about how long estimates are, and an enhancement backlog more than six months. Often teams report they are cutting corners to get all the work done.
Mar. 2, 2011
Business Analytics & BI Strategy – What is the Mission?
There is a lot of talk these days about business analytics. Although we’ve seen a number of companies achieving greater profitability through BI, it is no secret that many companies continue to struggle with BI and analytics.
Feb. 22, 2011
Getting Better Business Intelligence Results by Taming the Data Flood
As business intelligence consultants, we have seen many federal agencies besieged with vast amounts of data and uncertain with what to do with it. Many buy costly software tools and hardware platforms but still find themselves flooded with data.
Feb. 15, 2011
Does SaaS BI Make Sense for Your Company?
I recently came across an IDC report from early 2010 that predicted that the SaaS BI market will experience triple the growth of the BI market overall.
Feb. 10, 2011
Five Common BI Problems – Part 2
In part 1 of Five Common BI Problems, we examined the impact of having a lack of BI strategy and lack of BI readiness, which dealt more with preparing for BI success. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at some of the problems that get in the way of achieving BI success.
Feb. 8, 2011
Five Common BI Problems – Part 1
I wish that I could tell you that every organization that attempts business intelligence (BI) sees a demonstrable business benefit from it, is happy with the results, and found it an easy undertaking, but, alas, I cannot.
Feb. 1, 2011
Want Value from Your BI Initiative? Chainsaw Your Metrics
There is a lot of buzz these days about business analytics within government agencies and private sector organizations. At its loudest, the buzz positions analytics as the key to uncovering hidden meanings and truths in your data.
Jan. 26, 2011
Agile Business Intelligence as a BI Release Strategy
A major focus at the TDWI Conference in August 2010 was Agile BI, and a core idea is that using Agile BI development methods results in BI releases in “weeks instead of months” – with six weeks being a commonly cited cycle.
Jan. 24, 2011
BI Strategy: BI’s Big Challenge
Historically, business intelligence (BI) was a tool whose use was concentrated in a small set of highly computer literate, analytically skilled power users. Typically, such users were staff analysts at the corporate headquarters, and their use of BI was by self-selection: they chose to learn it and use it because it helped them do their [...]
Jan. 21, 2011
BI Strategy: Don’t Neglect the Strategic Insights
One of our clients is a large, successful services company for which we helped develop its BI strategy. The company executives with whom we worked were less interested in recurring reporting of performance against targets using an agreed set of metrics – although that was important – and more interested in leveraging analytics to discern and deliver strategic insights to operational leaders in the business units.
Jan. 18, 2011
Agile BI – What Problem are you Trying to Solve?
There is a lot of buzz in BI circles these days about “agile BI.” And it’s no secret that there have been many failed data warehousing and BI projects over the years.
Jan. 13, 2011
Clouding the BI Value Proposition
The concept of business intelligence (BI) has always been vague. Amongst the senior business and IT executives with whom we work, BI can mean anything from more responsive reporting, to packaged BI tools, to OLAP analysis, to advanced and predictive analytics.
Dec. 9, 2010
Three ways to Ease the Cost/Price Squeeze
In a recent forecast, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, said that it expected the inflation rate for food products (that is, the increase in retail food prices) to be the lowest since 1992. On the other hand, food manufacturers have seen their materials and indirect costs surge in recent months. This essentially leaves food [...]
Mar. 23, 2009
BI and Perceived Customer Value
Food companies also need to understand the attributes of their products, its packaging, brand positioning, and the shopping experience its customers and consumers value.
