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July 25, 2007
Breaking BI Bread, or Mixing Livestock Fodder?
Vendors and analysts continue to talk up various trends in business intelligence. But what's real and what's hype? That got me thinking about bread…yes the kind you toast and butter. Bread is made from wheat, which is first separated from the chaff by a thresher-like machine. Wheat is useful. Chaff is, well, chaff. So I thought I'd apply my own mental thresher to some of the hyped up trends that vendors and analysts are talking up today. Will they become bread or livestock fodder? Data Warehouse Appliances Wheat or Chaff? Love them or hate them, data warehouse appliances are not a passing fad and are here to stay. Driven by the relentless growth in transactions and data volumes, and riding on the back of Moore's technology cost curve, scalable and performance-optimized data warehouse appliances have the potential to add value to existing EDW initiatives without expensive upgrades. Appliances hitting the market today are unrecognizable from the proprietary and expensive appliances of yesteryear. A new generation of turnkey appliances built on commodity hardware and open source software components is starting to flood the data-warehousing market. Start-ups like Netezza and Datallegro have worked hard to make appliances a viable product category. Interest in appliances from big vendors like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun, has more or less validated the market. The next challenge is to create a critical mass of customers. Some big wins are expected in 2007. Most of these will be as an adjunct to enterprise data warehouses, but perhaps some will take business from market incumbents like Teradata, IBM, and Oracle. There will also be some failures. Getting the appliance model right is tricky, and several promising appliance start-ups have already dropped out after trying to plug in appliances built on proprietary platforms. Open Source BI Wheat or Chaff? It is hard to tell. Open source BI is aimed at lower-end of the market, namely basic reporting and the Java development community (as is the case with Actuate), rather than complex analysis or large enterprise-scale BI deployments. It's true that JasperSoft and Pentaho are assembling more ambitious BI suites, but they still tend to be feature-limited, and are unlikely to overtake and replace Business Objects or Cognos installations anytime soon. The question is whether this is something that customers will be prepared to wait for? Complex and enterprise-scale BI and analytics will traditionally remain licensed software for the next five years at least. Mobile BI But isn't this deja vu? Remember portable, wireless, mobile, or whatever you might wish to call it, BI was all the rage five years ago at the height of WAP-mania and the start of the PDA device boom. Back then software vendors scrambled to recreate their desktop interfaces on mobile devices, without giving much thought to the value and usefulness of doing so. But the idea has persisted and seems to have a second wind with Cognos, Business Objects, and MicroStrategy all launching fresh mobility features that plug into their core BI platforms in the hope of making BI more pervasive. Wheat or Chaff? Mobile BI has promised to go anywhere, but so far it hasn't. What stopped it doing so in the past was less about the technology (the bandwidth and rendering issues are being fixed) and more about presenting a compelling business case for the investment. That still holds true today. Only a few specialized functions really benefit from mobile BI, notably field sales and support optimization, territory analysis, and customer communications/management. Unless someone comes up with a killer app for mobile BI then it will simply be another bell and whistle function of your BI platform. On-Demand BI They have a strong case. Established BI software providers like SAS Institute, Business Objects, and Cognos, as well as new entrants like Oco Software, Seatab, Host Analytics, and LucidEra, have all recently made SaaS BI plays. And Informatica, in partnership with SaaS poster child Salesforce.com, is also pioneering the delivery of hosted integration services to systems integrators and business process outsourcers. Wheat or Chaff? SaaS, like open source BI, is still a nascent trend in BI. It is gaining in popularity, particularly at the lower end of the market where cash-strapped and IT resource-challenged SMBs are looking for painless entry into BI. In many ways SaaS represents a significant paradigm shift in how enterprise software is deployed and managed. It is a direct response to customer demand for less expensive software licensing, simpler implementation, and more widespread adoption. BI fits the bill well since it has traditionally been expensive and complex to deploy and has yet to penetrate broader business user audiences. It is too early to gauge the impact of this software delivery model. The newer start-ups need to acquire a critical mass of customers in the SMB segment. But these vendors are also up against a formidable and entrenched competitor in the SMB space, namely Microsoft and its SQL Server 2005-based BI system. At face value, SaaS offers a much cheaper and easier alternative than on-premise software. But moving to SaaS is not as easy as simply having your BI software hosted. Companies should carefully consider several issues, not least security implications that are more pronounced in BI given the sensitive nature of the data, managing organizations' access to the data and applications through multiple client tenancy arrangements, and how a vendor's SaaS architecture fits with their IT standards and its impact on interoperability with their own internal systems, especially enterprise BI systems already in place. Vendors offering their BI solutions as SaaS must also overcome the significant hurdles of data privacy, reliability of service, working out commissions for channel partners, and grappling with a new sales model. Moreover, the majority of SaaS deployments continue to be focused on individual departmental initiatives. No provider yet offers the functionality or end-to end process management awareness of on-premise software to support the analysis of cross-departmental business flows. Finally, there is the issue of customizability, which has always been the bugbear of SaaS applications, and one reason why most SaaS BI offerings today are best suited for "commoditized" BI tasks like query and reporting. But BI delivered as SaaS is also likely to get uptake from larger enterprises that have prior experience with on-demand CRM solutions. Posted by madansheina in Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) July 24, 2007Informatica Jumps Into Bed with SAP
Informatica's blockbuster OEM with German business applications giant earlier this week raised a few eyebrows, especially those that continue to think the data integration software vendor is a sitting duck for acquisition. Truth be told Informatica's pool of OEM opportunity has been shrinking for several years as a result of rampant consolidation in its core business intelligence and data warehousing market. Business Objects, IBM, and Oracle/PeopleSoft all used to be strong and lucrative business partners for Informatica. But that's all changed now as each now wears its own data integration kit. More recently Informatica effectively "self-destructed" a longstanding OEM with data quality vendor Firstlogic after acquiring Similarity Systems. Firstlogic was quickly snapped up by none other than Business Objects. Therefore it's no surprise that industry pundits and observers alike are betting on SAP, currently without a data integration competency of its own in its NetWeaver application integration platform, as a potential suitor. So does this OEM signal a possible future merger between the two companies? Some believe so, saying that few companies -- SAP and Oracle included -- will relish building the type of complex software that Informatica had developed over nearly two and half decades of so. Also, having a robust data integration technology inside of NetWeaver will help SAP to open up its rapidly evolving business intelligence and analytics applications suite more readily to heterogeneous data sources. Remember multi-source data integration has always been the main strength of Informatica's PowerCenter platform. Even though Informatica now maintains OEMs with both SAP and Oracle, it's with the former that it has a likely future with right now. Allying with SAP could well be a covering move against Oracle which recently bought French data integration firm Sunopsis and is seemingly breathing new life into its older Oracle Warehouse Builder data warehousing software as well. However one could also make the argument that SAP is taking a big risk integrating Informatica as a "preferred" data integration technology if it doesn’t harbor ambitions for a take-over somewhere down the road. If Informatica fell into someone else's hands then SAP would probably be forced into a back-up plan. But it could find itself running out of (good) partners pretty soon. Of course that's not to say that another large analytics of application player might not be interested in Informatica. Infor Global Solutions is one company that immediately springs to mind. Regardless of the buyer, Informatica will be a big fish to land, with a market cap of around $1.3 billion. But then again Informatica was the subjected to the bright glare of the acquisition spotlight back in 2004, when it leaked senior executives and reported a string of disappointing quarters. But the company has stood the test of time, no less because data integration remains the most critical, and challenging, task in corporate IT today. So whoever gets their hands on Informatica will be getting some very critical technology indeed. Posted by madansheina in Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 19, 2007Why We Can Go to the Moon, But We Can't Make Informed Decisions
James Taylor, who is part of our ebizQ community, just co-authored a book (with Neil Raden) entitled "Smart (Enough) Systems," which is a great work on systematizing and managing the decision support process. I had the honor of contributing a testimonial to the work, which I'm reprinting here: While growing up, the big rhetorical question I often heard asked was, “If we can send people all the way to the Moon and back, why can’t we…. ? (Fill in the blank with a frustration – predict tomorrow’s weather, design a car that runs on something besides oil, make a good omelet…) The same kind of question might be asked of today’s businesses: With all the vast amounts of information technology and data that is abundant in today’s corporations, why can’t companies still comprehend want their customers want, what their employees know, and what the future directions they should take? In Smart Enough Systems, James Taylor and Neil Raden – who have been leading the charge for more engaging business intelligence for a number of years now – attempt to finally answer this question, by looking at the current state of technology and how it is employed – or underemployed – within today’s organizations. In fact, James and Neil point out that most organizations already have the technology in place from which they can make better decisions. It’s not technology that’s holding things back, it’s the way that decision making is managed and measured – which, in many cases, is no management or measurement at all. Instead, too many managers throw more hardware and software at a problem, thinking that by buying and installing the latest and greatest tools and systems, they will suddenly gain wisdom and insights that will elevate their companies to the tops of their markets. However, once these systems are installed and the money is spent, managers and end users on the front lines -- the ones that are supposed to make it all happen -- receive little training and direction, and are left clueless as how to use these systems to their advantage. All too often, these expensive systems end up sitting unused, collecting dust. As James and Neil point out, "enterprise applications tend to be pretty dumb. They collect data, store it and produce reports on it.” The way to add greater intelligence to technology-enabled decision-making is through Enterprise Decision Management, or EDM. Why is EDM so important now? As James and Neil point out, “taking control of decisions is increasingly a source of competitive advantage.” The world is flatter and much more competitive, and the more a company can automate decision making, and capture the knowledge of the most effective decision-makers, the better it can stay ahead of the curve. Another challenge James and Neil bring up is the fact that many companies don’t know how to measure the success of their decision-making processes. In this work, James and Neil offer a methodology (“Decision Yield”) to measure decisioning success, and thus provide guidance on which technology approaches that are benefiting the business, and which aren’t. This book is a must-read for any manager or professional that seeks to understand how human-machine interaction can be better leveraged to make sense of all that data now flowing through organizations – and make smarter decisions. And, ultimately, the lesson learned is the same with any other major technology change that has swept today's organizations -- it's not technology that means the difference between failure and success -- it's adroit and informed management that makes the difference. Posted by joemckendrick in Decision Support | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 17, 2007BI Gut Check: What Decision Makers Really Want
Partly inspired by my recent post, Timo Elliot has just posted two really funny and clever cartoons (here and here) about executive attitudes toward BI and what they truly want out of their business intelligence systems. Timo hits the proverbial nail right on the proverbial head in that "gut feel" is just that; not actionable intelligence that will provide better metrics for the business. Plus, the fact that many decision makers still seek a magical technology solution that takes your problems away with the push of a button. The lesson here is that business intelligence requires both robust technology that is capable of accessing and tracking many aspects of the business, in combination with the intuitive insights of decision makers. You can have all the greatest technology in the world, but if you don't have a forward-thinking corporate culture that encourages managed risk-taking -- and, very importantly, even encourages failure to some degree -- things will not progress. James Taylor, who wrote the book on decision-making and technology (check it out, here!) also got a kick out of Timo's cartoons, noting in is latest post that the lesson in all this is that it's time to start focusing "on the challenge of automating decisions, not just supporting them. After all, front-line workers have less time and less experience with data analysis and so are easier to overwhelm with data. They are also, perhaps, not the people you want making "gut-feel" decisions about your customers." That last line is the key; it's important -- both from a profitability and even legal standpoint -- to be able to automate and standardize decisioning for day-to-day operations. James points out that the higher-level strategic decisions "are not repeatable enough to lend themselves to automation." Instead, "often these decisions are about decision strategy - how aggressive should I be about pricing decisions, about retention, about risk." While we may not have reached the point where we simply push a certain key if we decide we want to save millions of dollars, technology is helping us reach the point where we can say "'which of these three approaches should generate the best return, given the real-world constraints on my business,' and then have an easy way to pick the rules that seem to work best and push them into production without pain," James said. Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 12, 2007'Compete on Analytics'? Still a Dream, Say Some
Actionable analytics? We're still spending too much time gathering information, and not enough time truly analyzing it. Andy Bailey, vice president of worldwide marketing for Attunity, recently shared with me his thoughts on the 'Competing on Analytics.' vision everyone seems to be talking about these days. Is it any closer to reality in today's enterprises, or still a vision? Andy says we've made some progress, but, alas, the vision of competing on analytics is still elusive for many companies. Why is it so elusive? Andy points to research Attunity commissioned earlier this year, which shows the vision to still be elusive. "While there was agreement of its importance in creating a sustainable advantage, the reality is that management, and more importantly senior management, spends too much of their time gathering and collating information versus analyzing it and making timely decisions." Unfortunately, the current BI/analytics tools market is not delivering the kind of abilities decision makers need. Vendors typically "have focused on driving efficiencies in organizations by automating the repetitive tasks – gathering information for reports, distributing reports, creating charts and graphs and analyzing trends. While those efforts have been significant and clearly efficiencies have been achieved, the benefit to senior management has remained limited." Andy also points out that decision-makers still face a dearth of information in enterprises suffering from information overload. Many of today's BI solutions, in fact, "have only exacerbated the amount of information that is bombarding senior management and left it up to them to decipher, collate and try to find the nuggets of useful and relevant information for their particular responsibility." Andy goes on to note that "management does not receive what they need in context of what they care about and are responsible for. They receive reports and dashboards and can view portals, but they need to toggle back and forth between multiple applications, go to meetings, sift through emails, try to find documents and take one column off a report on page 35 of the report to make their decision." Overwhelming at best, he opines. "The burden has been placed on the top employees of an organization who were hired to drive a company forward, to sort through and figure out what they need. Sometimes one wonders if working more on gut feel back in the good ol’ days was easier and more effective." Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 11, 2007To 'Compete on Analytics,' Intelligence Has to be Shared
I just published an article in the latest issue of Database Trends & Applications on "competing on analytics," and wanted to share some findings and conclusions with you: The challenge: In theory, companies are now capable of capturing and analyzing the details of every minute transaction and event that occurs within their walls. Although businesses are being inundated with data, much of it is the wrong data. It's not timely, and it's not getting to the right end-users. This is perhaps one of the most vexing challenges to “ competing on analytics,” now seen as a key strategy for attaining competitive differentiation, and well- documented in popular books by industry experts such as Tom Davenport of Babson College. Consider some of the challenges cited in a recent survey of 296 data applications managers I helped conduct and analyze in partnership with Unisphere Research for the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). The survey, underwritten by Cognos, found that a paradox exists in most organizations today. Decision-makers are overwhelmed by information overload, but at the same time, there isn't enough of the right information available. Ninety-one percent of executives, in fact, said that their decision-making capabilities were stymied by a lack of complete information. Yet, three out of four also report they suffer from 'information overload.' Identifying and separating out the pieces of data that have the most value may be like looking for a particular piece of straw in a haystack. Add to this the fact that most end-users do not have access to the latest BI tools, and still have to go through IT or other departments. The majority of respondents to the OAUG survey, in fact, report that it takes more than three to five days to get a report out of IT. Overall, the survey found, fewer than 10 percent of employees have access to BI and corporate performance management tools. Marc Andrews, director of strategy and business development for unstructured information at IBM, told me that most companies are "still only touching the surface of business intelligence. The number of business processes and the number of users across the organization that are leveraging the technologies is still only the fraction of the population potential.” Mark Lorion, director of product marketing for the Spotfire Division of TIBCO, agreed with this assessment, noting that “companies have yet to find an effective way to deliver BI capabilities to more than a handful of ‘power users’ who have the technical expertise to leverage BI tools. Instead, their employees are using spreadsheets and other packaged applications because the BI platforms are not flexible enough to suit their analysis needs or pace. BI tools frequently are not intuitive, and require heavy IT involvement to reconfigure cubes or generate new reports. Because they require IT involvement, they do not work at the speed of frontline decision-makers.” I spoke with the folks at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee ( BCBST), who perhaps hit upon the best approach to broadening the reach of analytics -- they're employing multi-faceted approaches that leverage a wide range of data sources, and extend this capability to as many end-users as possible. BCBST, for example, offers account reporting to its largest groups, which allows the company to respond more effectively to RFPs to acquire new business and retain existing clients. In the article, I quote Frank Brooks, senior manager of data resource management and chief data architect for BCBST, who said that analytical capabilities currently delivered via the Internet to BCBST clients include utilization management through interactive reports and OLAP data cubes. BCBST plans to provide additional analytical capabilities for its account reporting packages, including national and regional benchmarking data from Blue Health Intelligence (a national data warehouse of BlueCross BlueShield Plans). “We’re now in the process of enhancing our business intelligence and analytical infrastructure to also support instant access to the results of text analytics and predictive analytics processing,” Brooks said. BCBST is taking a multipronged approach involving traditional business intelligence tools, as well as data mining, text analytics, and enterprise search to sift through a variety of company data sources to spot trends and patterns in service, claims, and utilization. Posted by joemckendrick in BI | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 09, 2007BI Bellwether Cracks?
The hidden pun in the title of this blog entry is perhaps appropriate as it's written around US July 4th holiday – though the ringing of the famous Liberty Bell in 1776 to summon the good citizens of Philadelphia to the reading of the Declaration of Independence, actually occurred four days later on July 8th. What's less certain though is how and when the famous crack appeared – some say it happened while sounding for a fire in 1825. But enough of the history lesson and back to the matter at hand. What's up with Cognos these days? Not so long ago the high-flying Canadian software company was considered to be the undisputed and consistent bellwether for the growth of the business intelligence software market. But since a CEO handover three years ago (Zambonini to Ashe), it seems to have lost its ringer. Cognos' most recent quarterly (first quarter) results were as flat as a bottle of Coke left open for two days. Most worrying of all was software license revenue growth – up a paltry 3% in the quarter – though revenue remained respectable enough at $327m driven largely from maintenance and support and services. That's not an ideal balance for a company that is supposed to be a software business. The lack of big-ticket BI standardization deals around its Cognos 8 BI platform also seems to be coming back to haunt the company. CEO Ashe had taken steps last year to address this, by restructuring field and executive sales. But in the most recent quarter it only managed to notch up nearly half of the million dollar deals it did in the same quarter a year ago - 7 compared to 13. Nor does Cognos expect things to get better soon, issuing some disappointing projections for the rest of the year that fall short of Wall Street expectations. Of course the strength of the Canadian dollar isn't doing Cognos any favors at the moment as well. On the product mix front, Cognos' focus on high-end financial analytics – under the guise of corporate performance management – seems to be doing better than Cognos' bread-and-butter BI tools business, which many believe is shrinking. Don't get me wrong. Cognos' first-quarter doesn't spell doom and gloom. But they hardly flatter in what seems to be a strong BI market. Worse still is that Cognos luster dulls even more when compared to recent results of arch-rival Business Objects. Business Objects doesn't care much to be labeled as a BI bellwether. But it's now reluctantly taking over that mantle from Cognos. The company's most recent quarterly earnings point to a healthy and thriving business with revenue up 20% to $334m (like Cognos license growth was modest though at 9%). The company seems to be on a high. It's in the midst of an aggressive acquisition roll – recently snapping up Cartesis and Inxight to strengthen its performance management portfolio and to put an early stake into a nascent, but rapidly evolving, market for unstructured data analytics. The company has also benefited from several analyst upgrades in the past several months that might ironically work to Cognos' advantage in the short-term at least by taking it out of the acquisition spotlight. That's because right now Business Objects, on paper at least, seems like a much better business to takeover, than Cognos. So when Business Objects reports its second quarter figures later this month it's very likely that many investors will be re-sighting the company as the new bellwether for growth. That said we could be talking about Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and IBM as the new bellwethers of BI growth in several years time – especially if the latest IDC figures are to be believed. Here's a quick lowdown of IDC's latest market number crunch: • Pure-plays like Cognos and Business Objects are slowly but surely losing ground in BI to these larger, less-specialized software vendors. • Microsoft increased its share by a percentage point to 7.7% in 2006; Oracle, buoyed by its $3.3bn acquisition of Hyperion Solutions earlier this year, now has a combined 8.5% share and IBM also reversed a decline in market share in 2005, with BI revenue up 12.2% to $71.9m last year. • In contrast Business Object saw its share sliced from 15% to 14.3% while Cognos had a more or less flat share growth at 10%. Other BI specialists also failed to keep pace with the industry average growth rate. Information Builders (7%) and Actuate (9.8%). • Reflecting the recent consolidation in the market the market share of "others" in the BI market dropped from 33.5% to 30.6% in the past couple of years, with revenue growth averaging just 6.6% in 2006. Posted by madansheina in Business Intelligence • Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) BI, BPM, SOA -- and USERS! 
I have just read the recent posting by my learned colleague and ebizQ blogmate Joe McKendrick, in which he summarizes some of the high points of the panel discussion that wrapped up the recent BI in Action Virtual Conference. I of course agree completely with what he and the other participants had to say about the links connecting BI, BPM, and service-oriented architectures (SOAs). I have in fact referred to what I and some others call "business knowledge management" (BKM) as the "missing link" connecting these three critically strategic areas. (You can read about BKM in more detail in some of the research located in the RFG section of the ebizQ Analyst Corner, as well as in previous postings of mine here and at the "BPM in Action" blog, particularly this one.) However, I, perhaps as usual, have something to add. It is equally critical, I believe, to remember that most useful BI, as well as most of the actual "heavy lifting" regarding BPM, resides in the hearts and minds of actual individual human users. Yes, of course, there's a lot of relevant "intelligence" resident in data and documents, and even within the IT systems and connections that support access to and manipulation of these. But all of that "stuff" is done by people who are trying to do jobs that drive the business. Those people are the ultimate consumers and beneficiaries of most if not all of the most significant services provided by SOAs as well. I know that Joe and everyone else involved in the BI in Action Virtual Conference knew and knows this. However, it can be too easy to take away from discussions about BI, BPM, and/or SOAs that some mix or subset of these technologies can simply, "automagically" improve things for users and/or the business. Would that it were that easy. BI, BPM, and SOA efforts must include specific, concrete elements focused on incorporating user input and feedback, from the earliest stages of development and deployment. Of course, all such initiatives are perhaps cavalierly assumed to be "designed with users in mind." However, IT and business decision-makers must also make overt and explicit efforts to incorporate user input and feedback, and include in their project plans steps and metrics focused on user productivity and satisfaction. BI, BPM, and SOAs are elements of larger business-technology ecosystems, within which things that affect some elements directly and/or indirectly affect all other elements. In such a context, users can represent the most maddeningly difficult elements of all to manage and integrate. (I have heard many engineers say without a trace of irony that a particular project or system would work just fine, if they could just keep users away from it. This may be true, but kind-of misses the point of the exercise in a business setting.) However, users and IT people in an enterprise are like cast and crew in a play. They may not understand or be able to stand one another, but without either constituency, you got no show. So make sure that everything you do (and most everything you say) regarding BI, BPM, and/or SOAs includes and addresses users adequately and directly. It may make things a bit more complicated, but it will help to ensure that they support rather than combat or ignore your efforts. Posted by mdortch in BI • Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) July 05, 2007BI, BPM, and SOA in Action, Together
What's on the horizon for business intelligence? What's business process management got to do with it? And, for that matter, what's service-oriented architecture got to do with it? Those are the questions recently taken up at a panel discussion led by ebizQ's Beth Gold-Bernstein to wrap up the BI in Action virtual conference. I had the opportunity to join Guy Weismantel of Business Objects, Rob Risany of Savvion, and Michael Corcoran of Information Builders for a rousing discussion on how the pieces of BI, BPM and SOA all fit together to greatly amplify the an organization's intelligence. (Transcript and link to the podcast is posted here.) First, the BI-BPM role. As Rob put it, "BPM -- business process management -- basically creates a role for business people that they haven't really had before in enterprise architecture. Business process management gives business people the ability to think about the things that affect them most and turn them into running solutions within the business." BI, in the context of BPM, "is about providing enough information so that the process solutions that are created by businesspeople used in conjunction with IT have enough information so that the right decisions can be made," Rob added. Then, there's BI-SOA. To quote Rob again, "SOA is the infrastructure which IT uses to enable the business initiatives.... BI creates a business face for the data, BPM creates a business face for the process while SOA is an underlying approach for building applications across the business." Examples of the BI-BPM-SOA triangle at work: Disneyland in Paris employs a number of data warehouses and applications to monitor events around the park in real time. "They can determine if they need to move Disney characters around different parts of the park based on the crowd levels and crowd flows," Guy said. "They can get more food and move inventory around based on the lunch crowd and the dinner crowd in different parts of the theme park." Another theme park, Universal Studios in Orlando, employs a BPM engine to streamline its planning and budgeting processes. The system enables the park's managers to "reduce the cycle time that it takes to go ahead and do budgeting," Guy explained. "Universal is probably one of the most unique companies in that they actually do planning and budgeting on a daily basis," versus once a year or so. The reason Universal plans daily is "because conditions at their theme park in Orlando are always changing and the plan for, you know, June 19th of 2007 is going to be different than the plan for June 19th of 2006. The weather could have been different, the day of the week could have been different, different rides could have been functional or not operational so they have a limited ability to go ahead and take past information and make some sense of it now they certainly use that but they're always look at the conditions during that day in the park and what they can forecast." Universal would not be able to accomplish this "unless they had the planning and budgeting and more performance management environment tied in real closely with the key processes that help them drive the business," Guy added. Motorola has built and leverages business intelligence on top of ongoing process data which is automatically gathered in audit trails, which is used to track SOA compliance. The reported data is also analyzed "to find anomalies in the specific products that are causing a service level problem," Rob explained, such as order delivery to drop ships to customers. "The role of BI in action in that regard is one of how can I affect the strategic decision making, of how I can improve the process overall." What's holding back organizations from really moving forward with the new BI-BPM-SOA paradigm? Michael reported that many companies will say that "'we're not doing anything with BI right now because we're very focused on our architecture.' I think you have to broaden that thought process to say 'BI is part of the architecture, it's a service in a service-oriented world.'" "There is no such thing as a perfect architecture," Michael continued. "I still see organizations who haven't done anything for twelve years just because they're waiting for that wonderful CORBA architecture or whatever the new standard was at the time. I think the perfect architecture is the one that works, the one that you can use to integrate and leverage now.... it's all about business needs, not technology needs." Posted by joemckendrick in Business Intelligence | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) |
