Business Intelligence 2

From ‘Performance Management in the Midmarket’ by the Aberdeen Group…

During the current economic downturn, Businesses are feeling pressure to access, review, analyze and act upon events and information in order to become more agile as they work to meet day-to-day operational and financial performance goals.

The Aberdeen Group interviewed over 300 companies and documented their top pressures in this order:

1)      Lag times and inaccuracy of operational business decisions

2)      Need to understand operational performance drivers

3)      Poor executive visibility into the business

4)      Executive mandate to find operational efficiencies

5)      Need to improve customer intelligence

6)      Need to improve response to customer demand

7)      Increased cost due to operational inefficiencies

8)      Declining customer retention

My Thoughts…

This week’s topic – The need to understand operational performance drivers

Operational performance drivers are characterized by their immediacy.  An example would be ‘the ability to respond to customer requests/demands.  This is a part of your overall customer satisfaction metric.

Another word for immediacy might be value.  Have you identified your high value activities?  Do you have them documented?  Do you have metrics in place to measure how well your company performs these activities?  Do you have real-time [you define the time span] reports that show you how well your company is performing these activities?

I see a lot of articles talking about business agility [performance] but I see more discussions than actions.  The companies that address their operational performance drivers are the companies that will end up with the greatest market share when the economy turns around.

Your Thoughts…

Is your company ‘talking’ about performance management or ‘acting’ on it?

Business Intelligence

From ‘Performance Management in the Midmarket’ by the Aberdeen Group…

During the current economic downturn, Businesses are feeling pressure to access, review, analyze and act upon events and information in order to become more agile as they work to meet day-today operational and financial performance goals.

They interviewed over 300 companies and identified their top pressures in this order:

1. Lag times and inaccuracy of operational business decisions
2. Need to understand operational performance drivers
3. Poor executive visibility to the business
4. Executive mandate to find operational efficiencies
5. Need to improve customer intelligence
6. Need to improve response to customer demand
7. Increased cost due to operational inefficiencies
8. Declining customer retention

My Thoughts…

Since this is a huge topic, I will stick to one topic at a time over several weeks.

Topic 1: Lag times and inaccuracy of operational business decisions

The old adage ‘time is money’ is still true today.  Aberdeen says that companies suffer when the lag time for determining operational performance is greater than the ‘decision window’ [the opportunity to affect performance based on taking or changing an action].

This really makes sense.  If you look at a report that is a week old, you may have already suffered a week’s worth of inefficiency.  Or, a report that is a week old may hide specific incidents of inefficiency that happened during that week.

All of us see many articles and much data talking about performance management [business agility], but there appears to be more discussions than actions.  The companies that act [take steps to improve] are the companies that will end up with greater market share when the economy turns around.  Companies that don’t act may not survive.

Your Thoughts…

Is your company ‘talking’ about performance management or ‘acting’ on it?

ERP and the Real World

Jan Baan, former head of BAAN Corporation says that ERP Systems are traditionally monolithic solutions for automation of business operations.  They provide a solution for a particular way of doing business and typically require a major investment in implementation and adaptation to align the solution and the business operation.

My Thoughts…

ERP is the lifeblood of most companies because the key resource they manage is cash.

I have never spoken with anyone that has implemented an ERP solution that enjoyed the project.  The project crosses departmental boundaries [making it disruptive].  Because ERP software wants you to work a certain way, companies are always modifying the software.  Because of the complexity of a company, an ERP project plan looks daunting.  Further, because of all of the customization, the investment in your ERP solution can double or triple.

Interestingly, after the implementation is completed and people have used it for a few months, most companies are happy with their implementation.  Still, when discussing ERP, there are thousands of war stories.

The future requires enterprises [as well as systems] be designed for change…

Businesses are not static – things change.  These changes to your ERP just keep piling on the investment.  There are no guarantees that a change will go smoothly.  And at some point, integration issues will arise.

So, what are your options?

      Work with your ERP vendor to make the changes and updates.  This is frequently the most expensive option.

      Charge your IT staff with making all of the changes.  Still, new versions of ERP software can upset the coding that your IT staff has created.  Many companies are still on back rev’s of their ERP software for this reason.

      Go with a lightweight solution that integrates and aggregates information.  Create a composite application [a user interface that sits on top of your enterprise software] that will display [read] only the information that users need to perform their tasks and then update [write] the appropriate enterprise software below.  Upgrades are straight forward because no customization has taken place.  Enhancements due to change are easy to create.

I have heard of some very large companies that have gotten very far into their ERP implementation only to cancel the project and take huge [$ millions] losses.  When you have narrowed down your solutions choices, talk to their customers.  More information should help you make a well informed decision.

Your Thoughts…

What has been your experience? 

by Scott Cleveland [scottc@coldwatertech.com]

Composite Applications

From an Atanu Banerjee [Microsoft] article…

Today, most business applications are effective at automating transactions, but they do not enable rich collaboration across functional boundaries.  This usually leads information workers to use personal productivity tools to perform he complex interactions required to conduct business.  However, this in turn leads to a loss in productivity, as users are forced to cross from one set of tools to another, often manually transporting the data through means such as cut-and-paste operations.

Composite Applications – Ideally, it would be easy to stitch together different business applications and enable collaboration for information workers – but in a way that complex interactions between people a plug easily into structured business processes.

My Thoughts…

There is a very large contingent of people that do not understand ‘composite applications’.  So, let’s see if I can add some clarity.

From Wikipedia – The term composite application expresses a perspective of software engineering that defines an application built by combining multiple existing functions into a new application. 

I describe a ‘composite application’ as a user interface that sits on top of multiple enterprise software packages.  The user interface will be in the language of your company.  It will present users with only the data, fields, choices, activities that pertain to the activities they perform for their job. 

What’s in it for them?  The users don’t log into each enterprise software package to use software they have forgotten how to use.  This new ‘composite application’ aggregates data from all of the enterprise software packages so that it appears to be in one location [data virtualization].  Reports [aggregated data] are easy to create and use to make sound business decisions. 

Building Composite Applications…

There are many approaches to building composite applications.  You could create the user interface and connect to your enterprise software packages through the use of a data warehouse; SOA [services oriented architecture], although more than half of the enterprise software packages out there are not SOA compliant; EAI [enterprise application integration]; you could write all of the code that is needed to complete the connection in house; or you can hire someone to do it for you.

No matter the choice, companies that have created composite applications are thrilled with the results.  As you might imagine, you will be able to complete more ‘real’ work in less time – reducing costs.