Description
A research report on Business Intelligence
A Review of MicroStrategy’s Patent Applications for 2010: Making it Easier to Generate Complex Reports, and Personalized, Real-Time, Interactive Voice Services
MicroStrategy filed two patent applications which were published in 2010. Although the inventions described are not earth-shattering, the patent applications nevertheless provide some clues as to what directions the pure-play BI vendor is headed in. One common element between these two seemingly unrelated applications is the use of prompt-and-answer dialogues to initiate a complex set of OLAPmediated services. MicroStrategy’s first patent application, published in July of this year, lists Clarabridge CTO Justin Langseth as one of the inventors, and is actually a continuation of an earlier patent application abandoned in 2005. The patent application is entitled “System and Method for Real-Time, Personalized, Dynamic, Interactive Voice Services for Entertainment-Related Information” (USPTO Pub. No. US2010/0166165). The application describes a method whereby users are alerted to entertainmentrelated information via interactive voice services. The users presumably would subscribe to such services, and the systems enabling these services would draw data from a variety of sources – e.g. user history stored in a data warehouse or user filters and preferences set during the subscription process – to decide when and how the users would be alerted to the availability of entertainment-related events. Once alerted, users can then interact with system via voice to opt for (or decline) services, or to customize their choices. While this in itself may not impress or surprise those familiar with CEO Michael Saylor’s longstanding fascination with mobile services - and his previous involvement with companies like Angel.com, Alarm.com, etc. - MicroStrategy’s current emphasis on mobile delivery has no doubt given renewed impetus to what was an earlier, abandoned application. Perhaps the most interesting embodiment of the services described in the application is tucked away in Item [0016] and describes “an interactive voice broadcasting system and method that enables analytical reporting and advanced transactional services via the telephone or voice-enabled terminal service.” This part of the application goes on to say that “one advantage of this invention is that a voice service may leverage the power of OLAP or other data repository systems and provide critical information to the user, in a timely fashion, by phone.” One can only wonder why something that sounds suspiciously like voice enabled reporting services – perhaps enabled by the kind of NLP services provided by Clarabridge (Lanseth’s company) – is being tucked away almost as an afterthought in an application purportedly relating to entertainment services. MicroStrategy’s second patent application this year was published in late November, and is entitled “Report System and Method Using Prompt Object Abstraction” (USPTO Pub. No. US2010/0299321 A1). At first glance, the application looks like it’s describing a newfangled report-building wizard. A closer examination, however, quickly reveals that the system uses a prompt-and-answer format to create reusable and/or interchangeable report components which even inexperienced users can use to generate highly complex reports – reports whose attributes can be customized in ways that are nearly impossible with most query wizards used for BI reporting today.
It would seem that MicroStrategy's second patent application from 2010 is aimed at addressing a longstanding complaint about the difficulty level of using its products. In its 2010 Magic Quadrant report, Gartner cited as one of the weaknesses of MicroStrategy its “steep learning curve, even for seasoned report builders.” Ostensibly, the described invention would enable even inexperienced users to generate reports of great complexity through the use of reusable components defining even the most minute attributes of reports.
The Basics of BI Success
Supporting Business Intelligence platforms in mid to large organizations is not just about technology nor is it solely about the information that the technology delivers. Striking the right balance between the type of information required and the framework for delivery requires a defined and methodical approach built on solid governance principles that merge business drivers with appropriate enabling technologies. Organizations have seen the fruits of implementing data warehouses and are moving at rapid speed to establish Business Intelligence models that seek to leverage an often under utilized and valuable asset information. The challenge with many of these efforts centers on 1) defining the strategy and 2) building the supporting infrastructure to ensure the overall success of the program. This was no more evident than when I recently attended a BI conference that included 1,500 peers representing dozens of companies looking to identify best in class practices that would take them to the next level. It quickly became evident, based on discussion with industry peers that many organizations are looking to take a giant leap into the world of BI without addressing some fundamental basics.
Defining the Strategy
A solid BI program starts with the basics. A formal data quality program must sit at the base of any effort. In fact, I believe that organizations with existing data quality programs in place to support their source systems are more likely to succeed in establishing a solid BI framework. These organizations get it and they understand the importance of ensuring that accurate and reliable information flows through their core systems. Financial institutions excel in this area because data accuracy is what keeps them in business. Customer deposits, earnings, portfolio summaries have to be correct, you do not get a second chance to be wrong and these companies know that their credibility is vital to sustaining customer relationships and ultimately, profitability. The following are some key items to consider when establishing a BI program in your organization: -- Establish a Data Quality Czar with primary dedicated resources charged with correcting identified errors, conducting independent audits of existing data, and establishing a metrics program aimed at fostering improved data entry and production support. -- Ensure that you engage your respective business partners across the Enterprise at the same time to ensure that data mart development is not done in a vacuum. Remember that many functional areas and service teams use the same data in different ways so make sure that you look at marts from a functional AND service channel perspective as well. There may be economies of scale opportunities right in front of you.
-- Avoid the "build it and they will come" mentality by engaging the business and having those stakeholders engage key customers to get a sense of not just what data they are looking for but what they are looking to accomplish with the information. -- Re-focus ROI opportunities away from the typical "less time" to produce reports and instead incorporate increased capacity estimates, headcount avoidance and demand forecasting from a reporting perspective. -- Avoid a common mistake that organizations make when implementing new technologies - Do Not Over Customize. Remember, delivering accurate and reliable information in the most streamlined manner possible has to remain the primary goal of the effort. Sending the report to a PDA with embedded images can come later. -- Finally, don't implement a Cadillac if the Pinto gets you to the same place. For smaller organizations this especially rings true. Leveraging 30-40% of the capability of a technology asset means that you probably missed a tremendous opportunity on the ROI side of the house.
BI Governance
The challenge with governance is significant in many organizations when it comes to rolling out a BI platform especially when it comes to IT resources. BI technology resources almost always fall outside of the core application development structure in many organizations. The BI technology resources build extracts that pull data out of systems owned by another group. That group is often focused on implementing enhancements and releases to their applications that can sometimes take precedent over supporting an extract build to a warehouse. It can, and often does, become a juggling act. A possible solution in support of improved coordination in this area entails a full process integration of your BI technology assets into your application development infrastructure with a specific focus on assuming responsibility for delivering on reporting needs as part of your application development effort. Rather than waiting until the business case and requirements are finalized before you engage the BI team for support on report development, make them an integral part of the process upfront. Handing the BI technology team 20 and 30 page documents to review and then having them engage the business separately might not be the most practical use of time and resources. Some key items for consideration from an overall BI governance perspective include the following: -- Consider appointing an Officer level individual responsible for BI initiatives with matrix reporting from respective IT and business sponsors engaged in BI activity. -- Establish a Program Management Office to reinforce organizational wide commitment and partnering for BI activity. -- Appoint a dedicated report analyst in each functional area with matrices into the PMO office who will serve to help address production support, issue escalation, status reporting and project plan deliverables. The degree of dedication initially should be significant but can be scaled down as the BI environment matures.
-- Establish BI alignment meetings with senior leadership to ensure continued buy-in and support (must be done in parallel with IT leadership as well). -- Institutionalize the value of collecting and analyzing information assets via a formal horizontal and vertical communication plan. Stakeholders can't appreciate what they don't know and that might present challenges when you need to get additional funding down the road. Having the strategy and vision will mean very little if you don't have the governance structure in place to pull it off. A firm commitment in this area ensures success across the board. Be careful when assigning resources to your BI effort. Stand tall in the face of the "it's just reporting" comments that may come your way and be ready to demonstrate how BI can be a key asset to expense management and business profitability in your organization. If you have not noticed by now, I left out any reference to a particular technology or tool that can make all your BI challenges go away. It doesn't exist. We often see BI efforts driven by IT groups and why not? Finding a way to put technology into the hands of the users freeing up dedicated IT resources to design and distribute hundreds if not thousands of reports is a sure way to get some year end kudos and significant cost avoidance saves for the department and business, as well. However, sitting in this position from an IT perspective is sort of like dealing with my 2 year old when I give him a cookie. "More, more, more...please" is what you will be faced with because users will demand more and unlike my 2 year old, they will know that there is more and will quickly gain a level of sophistication and expectation that may overwhelm the best technology organization. As you seek a solution from a technology perspective, make sure that you bring the users along to ensure that they understand the technology requirements from an architecture perspective as well. After, all there is nothing like defining the strategy, procuring the resources, building the box, opening the box and finding out your cookies are crumbling. Ooops, I think I hear my 2 year old crying.
Implementing BI Governance
August 23rd, 2006
• • by Noe Gutierrez
Background
Governance became a critical concept in the after "IT bubble" days, as IT faced the challenge of dealing with diminishing budgets, without demand on its services being reduced proportionally. There were many initiatives and projects in the pipeline, but not all of them could be executed, given the limitations on people, infrastructure and budget. As companies looked for a way to properly classify and then prioritize the requests coming from the business, the concept of implementing a formal IT Governance process went from being a "nice to have" to a "must have" very quickly. Committees were formed to oversee the process and make sure all business areas had adequate representation when making decisions as to which projects to fund, and how much money to allocate for infrastructure capital investments. While difficult to accept at first, as many organizations operated with no rules for decades, Governance
happened to be very successful aligning the IT organization to the strategic objectives of the company. The Governance process forced a discussion among the stakeholders and make sure the projects with the highest contribution to the company were executed first. The IT Governance process worked very well for individual projects or initiatives, but it did not focus on making sure particular programs, such as Business Intelligence, were successful across the Enterprise. In order to close this gap, leading-edge companies decided to take the Governance concept down a level and focus entirely on the programs, thus giving born to the BI Governance concept. Some of these organizations defined BI Governance as the process they followed to prioritize BI requests along different criteria such as: Project ROI, Organizational Budget, Expertise of the team, People Availability, Infrastructure capacity and Organizational Politics. This article will focus on defining BI governance, and detailing a good BI Governance process must go beyond the basics of approving and prioritizing initiatives.
Defining BI Governance
BI Governance can be defined from three different, unique perspectives (Figure 1): a) As a resource rationalization exercise. This is the traditional definition of BI Governance, a prioritization mechanism by which projects can be approved, rejected and sequenced based on specific criteria. Many companies today have some kind of process to prioritize BI requests; however most of them still rely on subjective factors to determine how a project should move forward. b) As a series of guidelines/rules /recommendations. This is a relatively new way of defining BI Governance. Traditionally IT has been solely responsible for defining the Architecture, Standards and Best Practices to follow in Business Intelligence, however as business starts realizing the significant impact that these decisions may have in BI Projects there has been a trend to make these topics part of the BI Governance process. c) As the definition of roles and responsibilities for both IT and Business stakeholders. As Business Intelligence projects are by nature highly complex, establishing the proper interaction and outlining areas of responsibility between and IT and the Business becomes critical for a project to succeed.
Figure 1 - The three dimensions to BI Governance
Understanding the need for BI Governance
Even despite the apparent benefits that implementing a properly defined BI Governance process can bring to the organization, there is still a significant number of companies in the market place who have yet to start similar efforts. When interviewing people from these companies, one of the most frequent reasons that they give to justify the inaction is the perception that implementing BI Governance is a costly and complex exercise that does not provide any value, as management has already decided which projects to execute first.
While it is true that a good management team should have already a general understanding of the priorities of the organization, and how the company strategy(ies) translate into a series of BI initiatives, establishing BI Governance provides a framework by which the proper resources can be aligned to the Business Priorities. In order for the initiatives to be successful they need to be executable. Only by aligning people and resources to a particular project and documenting a project plan is that initiatives become ready to be executed. Furthermore, a good, solid BI Governance process will establish proper Change Management (CM) and Training policies that facilitate the user adoption process and promote the overall use of BI minimizing the amount of fear and resistance to new technologies from the business users. The proper BI Governance process will also drive the infrastructure and technology decisions. As both perspectives, IT and Business, are considered when making these decisions the likelihood of choosing the right vendor/platform significantly increase; thus reducing the risk that one of the parties chooses a platform without considering the implications that it will have over the other party (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - Business and IT collaborate to align the BI resources to the organization priorities
Establishing the organizational structure of a BI Governance Committee
The fist step to establish an organizational structure of the member of the BI Governance is identifying the stakeholders within the organization. A stakeholder can be defined as someone who has some "skin the game". Stakeholders usually come three areas: a) Business: Every business area/department should nominate who their representative is going to be for the BI Governance committee. This will enable equal representation from business across the organization, and thus provide the right forum to make decisions that might impact the revenue and thus budget for a particular business unit. The business area representatives will be responsible for sponsoring particular projects for their home units, explaining to the committee the benefits of the initiatives. At the same they outline a high level impact and change management plan that allows the committee to understand the project being proposed from many possible angles. Part of their responsibilities will include identifying people in their functional areas to support the Data Modeling, Data Integration and BIFront End efforts from a business perspective. b) IT: IT provides the back office support for the committee. It is its responsibility to provide a Project Manager, Data Modeler, Data Integration Lead, BI Front-End Lead, and Enterprise Architect and Trainer Lead. The project manager will be the facilitator for the committee, making sure the meetings take place at the right place, right time and with the right people. The Data Modeler will be in charge of creating a data model that supports the business needs. It will be the Data Integration Lead's responsibility to implement the appropriate data integration framework to populate the data model. The BI Front-End Lead will interact heavily with the business users to define the report and standards to follow. The Enterprise Architect will keep the solution in check with Enterprise Standards. The Trainer Lead will be responsible
for creating the material that will be used to train the trainers, and thus create an infrastructure to train the user universe in a quick and effective manner. c) CFO Office: As BI projects are considered strategic in nature and depending on the implementation cost can easily escalate to millions of dollars, it is recommended to have a direct link to the CFO in the BI Governance committee. This will facilitate the prioritization of projects, based on alignment to the corporate strategy (ies) and Return On Investment (ROI), at the same time that provides an opportunity to the team to justify the infrastructure and development costs directly to the ultimate approver. As outline above, every group of stakeholders needs to play a role and commit to some responsibilities in order to establish BI Governance. The picture below outlines how the different groups interact through the life cycle of a BI initiative (Figure 3).
Figure 3 - Stakeholder's major roles and responsibilities through the life cycle of a BI initiative
Business roles and responsibilites in BI Governance
The Business area representatives play a key role during the initiatives definition phase. In fact, they actually play a dual role, one inside their particular area, and a slightly different one in the BI Governance committee. Inside their department, it is their responsibility to participate in the internal discussions to analyze the impact that different BI initiatives might have on their organization. They have to take an impartial decision to pick a handful of initiatives that will be taken the BI Governance committee. Once at the committee, the business area representatives need to clearly articulate to the organization the benefits of the initiatives they are sponsoring, as they will be "competing" for resources against other business areas. In a traditional BI Governance, the job of a business area representative is "complete" when one of their initiatives is approved by the committee. However this is rapidly changing to accommodate other responsibilities like participating in data modeling, data integration and the users' BI experience. Business user participation during the data modeling exercise is highly requested as they are the ones who know the operation of the business; they can help the data modeler understand the business processes that are established and identify current and future business scenarios. The business users' involvement in data integration is critical to the success of the initiatives. Their knowledge of the data and the business processes makes them ideal candidates to become or designate the data stewards. A data steward is the person responsible to define the data loading exception scenarios and approve the recovery strategies proposed by IT. Furthermore as the business area representatives they have ownership of the Data Quality criteria and policies for the initiative. Furthermore, as the business area representatives speak for everyone in their areas, it is their responsibility to take ownership of the user experience. The definition of naming standards, folder structures and the report organization in general impacts this user experience. As subject matter experts, they also own the metadata and object descriptions. The establishment of guidelines to govern the
creation of additional end user objects (e.g. reports, metrics, etc) also belongs to them as it significantly contributes to define the user experience.
IT roles and responsibilities in BI Governance
Traditionally, IT participated in the BI Governance committee from the Project Management and BI FrontEnd work perspective. While these two responsibilities are certainly important, they are by no means comprehensive to what IT must now provide in order to be perceived as successful. Other roles that are slowly becoming critical in Governance that traditionally were wrapped behind the scenes are: data modeling, data integration, enterprise architecture and training. Providing the right leadership for project execution is still critical, IT and the Project Management Office (PMO) are in a unique position in the organization to provide thought leadership and a strong methodology to run the projects. The business users heavily rely on IT to structure work streams along timelines and resources to achieve a committed dateline. The BI Front-end work has seen a significant change over the last couple of years, before IT used to set the direction and the business was expected to follow. Given that this approach did not take into consideration many of the business needs, and it did not encompass a seamlessly defined user experience across initiatives, we are seeing a trend where the business users representatives are stepping up to the plate to participate in the decision making. While it is now a more collaborative effort that it used to, IT is still on the hook for critical decisions such as: selecting the proper tools, defining the BI architecture, establishing the proper infrastructure, implementing the standards as defined by the BI Governance Committee, Training the users and last but not least, coordinating support and maintenance across the business areas. Data Modeling, which traditionally was done behind the scenes is now being introduced as part of the BI Governance model to ensure the business users will participate in the data modeling sessions to capture the right elements and accurately reflect business processes. Data Integration, also known as data plumbing, was not something the business user had a lot of visibility into it before. Imagine the surprise of a business user when he was contacted by IT to be designated as a data steward; with no context or understanding of the activities that they were going to commit to. No wonder IT did not get much traction from the business users and had to resort to escalation processes to solve particular data challenges. In the new model IT partners with business to ensure success of the initiatives. In addition to providing the proper infrastructure, IT owns the Tool selection process, the data Integration Architecture and the implementation of data loading and data quality policies. Not to mention that IT has the responsibility to interface with the Data Stewards to resolve data situations and correct data issues as soon as possible. An important element that was not present in BI Governance before was the Enterprise Architecture representative; it is the responsibility of the Enterprise Architect to define how the BI architecture will fit within the Enterprise. These decisions might materially impact the cost and performance of BI initiatives; furthermore if the Enterprise Architect is not aligned he/she can delay the implementation of a project to the point of affecting the business value of the project.
Training is another key role that traditionally has been bounced between IT and the Business, in the past nobody wanted to take ownership of training as it implied a significant invest in time to prepare the material and probably even more to teach it. As the organization evolves, developing the training material and training the trainer is starting to become IT's responsibility, while the business areas provide end trainers who then train the end users.
Implementing BI Governance, what are the first steps?
Implementing BI Governance can be related to writing an article, in both writing the first sentence or giving the first step is always the toughest one. The first step sets the direction of the whole program; it will tell the people in your organization how you are conceptualizing the whole process to work. It is this author's recommendation that the first is to get executive sponsorship, preferably from straight from the CFO. The path to implementation for BI Governance will not be without challenges, just getting the people together will a daunting task by itself.It is extremely important to identify who the business stakeholders are in the organization, communicate them the benefits that BI governance can bring to their areas and discuss their specific BI pain areas / opportunities for improvement. Outlining how the BI Governance process can help them attenuate / solve their situations will give them a compelling reason to support the initiative. Next, the stakeholders in IT will have to be identified. Furthermore, the responsibilities among Data Modeling, Data Sourcing and BI Front-end will have to be clearly defined. Also, support will have to be rallied from the Architecture and Project Management Offices. Once the stakeholders are identified and executive sponsorship is present it will be the time to bring the people together. A mission statement and specific strategies/goals will have to be crafted and approved during the first session. During this meeting sub-committees might be defined to discuss specific topics that do not require getting the whole group together. If possible, it is also suggested to schedule at least the next four meetings of the group so everyone knows the dates and commits to them.
doc_362419468.doc
A research report on Business Intelligence
A Review of MicroStrategy’s Patent Applications for 2010: Making it Easier to Generate Complex Reports, and Personalized, Real-Time, Interactive Voice Services
MicroStrategy filed two patent applications which were published in 2010. Although the inventions described are not earth-shattering, the patent applications nevertheless provide some clues as to what directions the pure-play BI vendor is headed in. One common element between these two seemingly unrelated applications is the use of prompt-and-answer dialogues to initiate a complex set of OLAPmediated services. MicroStrategy’s first patent application, published in July of this year, lists Clarabridge CTO Justin Langseth as one of the inventors, and is actually a continuation of an earlier patent application abandoned in 2005. The patent application is entitled “System and Method for Real-Time, Personalized, Dynamic, Interactive Voice Services for Entertainment-Related Information” (USPTO Pub. No. US2010/0166165). The application describes a method whereby users are alerted to entertainmentrelated information via interactive voice services. The users presumably would subscribe to such services, and the systems enabling these services would draw data from a variety of sources – e.g. user history stored in a data warehouse or user filters and preferences set during the subscription process – to decide when and how the users would be alerted to the availability of entertainment-related events. Once alerted, users can then interact with system via voice to opt for (or decline) services, or to customize their choices. While this in itself may not impress or surprise those familiar with CEO Michael Saylor’s longstanding fascination with mobile services - and his previous involvement with companies like Angel.com, Alarm.com, etc. - MicroStrategy’s current emphasis on mobile delivery has no doubt given renewed impetus to what was an earlier, abandoned application. Perhaps the most interesting embodiment of the services described in the application is tucked away in Item [0016] and describes “an interactive voice broadcasting system and method that enables analytical reporting and advanced transactional services via the telephone or voice-enabled terminal service.” This part of the application goes on to say that “one advantage of this invention is that a voice service may leverage the power of OLAP or other data repository systems and provide critical information to the user, in a timely fashion, by phone.” One can only wonder why something that sounds suspiciously like voice enabled reporting services – perhaps enabled by the kind of NLP services provided by Clarabridge (Lanseth’s company) – is being tucked away almost as an afterthought in an application purportedly relating to entertainment services. MicroStrategy’s second patent application this year was published in late November, and is entitled “Report System and Method Using Prompt Object Abstraction” (USPTO Pub. No. US2010/0299321 A1). At first glance, the application looks like it’s describing a newfangled report-building wizard. A closer examination, however, quickly reveals that the system uses a prompt-and-answer format to create reusable and/or interchangeable report components which even inexperienced users can use to generate highly complex reports – reports whose attributes can be customized in ways that are nearly impossible with most query wizards used for BI reporting today.
It would seem that MicroStrategy's second patent application from 2010 is aimed at addressing a longstanding complaint about the difficulty level of using its products. In its 2010 Magic Quadrant report, Gartner cited as one of the weaknesses of MicroStrategy its “steep learning curve, even for seasoned report builders.” Ostensibly, the described invention would enable even inexperienced users to generate reports of great complexity through the use of reusable components defining even the most minute attributes of reports.
The Basics of BI Success
Supporting Business Intelligence platforms in mid to large organizations is not just about technology nor is it solely about the information that the technology delivers. Striking the right balance between the type of information required and the framework for delivery requires a defined and methodical approach built on solid governance principles that merge business drivers with appropriate enabling technologies. Organizations have seen the fruits of implementing data warehouses and are moving at rapid speed to establish Business Intelligence models that seek to leverage an often under utilized and valuable asset information. The challenge with many of these efforts centers on 1) defining the strategy and 2) building the supporting infrastructure to ensure the overall success of the program. This was no more evident than when I recently attended a BI conference that included 1,500 peers representing dozens of companies looking to identify best in class practices that would take them to the next level. It quickly became evident, based on discussion with industry peers that many organizations are looking to take a giant leap into the world of BI without addressing some fundamental basics.
Defining the Strategy
A solid BI program starts with the basics. A formal data quality program must sit at the base of any effort. In fact, I believe that organizations with existing data quality programs in place to support their source systems are more likely to succeed in establishing a solid BI framework. These organizations get it and they understand the importance of ensuring that accurate and reliable information flows through their core systems. Financial institutions excel in this area because data accuracy is what keeps them in business. Customer deposits, earnings, portfolio summaries have to be correct, you do not get a second chance to be wrong and these companies know that their credibility is vital to sustaining customer relationships and ultimately, profitability. The following are some key items to consider when establishing a BI program in your organization: -- Establish a Data Quality Czar with primary dedicated resources charged with correcting identified errors, conducting independent audits of existing data, and establishing a metrics program aimed at fostering improved data entry and production support. -- Ensure that you engage your respective business partners across the Enterprise at the same time to ensure that data mart development is not done in a vacuum. Remember that many functional areas and service teams use the same data in different ways so make sure that you look at marts from a functional AND service channel perspective as well. There may be economies of scale opportunities right in front of you.
-- Avoid the "build it and they will come" mentality by engaging the business and having those stakeholders engage key customers to get a sense of not just what data they are looking for but what they are looking to accomplish with the information. -- Re-focus ROI opportunities away from the typical "less time" to produce reports and instead incorporate increased capacity estimates, headcount avoidance and demand forecasting from a reporting perspective. -- Avoid a common mistake that organizations make when implementing new technologies - Do Not Over Customize. Remember, delivering accurate and reliable information in the most streamlined manner possible has to remain the primary goal of the effort. Sending the report to a PDA with embedded images can come later. -- Finally, don't implement a Cadillac if the Pinto gets you to the same place. For smaller organizations this especially rings true. Leveraging 30-40% of the capability of a technology asset means that you probably missed a tremendous opportunity on the ROI side of the house.
BI Governance
The challenge with governance is significant in many organizations when it comes to rolling out a BI platform especially when it comes to IT resources. BI technology resources almost always fall outside of the core application development structure in many organizations. The BI technology resources build extracts that pull data out of systems owned by another group. That group is often focused on implementing enhancements and releases to their applications that can sometimes take precedent over supporting an extract build to a warehouse. It can, and often does, become a juggling act. A possible solution in support of improved coordination in this area entails a full process integration of your BI technology assets into your application development infrastructure with a specific focus on assuming responsibility for delivering on reporting needs as part of your application development effort. Rather than waiting until the business case and requirements are finalized before you engage the BI team for support on report development, make them an integral part of the process upfront. Handing the BI technology team 20 and 30 page documents to review and then having them engage the business separately might not be the most practical use of time and resources. Some key items for consideration from an overall BI governance perspective include the following: -- Consider appointing an Officer level individual responsible for BI initiatives with matrix reporting from respective IT and business sponsors engaged in BI activity. -- Establish a Program Management Office to reinforce organizational wide commitment and partnering for BI activity. -- Appoint a dedicated report analyst in each functional area with matrices into the PMO office who will serve to help address production support, issue escalation, status reporting and project plan deliverables. The degree of dedication initially should be significant but can be scaled down as the BI environment matures.
-- Establish BI alignment meetings with senior leadership to ensure continued buy-in and support (must be done in parallel with IT leadership as well). -- Institutionalize the value of collecting and analyzing information assets via a formal horizontal and vertical communication plan. Stakeholders can't appreciate what they don't know and that might present challenges when you need to get additional funding down the road. Having the strategy and vision will mean very little if you don't have the governance structure in place to pull it off. A firm commitment in this area ensures success across the board. Be careful when assigning resources to your BI effort. Stand tall in the face of the "it's just reporting" comments that may come your way and be ready to demonstrate how BI can be a key asset to expense management and business profitability in your organization. If you have not noticed by now, I left out any reference to a particular technology or tool that can make all your BI challenges go away. It doesn't exist. We often see BI efforts driven by IT groups and why not? Finding a way to put technology into the hands of the users freeing up dedicated IT resources to design and distribute hundreds if not thousands of reports is a sure way to get some year end kudos and significant cost avoidance saves for the department and business, as well. However, sitting in this position from an IT perspective is sort of like dealing with my 2 year old when I give him a cookie. "More, more, more...please" is what you will be faced with because users will demand more and unlike my 2 year old, they will know that there is more and will quickly gain a level of sophistication and expectation that may overwhelm the best technology organization. As you seek a solution from a technology perspective, make sure that you bring the users along to ensure that they understand the technology requirements from an architecture perspective as well. After, all there is nothing like defining the strategy, procuring the resources, building the box, opening the box and finding out your cookies are crumbling. Ooops, I think I hear my 2 year old crying.
Implementing BI Governance
August 23rd, 2006
• • by Noe Gutierrez
Background
Governance became a critical concept in the after "IT bubble" days, as IT faced the challenge of dealing with diminishing budgets, without demand on its services being reduced proportionally. There were many initiatives and projects in the pipeline, but not all of them could be executed, given the limitations on people, infrastructure and budget. As companies looked for a way to properly classify and then prioritize the requests coming from the business, the concept of implementing a formal IT Governance process went from being a "nice to have" to a "must have" very quickly. Committees were formed to oversee the process and make sure all business areas had adequate representation when making decisions as to which projects to fund, and how much money to allocate for infrastructure capital investments. While difficult to accept at first, as many organizations operated with no rules for decades, Governance
happened to be very successful aligning the IT organization to the strategic objectives of the company. The Governance process forced a discussion among the stakeholders and make sure the projects with the highest contribution to the company were executed first. The IT Governance process worked very well for individual projects or initiatives, but it did not focus on making sure particular programs, such as Business Intelligence, were successful across the Enterprise. In order to close this gap, leading-edge companies decided to take the Governance concept down a level and focus entirely on the programs, thus giving born to the BI Governance concept. Some of these organizations defined BI Governance as the process they followed to prioritize BI requests along different criteria such as: Project ROI, Organizational Budget, Expertise of the team, People Availability, Infrastructure capacity and Organizational Politics. This article will focus on defining BI governance, and detailing a good BI Governance process must go beyond the basics of approving and prioritizing initiatives.
Defining BI Governance
BI Governance can be defined from three different, unique perspectives (Figure 1): a) As a resource rationalization exercise. This is the traditional definition of BI Governance, a prioritization mechanism by which projects can be approved, rejected and sequenced based on specific criteria. Many companies today have some kind of process to prioritize BI requests; however most of them still rely on subjective factors to determine how a project should move forward. b) As a series of guidelines/rules /recommendations. This is a relatively new way of defining BI Governance. Traditionally IT has been solely responsible for defining the Architecture, Standards and Best Practices to follow in Business Intelligence, however as business starts realizing the significant impact that these decisions may have in BI Projects there has been a trend to make these topics part of the BI Governance process. c) As the definition of roles and responsibilities for both IT and Business stakeholders. As Business Intelligence projects are by nature highly complex, establishing the proper interaction and outlining areas of responsibility between and IT and the Business becomes critical for a project to succeed.
Figure 1 - The three dimensions to BI Governance
Understanding the need for BI Governance
Even despite the apparent benefits that implementing a properly defined BI Governance process can bring to the organization, there is still a significant number of companies in the market place who have yet to start similar efforts. When interviewing people from these companies, one of the most frequent reasons that they give to justify the inaction is the perception that implementing BI Governance is a costly and complex exercise that does not provide any value, as management has already decided which projects to execute first.
While it is true that a good management team should have already a general understanding of the priorities of the organization, and how the company strategy(ies) translate into a series of BI initiatives, establishing BI Governance provides a framework by which the proper resources can be aligned to the Business Priorities. In order for the initiatives to be successful they need to be executable. Only by aligning people and resources to a particular project and documenting a project plan is that initiatives become ready to be executed. Furthermore, a good, solid BI Governance process will establish proper Change Management (CM) and Training policies that facilitate the user adoption process and promote the overall use of BI minimizing the amount of fear and resistance to new technologies from the business users. The proper BI Governance process will also drive the infrastructure and technology decisions. As both perspectives, IT and Business, are considered when making these decisions the likelihood of choosing the right vendor/platform significantly increase; thus reducing the risk that one of the parties chooses a platform without considering the implications that it will have over the other party (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - Business and IT collaborate to align the BI resources to the organization priorities
Establishing the organizational structure of a BI Governance Committee
The fist step to establish an organizational structure of the member of the BI Governance is identifying the stakeholders within the organization. A stakeholder can be defined as someone who has some "skin the game". Stakeholders usually come three areas: a) Business: Every business area/department should nominate who their representative is going to be for the BI Governance committee. This will enable equal representation from business across the organization, and thus provide the right forum to make decisions that might impact the revenue and thus budget for a particular business unit. The business area representatives will be responsible for sponsoring particular projects for their home units, explaining to the committee the benefits of the initiatives. At the same they outline a high level impact and change management plan that allows the committee to understand the project being proposed from many possible angles. Part of their responsibilities will include identifying people in their functional areas to support the Data Modeling, Data Integration and BIFront End efforts from a business perspective. b) IT: IT provides the back office support for the committee. It is its responsibility to provide a Project Manager, Data Modeler, Data Integration Lead, BI Front-End Lead, and Enterprise Architect and Trainer Lead. The project manager will be the facilitator for the committee, making sure the meetings take place at the right place, right time and with the right people. The Data Modeler will be in charge of creating a data model that supports the business needs. It will be the Data Integration Lead's responsibility to implement the appropriate data integration framework to populate the data model. The BI Front-End Lead will interact heavily with the business users to define the report and standards to follow. The Enterprise Architect will keep the solution in check with Enterprise Standards. The Trainer Lead will be responsible
for creating the material that will be used to train the trainers, and thus create an infrastructure to train the user universe in a quick and effective manner. c) CFO Office: As BI projects are considered strategic in nature and depending on the implementation cost can easily escalate to millions of dollars, it is recommended to have a direct link to the CFO in the BI Governance committee. This will facilitate the prioritization of projects, based on alignment to the corporate strategy (ies) and Return On Investment (ROI), at the same time that provides an opportunity to the team to justify the infrastructure and development costs directly to the ultimate approver. As outline above, every group of stakeholders needs to play a role and commit to some responsibilities in order to establish BI Governance. The picture below outlines how the different groups interact through the life cycle of a BI initiative (Figure 3).
Figure 3 - Stakeholder's major roles and responsibilities through the life cycle of a BI initiative
Business roles and responsibilites in BI Governance
The Business area representatives play a key role during the initiatives definition phase. In fact, they actually play a dual role, one inside their particular area, and a slightly different one in the BI Governance committee. Inside their department, it is their responsibility to participate in the internal discussions to analyze the impact that different BI initiatives might have on their organization. They have to take an impartial decision to pick a handful of initiatives that will be taken the BI Governance committee. Once at the committee, the business area representatives need to clearly articulate to the organization the benefits of the initiatives they are sponsoring, as they will be "competing" for resources against other business areas. In a traditional BI Governance, the job of a business area representative is "complete" when one of their initiatives is approved by the committee. However this is rapidly changing to accommodate other responsibilities like participating in data modeling, data integration and the users' BI experience. Business user participation during the data modeling exercise is highly requested as they are the ones who know the operation of the business; they can help the data modeler understand the business processes that are established and identify current and future business scenarios. The business users' involvement in data integration is critical to the success of the initiatives. Their knowledge of the data and the business processes makes them ideal candidates to become or designate the data stewards. A data steward is the person responsible to define the data loading exception scenarios and approve the recovery strategies proposed by IT. Furthermore as the business area representatives they have ownership of the Data Quality criteria and policies for the initiative. Furthermore, as the business area representatives speak for everyone in their areas, it is their responsibility to take ownership of the user experience. The definition of naming standards, folder structures and the report organization in general impacts this user experience. As subject matter experts, they also own the metadata and object descriptions. The establishment of guidelines to govern the
creation of additional end user objects (e.g. reports, metrics, etc) also belongs to them as it significantly contributes to define the user experience.
IT roles and responsibilities in BI Governance
Traditionally, IT participated in the BI Governance committee from the Project Management and BI FrontEnd work perspective. While these two responsibilities are certainly important, they are by no means comprehensive to what IT must now provide in order to be perceived as successful. Other roles that are slowly becoming critical in Governance that traditionally were wrapped behind the scenes are: data modeling, data integration, enterprise architecture and training. Providing the right leadership for project execution is still critical, IT and the Project Management Office (PMO) are in a unique position in the organization to provide thought leadership and a strong methodology to run the projects. The business users heavily rely on IT to structure work streams along timelines and resources to achieve a committed dateline. The BI Front-end work has seen a significant change over the last couple of years, before IT used to set the direction and the business was expected to follow. Given that this approach did not take into consideration many of the business needs, and it did not encompass a seamlessly defined user experience across initiatives, we are seeing a trend where the business users representatives are stepping up to the plate to participate in the decision making. While it is now a more collaborative effort that it used to, IT is still on the hook for critical decisions such as: selecting the proper tools, defining the BI architecture, establishing the proper infrastructure, implementing the standards as defined by the BI Governance Committee, Training the users and last but not least, coordinating support and maintenance across the business areas. Data Modeling, which traditionally was done behind the scenes is now being introduced as part of the BI Governance model to ensure the business users will participate in the data modeling sessions to capture the right elements and accurately reflect business processes. Data Integration, also known as data plumbing, was not something the business user had a lot of visibility into it before. Imagine the surprise of a business user when he was contacted by IT to be designated as a data steward; with no context or understanding of the activities that they were going to commit to. No wonder IT did not get much traction from the business users and had to resort to escalation processes to solve particular data challenges. In the new model IT partners with business to ensure success of the initiatives. In addition to providing the proper infrastructure, IT owns the Tool selection process, the data Integration Architecture and the implementation of data loading and data quality policies. Not to mention that IT has the responsibility to interface with the Data Stewards to resolve data situations and correct data issues as soon as possible. An important element that was not present in BI Governance before was the Enterprise Architecture representative; it is the responsibility of the Enterprise Architect to define how the BI architecture will fit within the Enterprise. These decisions might materially impact the cost and performance of BI initiatives; furthermore if the Enterprise Architect is not aligned he/she can delay the implementation of a project to the point of affecting the business value of the project.
Training is another key role that traditionally has been bounced between IT and the Business, in the past nobody wanted to take ownership of training as it implied a significant invest in time to prepare the material and probably even more to teach it. As the organization evolves, developing the training material and training the trainer is starting to become IT's responsibility, while the business areas provide end trainers who then train the end users.
Implementing BI Governance, what are the first steps?
Implementing BI Governance can be related to writing an article, in both writing the first sentence or giving the first step is always the toughest one. The first step sets the direction of the whole program; it will tell the people in your organization how you are conceptualizing the whole process to work. It is this author's recommendation that the first is to get executive sponsorship, preferably from straight from the CFO. The path to implementation for BI Governance will not be without challenges, just getting the people together will a daunting task by itself.It is extremely important to identify who the business stakeholders are in the organization, communicate them the benefits that BI governance can bring to their areas and discuss their specific BI pain areas / opportunities for improvement. Outlining how the BI Governance process can help them attenuate / solve their situations will give them a compelling reason to support the initiative. Next, the stakeholders in IT will have to be identified. Furthermore, the responsibilities among Data Modeling, Data Sourcing and BI Front-end will have to be clearly defined. Also, support will have to be rallied from the Architecture and Project Management Offices. Once the stakeholders are identified and executive sponsorship is present it will be the time to bring the people together. A mission statement and specific strategies/goals will have to be crafted and approved during the first session. During this meeting sub-committees might be defined to discuss specific topics that do not require getting the whole group together. If possible, it is also suggested to schedule at least the next four meetings of the group so everyone knows the dates and commits to them.
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