If anyone has seen the Mel Gibson film “What Women Want”, you wouldn’t forget the scene where Mel Gibson’s character falls into a bathtub complete with ladies shoes, lipstick, nail polish and to top it off ... wearing tights. He was trying to understand how women think (and evidently what they might want to buy) in order to be a more successful marketing professional. Ultimately the fall into the bathtub electrocutes him and he emerges with the ability to listen to the thoughts of women. Besides the inevitable romantic match-up with Helen Hunt’s character, he becomes incredibly successful at understanding his target market – women. The Edward De Bono book “Six Thinking Hats” hammers home this concept in a variety of business scenarios. De Bono (one of the great lateral thinkers of our time) devises a method of problem solving using 6 different “hats” or ways of thinking to analyse and ultimately resolve problems. Like in the film “What Women Want” putting yourself in the shoes (or under the hat as it were) of the people you are trying to reach out to, will allow you to better understand their requirements.
Thinking Hats, Mel Gibson & BI...I’m Confused!
If you are charged with the task of assembling a team to deliver information to the business, you will be successful if you follow Mel Gibson’s lead and put on the thinking hat of a BI Decision Maker. Often times the business will examine their existing reports (often cobbled together in Excel or Word) and ask the BI deployment team to replicate the report. I’ve often heard these decision makers referred to as being “very particular” business users. If your team walks away from that meeting with the mandate to replicate this report line-by-line, format-by-format, you have not really made an attempt to understand the needs of the business. In order to truly meet their needs, you will need to put on the BI thinking hat, and get inside the head of one of these decision makers. You may come to the conclusion that there is a very good reason that the report needs to be replicated verbatim, but you will probably find that there was a lot missing, or too much information in the status quo. By examining the needs of the decision maker, following the information flow (who is receiving the information that they are producing) and seriously examining the present report framework, you have an excellent opportunity to stream-line and improve the overall information reporting process. One of the exercises I like to promote is taking a report and asking the question “Who will be upset if this report doesn’t go out tomorrow?”, when we get the answer for that question we drill a bit further “If we produced the report with X,Y,Z missing as sections, who would ring you to complain?” You get the point. Just because a report has been produced the last 2 years, doesn’t mean it is relevant any longer. Additionally with new technologies, there are ways to deliver information and report results like we haven’t seen ... there should be an opportunity to educate your decision makers, understand their position and collaboratively work towards a solution.
What DO BI Decision Makers Want?
Depending on the role of the team in question, the flavour of information could be operational, financial etc. The way the information is delivered, examined or moved through the organisation is part of the foundation for any BI strategy. When it comes to the enterprise software that you are planning to use for your BI solution, many of them have a variety of these functions. But, just because you grew to 6’5” doesn’t mean you necessarily want to play basketball. What message I am trying to get across here is that even though a particular delivery method or function may exist in your BI systems, it may not be right for what you are trying to achieve. Often times a sleek, lean solution is driven towards the complex because the leaders of the BI deployment catered too much to the draw of the “gadget”. I’ll talk about the draw of the fancy dashboard in another blog entry, but for now, let’s look at what I have found businesses are looking for in a BI solution:
Play with the Data - Ad hoc, What-if?, OLAP
Let’s face it. Users of BI information want the ability to get their hands dirty. Although they may not be a full-fledged mechanic, they work on restoring cars on the week-end...and want to learn more! The best way to understand what is happening under the hood is to give them the tools to play with the data. There is nothing more in demand and successful to a BI deployment than to provide them with this capability.
Deliver Information - Standard Reporting
Going back to the early comments relating to the status quo, there will be an inevitable need to provide the business with information that is fairly static, but informative. Getting these reports refreshed in a timely and relevant manner will be key for success in developing your standard reports strategy.
Simplify Information - Dashboards Dashboards are effective In order to see the forest for the trees, with a difference. A dashboard is most effective when you can see the forest, then a stand of trees, a particular tree, a leaf (drill-downs!) ... Decision makers want to be able to identify a problem area, and then understand the cause and effect relationship, even if it means drilling to the invoice level.
Leverage Existing Skills - MS Office Integration
Where would we all be without Microsoft? I would probably have a few less grey hairs, but the reality is most business users are comfortable with using MS Office tools. Leveraging these tools effectively by connecting and controlling access to the underlying data, will increase user adoption and enhance the capability and investment in Microsoft Office.
Consolidate Information - BI Portals
When your users fire up their PC, PDA or other web-enabled device, the last thing you want them to do is have to search for what they need to make their decisions. A BI portal can combine internal and external information to empower them, rather than frustrate them. This improves user adoption, and aligns the business and should be an important part of any BI strategy.
Predict an Outcome - Predictive Analytics
How did you know I was going to talk about predictive analytics? If your business users can spot trends in the information it can give you a competitive advantage since you are looking 4 moves ahead on the chess board while they are still working on their opening move. Predictive analytics seem to be mature around marketing and fraud detection, but there are countless opportunities in operations and other parts of the business that have yet to be exploited.
Wear the BI Hat for Success
I have discussed one aspect of what makes up a successful BI deployment...thinking like the user. Of course whether you are part of a Business Intelligence Competency Centre, managing divisional information or responsible for some of the reports that are delivered to your cohorts, this is only a sliver of what is required for successful, ongoing results ... but by putting on your BI hat you can get closer to that goal.
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