tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497342.post8592594214051774934..comments2024-03-19T03:24:01.896-04:00Comments on The Eponymous Pickle: Too Many Business Intelligence ToolsFranz Dillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16209033148176538723noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497342.post-81673923386839060032008-12-26T16:42:00.000-05:002008-12-26T16:42:00.000-05:00Stan Dyck, a colleague, makes some excellent point...<B>Stan Dyck</B>, a colleague, makes some excellent points:<BR/><BR/>I’d perhaps add:<BR/><BR/>1) Management/strategy setter should lead first with a definition of business critical metrics prioritized from highest to lowest and articulated within something like an OGSM (by business/brand/region/function)…this could take a few years of trial and error. <BR/><BR/>2) Go after the most important ones first. There are probably only a very few that really matter across the organization. There may be 2-3 others within each “function” that have smaller but local incremental value. These metrics should be based on proven ROI association or closest data-driven approximation to same. <BR/><BR/>3) Harmonization/convergence to the fewest possible # of tools must be weighed against the entrepreneurial spirit engaged by allowing local differences (functions, regions). The compensation system which rewards success incorporates cost/benefit ration anyways and should help drive efficiency to the enterprise. There needs to remain robust, thoughtful experimentation with “new” systems by knowledgeable, continuous community of practice which knows what is in place across the enterprise (part of core team’s work above). It is critical to get the highest level metrics right so that the lower down and localized ones support it whatever the degree of experimentation.<BR/><BR/>4) The core team has to be business driven so needs to esp. include groups leading metric tracking of the business organized by 4C’s or something similar. Increasingly this includes sales/bus dev (customer), market research (consumer), finance and whoever owns cost of goods where that is a big piece (product supply, operations, purchasing), competition (CI) and other companies (benchmarking)<BR/><BR/>5) There is huge organizational failure repeatedly occurring when novel systems are brought in…implementation, marketing, training is severely under-emphasized. The last system I put cost $5K/month, cost $15K upfront and took 25% of my time for 3 months to get up and running – resulted in rapid uptake by 250 people globally and fortunately had very granular user statistics that helped with targeting, encouraging the right people. Critical to success are early, rapid wins. Need to capture these learnings.<BR/><BR/>6) It’s much easier to get a knowledgeable business person and experienced decision maker (in the process) to implement BI than to let IT do so. It’s a much smaller investment (if the pay & progression system will allow it!) to let these people learn a little about IT and comparative algorithms, than it is to teach IT folks about the business or decision process (at least in the culture you and I worked in)<BR/><BR/>7) It is also critical in evaluating BI not to think of it in terms of simply cost savings but to look for overall enablement of the organization. This requires some judgement of experienced and often senior managers. IT is often hung up on cost esp. in organizations where there key mission in the organization is adding efficiency and reducing cost. They are not very good at the worker bee level in identifying “opportunity”. If a new BI system offers benefits such as: more rapid response to a business threat, accelerating community-wide identification and agreement of a business opportunity, enhancement of likelihood of innovation through more real-time (at time of specific problem solving) assessment of business potential and ease of connection with external world/SMEs, etc. then some judgement and experience are required. Can elaborate further if you like. <BR/><BR/>8) The fundamental structure of the Core team specifically takes into account the fact that in a competitive organization (like P&G) everyone thinks they, own, control, best understand BI. The Core team has to be chosen so as to include participation of representatives from each of the strongest advocates in this space. (for me it was R&D, PDD, IT, CMK, F&A, CI, BIS and also important for them to have corporate functional perspective/networks…e.g. know within IT what is happening by SBU and also globally)Franz Dillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16209033148176538723noreply@blogger.com