New reviews on Amazon.co.uk

...Just today added a handful of reviews on Amazon.co.uk. Notably, a 5-star review of Performance Leadership by Frank Buytendijk.

Platon IM Conference 2009 - retrospective

IM2007 was just superb, IM2008 I did not attend, and now IM2009 was still a fine conference in spite of the financial climate. Banks and insurance companies were modestly represented, of course, but when you do not rely on external consulting assignments they are dispensable! It was still nice to meet a number of former colleagues and professional acquaintances of times past. But mainly there were the inspirational presentations. I kind of like the classic style of presentation - break - presentation - break - presentation, etc, - let me briefly recap the presentation highlights for readers of the blog and for myself to remember in times to come.

Tuesday, 16 June (afternoon only)
TARGIT has somehow never crossed my path, but Morten Middelfart's presentation was quite lively and it is nice to now have a real impression and cursory knowledge of what it is. Great to know that such ingenuity flows from the north of Jutland.
SAP is also no stronghold of mine, but since it is the ERP system of choice and first pillar of BI in Novozymes, I am bound to see and hear more of it in times to come - even though my main focus is Microsoft BI, primarily "backend". - Now, Ken Seitzberg produced a fine overview of the present status of SAP BI offerings including ongoing integration with BusinessObjects, which is much more familiar to me.

Wednesday, 17 June
Frank Buytendijk was first with 'Performance comes from Venus, Management from Mars' on the basis of his recent book Performance Leadership (which should probably be my first online review target - 5-star - on Amazon.co.uk soon). Frank's ideas may be radical, but they are not easily refuted, and his presentation is as delightfully audible as his writing is readable.
Stefan Eriksson (Sandviken) on How to Govern BI in a Global Organization was a pleasant surprise. He started out with a phone bill analogy - when it is so difficult to summarize and report on just a single phone user, how difficult must it then be to provide Decision Support to a heterogeneous global organization. But he seemed to be on top of it with just the right blend of personal (company) terminology and structures combined with recognizable standard BI phraseology.
Kristine Kerr of Microsoft succinctly explained the core differences between the big 4: SAP is Business oriented, Oracle is database centric, IBM is mainly a consultancy conglomerate, and Microsoft thrives on end-user focus. Furthermore, she gave a reassuring presentation of where MS BI is going the next couple of years where PerformancePoint features are divided between SharePoint, SQL and Excel (incl. Gemini).
Jay Mazzucco (Johnson & Johnson Health Care) replaced a colleague for a presentation of an advanced and successful data governance program. And his case story was easily the best of its kind at the conference. OK, he had a good story to tell, and he did it well, but what was truly remarkable was himself! Working with data governance for J&J for 20+ years he admitted that the first 15 years had been unfulfilling. Only over the last 5 years had technological opportunities really caught up with architectural aspirations. But where the average guy would probably have long succumbed to years and years of technical disappointment, Jay had remained ready and alert and went straight for the current solution once it became technically feasible.
Nigel Pendse (OLAP Report and OLAP Solutions) closed the conference in style with his BI Survey 8 questionnaire findings, and it was sobering to hear that there is actually quantitative evidence for common sense principles such as focusing on the product as opposed to the vendor, for formally comparing alternative products, for involving end users, for employing dedicated BI consultants rather than general purpose IT or management consultants and - last but not least - for recognizing query response time as (still!) a primary driver for user satisfaction, - or the opposite.

Platon IM Conference 2009

Current events take precedence....
And fortunately I have just been given the opportunity to participate in the Platon Information Management Conference 2009 16+17.6.09 on behalf of my new employer, Novozymes (1.6.09&on). So, that is what today and tomorrow will be all about, and afterwards I will post my main impressions from the conference here on morlin's BI blog.
The second part of the 'Ancient Greece and modern BI' sequel will have to be postponed till next time as a consequence.

Ancient Greece and modern DW, BI, and PM. - Is there a connection? (1/2)

On the surface it may seem far-fetched to see a link between ancient Greek philosophy and modern Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Performance Management. But if you reckon from the title that I will try to make that connection, then you are absolutely right!

Let's consider some characteristic features of DW, BI, and PM in turn.

First there was Data Warehousing, and, ignoring that many early DW initiatives failed for technical reasons, it is also well known that simply building a technically sound and "successful" data warehouse is rarely enough to move an organisation. Even with all the right data available just a few mouse clicks away, if that is all there is to a DW, then business users are quite likely to stay away and ignore it.

Now enter Business Intelligence, which is a somewhat fluffy term that could mean anything from ABC to CRM to something completely novel and characteristic of a particular organisation. I suggest the common denominators for a BI application, activity - or just initiative - are

• a need for focus: "This is what we are going to do [as opposed to everything else], and this is the way to go about doing it [for us as a company and for you and me as individual employees],
• a need for communication and motivation: "This is all the wonderful things we - you and me - can achieve by doing so",
• a need for the necessary means: Without a solid foundation on data and an appealing application it may all be just hot air. It can even cause the derailing of an organisation which may have been slow but was at least moving in the right direction. The necessary data may be sourced from a data warehouse, or they may come from a dedicated "stovepipe" database and application.

Finally, enter Performance Management: Now we are talking values. What are our company values, what is good and bad and everything in between? And what are personal values of employees? What is the degree of alignment? Do we have attraction and positive synergy, or the opposite? Performance Management has explosive potential depending on whether it produces alignment or alienation. For precisely that reason it is essential to be very precise in formulating company values and implementing them in a Performance Management programme. If value formulation and PM implementation is skewed, the result will be a degree of alienation with the company's most valuable employees, and vice versa.

Now consider executive attitudes towards DW, BI, and PM. It appears to me that most sponsoring executives tend to have a personal favourite among the three and a feeling that "one is enough and will have to do the job of all three. We don't want to pay several times for the same service!" The technically oriented executive may have a preference for data warehousing and is to a large extent right; after all, a well designed and implemented data warehouse will support and facilitate BI and PM activities a long way. The very matter-of-factly business oriented executive may have a preference for PM, and is also, to a large extent, right; after all, doing PM right entails coming to grips with the underlying data supply problem, and we really only want to spend time on the data necessary for PM, not to waste our efforts by including some data in a data warehouse just because it is readily available and might be needed some other time! Finally, the mainstream middle-of-the-road executive may have a preference for a suite of separate BI projects, and he or she is also, to a large extent, right; after all, is it not preferable to formulate and fund activities with a well defined, limited, and manageable scope where the ROI may be estimated and controlled?

But where does that lead us? - I will try to answer that in a couple of weeks in the sequel to this first real blog entry!

In the meantime, I owe the interested reader a hint at where I am going. Try reading about Aristotle's three modes of persuasion within the art of rhetoric and argumentation: logos, pathos, and ethos, e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion. Is there a primary connection, or affinity between Data Warehousing and logos, between Business Intelligence and pathos, and between Performance Management and ethos? I think there are such affinities, and I will return shortly to elaborate on that idea and its possible consequences. Stay tuned here at morlin's BI blog!

Intro

WELCOME to morlin's BI blog about all aspects of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, and Performance Management.
You will find morlin at http://www.linkedin.com/in/morlin.
Regular postings will be made twice monthly: (i) shortly after turn-of-month, and (ii) shortly after mid-month.
What better time to start a blog than the first of a month, in this case 1 June. In 2009 it is even the day after Whitsun, which surely cannot be a bad sign.
Onwards, then !