Webinar: Are your users suffering from "metrics confusion"?

Eliminate Metrics Confusion
Are your users spending more time arguing than analyzing?

Today’s Agenda
What is “metrics confusion”?
Industry trends
Why “metrics confusion” occurs?
Eliminating “metrics confusion”
Keys to eliminating “metrics confusion”
Next Steps

What is “metrics confusion”?
In the quest for innovation, companies continuously collect and analyze ever increasing amounts of data.
Valuable information is wasted in companies because employees don't describe or understand information in the same way across the organization.
But what if a company has already collected the most valuable information and doesn't realize it?
3

Increased occurrence of:
User Misunderstandings
Duplicate research efforts
Reduction in innovative ideas
Why?
Because most meetings are about understanding where the numbers came from
NOT analyzing the numbers and taking action or making decisions
4
What is the impact of “metrics confusion”?

Metrics Confusion: What is an “employee”?
CFO needs to know the current headcount (or number of employees). The result depends on who you ask:
Benefits Staff: people eligible for benefits
HR Operations: labor resources including contract staff
Recruiting Staff: current employees plus open headcounts
Controller: people being paid in payroll
5

Metrics Confusion: What is a “product shipment forecast”?
Business Unit definition conflict for “fiscal month” and/or “product” drive inaccuracies:
Regional Business Unit:
Fiscal month: 15th to 14th
Product: revenue producing & promotional products
New Acquisition:
Fiscal month: 20th to 19th
Product: all products
Remaining Business Units:
Fiscal Month: Calendar Month
Product: 50% of business units included promotional products and all included revenue producing products
6

How pervasive is “metrics confusion”?
7
The confusion over business language will likely be one of the primary reasons more than 35% of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets.
Gartner, Predicts 2009: Business Intelligence and Performance Management will Deliver Greater Business Value, Dec. 18, 2008.
Over 80% of respondents identified the driver for BI as “improving the quality of decision making”.
Yet more than 50% of respondents couldn’t ask the questions they needed answered from BI Solutions.
National Computing Center: Principa, Business Intelligence, Results of the Rapid Survey.
Standardizing language and reporting data so that it's not only accessible but comprehensible to diverse groups within a company can help reduce misunderstandings, eliminate duplicative research efforts, and increase innovative ideas by constantly bringing in fresh perspectives.
Wall Street Journal, Staring you in the face, Sept 22, 2008.

Metrics Confusion: Are your users arguing or analyzing the metrics?
8

Legacy of BI is “cobbled” together
9
Most companies
have provided users
with 6-10
BI Tools
User
Access
Dashboards, Scorecards, Reports
Ad-hoc query & reporting, OLAP
Target
Data
Data Marts, Data Warehouse
Master Data, Staging Structures
Data
Movement
& Quality
What is being built?
ETL, Data Quality
Source
Data
Application Specific DBs

Confusion is a bi-product of current delivery process
How are terms captured?
Proprietary tools
Who reviews them?
Project sponsors (sometimes)
What is done once reviewed?
Put on network share (never to be seen again)
How is the term developed?
Silo’ed development - leveraged by one project (not the enterprise)
10

Reporting often an after thought
11
User
Access
Report
in Crystal Report
By Developer
?
?
Target
Data
Tables
in Oracle
by DBA
Data
Movement
& Quality
ETL Modules
in PowerCenter
by ETL Developer
Source
Data
Look at data
in Application
Database
Deploy
Test
Build
Design
Analysis
Requirements
How is it being built?

Reporting not enterprise focusedbuild baby, build!
12
Spreadmarts (In Excel)
user based data integration
User
Access
Report
Excel
By Developer
Report
Cognos
By Developer
Report
Report Services
By Developer
Report
Crystal Report
By Developer
Report
Brio
By Developer
Report
WebFocus
By Developer
Target
Data
Tables
in Oracle
by DBA
Tables
in DB2
by DBA
Tables
in Microsoft SQL
by DBA
Tables
in Oracle
by DBA
Tables
in Access
by DBA
Tables
in DB2
by DBA
Data
Movement
& Quality
ETL Modules
in OWB
by ETL Developer
ETL Modules
in COBOL
by ETL Developer
ETL Modules
in Microsoft SSIS
by ETL Developer
ETL Modules
in PowerCenter
by ETL Developer
ETL Modules
in Visual Basic
by ETL Developer
ETL Modules
in Focus
by ETL Developer
Source
Data
Look at data
in Application
Database
Look at data
in Application
Database
Look at data
in Application
Database
Look at data
in Application
Database
Look at data
in Application
Database
Look at data
in Application
Database
Build
Build
Build
Build
Build
Build
How is it being built?

Gartner:Enterprise Information Management Focus
Need for a set of processes for cross-functional and cross-enterprise BI, specifically:
Common definitions and business rules
Ability to reconcile and map out the locations, representations, and hierarchies associated with information
Ability to manage changes across multiple sources and repositories
13

Bridging the business-IT communications gap
Aligning your common business language
14

AlignmentProcess Management & Oversight
Project
Artifact
Approved
Project
Artifact
Approval
Process?
Approved
Rejected
Refinement Process

AlignmentRoles in Balanced Insight Consensus®
Contributor
Approver
Consumer
Project
Artifact
Approved
Project
Artifact
Approval
Process?
Approved
Rejected
Refinement Process
Facilitator

Approval ProcessMulti-step approval process or workflow
Team
Approvers
Approval Process
Facilitators

Automating the alignment process
18
I like the word “offering” as a more succinct way to say “product/platform or service.”
Approval
Process?
Should be “customer or prospect”
A product, platform, or service that our company sells or intends to sell to customers to generate revenue.
Facilitated Resolution

Reports
consensus
Dashboard
aligns your
BI Solutions
Analysis
across the enterprise
consensus
integratorTM

consensus
aligns your
BI Solutions
from a common business language
consensus
integratorTM

Naming Standards
Type Standards
Taxonomies
Business Terms
Relationships
Repository
Artifacts
User
Access
Dimensions
Hierarchies
Facts
Target
Data
Data Mart & Warehouse
Tables/Columns
Data
Movement
& Quality
Transformation Rules & Orchestration
Source
Data
Source
Tables/Columns
Potential Project Artifacts

Keys to eliminating “metrics confusion”
How are terms captured?
An open, cross project, cross BI platform repository
Who reviews them?
Cross functional, cross regional stewards
What is done once reviewed?
Made accessible across the enterprise (BI Wiki) and deployed in BI Platforms
How is the term developed?
Leveraged across the enterprise (all projects)
Reuse across projects and platforms
Establish a common business language
26

Collaborative Delivery & Alignment
27
The platform for Agile Business Intelligence Delivery & Alignment of Business Metadata

Next Steps
28
Try
Online edition
Personalize
Contact for a personalized presentation/demo for you or your company
More information
Send me some details and whitepaper
http://www.balancedinsight.com