Developing Enterprise BI Strategy

DEVELOPING ENTERPRISE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY Technical Overview

This PowerPoint provides a high level overview of the process we use at Small World Solutions to help define your Enterprise Business Intelligence strategy.

Focus

Small World Solutions, Inc. is a dynamic technology solutions provider. Our team comprises of members with senior level management experience with Fortune 50 companies including Target Corporation, American Express and NBC/Universal.

At Small World Solutions we take a consultative approach towards understanding our clients’ needs and collaborate with the client resources to design and develop the most suitable, cost effective sustainable technology solutions that provide long term benefits to the business. Small World’s strengths include providing technical expertise in planning, developing and managing technology solutions.

We credit our success to our ethical, professional and accommodating approach

While treating both our clients and employees/consultants with utmost respect

Believing in building long term relationships

With the motto of integrity and honesty in all our dealings as a company

Please visit us online at http://www.thesmallworld.com to learn more about us …

Small World - Brief Introduction

Current State Assessment

Identify organizational roles and responsibilities

Review/conduct applications and key business processes inventory

Review existing infrastructure, applications, and processes with regards to Business Intelligence needs

Business/Transactional Applications

Data Management

Database Platform and Architecture

ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load)

Understand current production management and support practices

Stages of BI

Future State Design and Delivery

Provide solutions for tactical needs

Establish strategic direction and create a roadmap

Identify key stakeholders and understand their information needs

Understand budget and resource constraints

Help identify technologies and solutions for BI

Develop a road map for …

Recommended Business Intelligence strategy

Operational Data Store (ODS)

Data Warehousing

Business Intelligence Dashboard

Making it happen!

We help guide your internal resources and provide additional Small World resources as necessary to realize a strategic solution within established time and budget constraints

Stages of BI

BI: Typical Solution

Technologist’s View of BI

Data > Information > Intelligence

DO’s and DON’Ts

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) & BI

BI: Enterprise Data

Enterprise Business Intelligence

Developing BI Strategy

Ubiquitous BI

Defining BI

BI: Typical Solution ERP DB OLAP DB Batch Process Data Load Processes data External User Internal User Reporting Environment IT Management Reports ERP System Customer Facing Applications

Technologist’s View of BI

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Applications

+ Databases

+ Data

+ Reporting Tools & Reports

+ Extract Transform, Load (ETL) Tools & Processes

+ Operational Data Store (ODS)

+ Data Warehouses (DW) & Data Marts

+ BI Platform (Analytical Tools)

+ BI Platform (Visualization Tools/Dashboards)

Data > Information > Intelligence A Business Intelligence solution turns data into information and information into intelligence

DON’T!!

Can you identify what is wrong with following picture? (see next slide for our thoughts on this picture)

Extract Data (Batch) Process Data App DB Application Source Systems Process Data Process Data Process Data Extract Data (Batch) Extract Data (Batch) Extract Data (Batch) App DB App DB App DB Application Application Application Reports Reports Reports

DON’T!!

[ DO NOT ] Make copies of data across the enterprise.

Making copies of data is sometimes sold as a necessary evil. While it may make sense from a tactical, project-delivery point of view, many IT organizations fail to realize that these so-called tactical solutions end-up being permanent fixtures in their overall solution portfolio.

Following is a partial list of issues resulting from such tactical decisions …

Data integrity issues

No single source of truth

Lack of clarity on who owns what data (System of Record)

Data freshness issues

Systems are not extensible or adaptable

[ DO NOT ] Build application centric view for your enterprise information needs

As part of their enterprise BI strategy, companies are moving away from a department-centric view or an application-centric view to a more strategic, enterprise-wide view

DO!

Use an ODS as an aggregation point for low-latency, operational, read-only data

Provide Enterprise Data Services to cater to data needs of the applications

Use Ad-hoc reporting tools against ODS to gain access to transactional data while avoiding impact on performance and availability of transactional systems

Use Data Warehouse to support analytical, decision support systems

Provides historical data, corporate memory

ETL Processes Ad-hoc Reporting Tools ODS Data Warehouse Enterprise Data Services Application Reports App DB Enterprise Information Aggregators BI Platform Other Systems Online Order Processing System ERP System

EAI & BI

Integrate applications using enterprise resources

Define a single source of truth for enterprise data

Avoid redundant copies of data and data integrity questions

Achieve flexibility and adaptability

Data Acquisition Services (Extract) Events/Monitoring/Alerts Source Systems Transform & Load Data Access Services ODS App DB App DB App DB Application Application Application

BI: Enterprise Data

Clearly define strategy for managing enterprise data. Enterprise data can be classified as one of the following two types:

Master Data Master Data is non-transactional data that defines how the business operates. Master data is stored in data warehouse and/or data marts and managed through the practice of Master Data Management (MDM)

Business Objects

Definitions

Classifications

Terminologies etc.

For example, data about customers, suppliers, employees, products, services, materials etc.

Metadata Metadata is essentially data about data, that is used to facilitate the understanding, use and management of the data.

File name, file type

Title, description

Name of the creator, date created etc.

Enterprise Business Intelligence

An enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) strategy encompasses …

Extraction and Transformation of data from various data sources within enterprise

Loading of this data into one or more Operational Data Stores (ODS), Data Warehouses and Data Marts

Providing meaningful, business-focused reports using this data

Analytical processing of this data and delivering results through interactive dashboards for the purpose of performance management

Providing predictive analysis to help optimize business operations with the objective of

Finding problem areas

Improving productivity

Reduce Costs

Increase revenues

Clearly define expectations

Information Ownership – systems of record, authoritative sources, data stewards

Information Management – Information, timeliness, accuracy, granularity and availability

Governance – who has access to what

Identify correct stakeholders across enterprise

Identify required stakeholders early in the cycle

Identify information needs

Understand stakeholders information needs, from their point of view!

Clearly define business questions that each stakeholder must answer to manage the business

Ensure common definition of information

Confirm that the information you need is defined uniformly across the company

Is definition of “Customer” same across all data sources feeding data into the data warehouse?

Should you interpret “CA” in the address as “California” or as “Canada”?

Implement data quality and Master Data Management initiatives as necessary

Understand difference between Information vs. Data

BI is not same as Reporting

Make information actionable to allow timely, informed business decisions vs. delivering simple data reports

Establish Strategic vs. Tactical Goals

BI program is a long term strategy, not a short term project

Establish a long term, strategic direction in partnership with your IT department

Solve most critical needs first, as a tactical solution. Spinning wheels for years without any significant milestones that benefit business could result in business units seeking one-off solutions outside of IT

Ubiquitous BI