W17073CALGARY DROP-IN CENTRE DONOR INFORMATION SYSTEM.docx

W17073
CALGARY DROP-IN CENTRE: DONOR INFORMATION
SYSTEM
Deb Elkink, Michelle Woo, Dennis Dupuis, and Dan
Hausermann wrote this case under the supervision of Professor
Derrick Neufeld
solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do
not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of
a
managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain
names and other identifying information to protect
confidentiality.
This publication may not be transmitted, photocopied, digitized
or otherwise reproduced in any form or by any means without
the
permission of the copyright holder. Reproduction of this
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organization. To order copies or request permission to
reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Business
School, Western
University, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 0N1; (t)
519.661.3208; (e) [email protected]; www.iveycases.com.
Copyright © 2017, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation
Version: 2017-02-01
The homeless and marginalized had been paramount in Alan
Facey’s mind for the past 15 years. As

director of finance and administration for the Calgary Drop-In
& Rehab Centre (the DI), he exercised
“management by walking around,” leaving his sixth-floor office
daily to mingle with staff as well as the
street-involved clients who rotated through the facility. He
measured success by the DI’s ability to serve
others in times of need through offering community and
relationship to those suffering or in trauma.
“People gravitate towards a safe hub,” he said, “and that’s us.”
By spring of 2016, Facey was becoming frustrated with the DI’s
donor and volunteer information system
(IS). He had been exploring ways to leverage technology in
order to improve operational effectiveness in
the non-profit organization, which relied on manual processes to
capture information. The DI had not
been able to replace the director of information technology (IT),
who had retired more than a year before,
and Facey had assumed additional responsibilities as a result.
The legacy systems built over time by the
former IT director were antiquated, and the DI was in desperate
need of an overall technology upgrade to
support its five business strategies. Communication,
fundraising, and stewardship were not operating at
optimal levels, and, with the board of trustees watching closely,
Facey had a fiduciary duty to marshal
limited resources. He cared about each of the clients passing
through the DI. As the DI continued to
expand its service offerings, and as demand for donor and
volunteer stewardship increased—at least 75
homeless Albertans were dying each year due to substance
abuse, violence, and suicide1—improved
technology and operational effectiveness were essential (see
Exhibit 1).
THE CHARITABLE SECTOR IN CANADA

Charities played a critical role in building and enriching
communities across the country. The Canada
Revenue Agency (CRA) regulated this sector, granting
charitable registration status to organizations
operating exclusively for benevolent purposes. All charities
were non-profit organizations, but not all
non-profit organizations were charities. In order to earn
recognition as a registered charity with the ability
1 Jason Van Rassel, “Homeless Death Statistics Paint Grim
Picture,” Calgary Herald, November 14, 2014, accessed
October 12, 2016, http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-
news/homeless-death-statistics-paint-grim-picture.
For the exclusive use of J. Wang, 2018.
This document is authorized for use only by Jiaqi Wang in
GR601 - final exam taught by Garfield, Bentley University from
April 2018 to April 2018.
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.iveycases.com/
Page 2 9B17E003
to issue tax receipts, an organization had to meet certain CRA
requirements, such as demonstrating that it
benefitted the community through relief of poverty or
advancement of education or religion.2
Over the past few decades, the landscape of the charitable
sector in Canada had become increasingly
complex. Charities employed over two million Canadians. When

measured as a share of the economically
active population, Canada’s charitable and non-profit sector was
ranked as the second largest in the
world, with the Netherlands leading and the United States in
fifth place.3 Charities and non-profit
organizations contributed 8.1 per cent of Canada’s gross
domestic product (CA$106 billion), more than
either the automotive or manufacturing industries.4 The value
of volunteer work could not be
underestimated; more than 13 million people volunteered for
charities and non-profit organizations in
Canada every year.5 In 2013, 44 per cent of people aged 15
years and older participated in approximately
1.96 billion hours of volunteer activity, equivalent to about one
million full-time jobs. Out of the
estimated 170,000 charitable and non-profit organizations in
Canada, 85,000 were registered charities
recognized by the CRA, and 54 per cent were run entirely by
volunteers.6
Charities worked relentlessly to address societal issues and
improve the outlook of communities, but real
investment was required to achieve outcomes. Funding came
from many sources, including individual
and corporate donations, government programs, foundation
grants, and sales of products and services.
Administrative costs, a reality of operating a charity, accrued
through multiple factors: management,
financial systems, insurance, IT, staff and volunteer
recruitment, and everyday expenses such as rent,
electricity, and salaries. Producing annual reports, financial
statements, audits, and program evaluations
also came with costs.7 Despite this, surveys showed that nearly
75 per cent of Canadians believed that
charities were spending too much on salaries and
administration, while 52 per cent believed that charities

spent too much on fundraising.8 Although low overhead
expenses were often seen as a measure of
success, research showed that low overhead could limit the
effectiveness of non-profit agencies.9 In fact,
while the bottom line might have looked alarming, based on
Facey’s business orientation, he knew it was
true that a higher budget meant the DI could achieve more good
in the community.
To ensure the continuance of the DI’s good works, Facey knew
it was important to pay close attention to
donors, especially considering the growing competition between
Canadian charities for limited
government and foundation grants. Well-stewarded benefactors
were more likely to give larger or more
frequent gifts and to continue relationships with the charity. In
fact, the likelihood of existing donors
2 Canada Revenue Agency, “What is the Difference between a
Registered Charity and a Non-Profit Organization?”
accessed May 14, 2016, www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-
gvng/dnrs/rgltn/dffrnc-rc-np-eng.html.
3 Michael H. Hall, Cathy W. Barr, M. Easwaramoorthy, S.
Wojciech Sokolowski, and Lester M. Salamon, The Canadian
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector in Comparative Perspective
(Toronto, ON: Imagine Canada, 2005), accessed May 14, 2016,
http://sectorsource.ca/sites/default/files/resources/files/jhu_repo
rt_en.pdf.
4 All currency amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise
specified; Imagine Canada, “Key Facts about Canada’s
Charities,” accessed May 14, 2016,
www.imaginecanada.ca/resources-and-tools/research-and-
facts/key-facts-about-
canada%E2%80%99s-charities.
5 Imagine Canada, “Sector Impact: What is the Charitable and
Nonprofit Sector?,” accessed May 14, 2016,

http://sectorsource.ca/research-and-impact/sector-impact.
6 Martin Turcotte, Spotlight on Canadians: Results from the
General Social Survey—Volunteering and Charitable Giving in
Canada, Statistics Canada, January 30, 2015, accessed May 14,
2016, www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2015001-
eng.pdf.
7 Imagine Canada, “Fundraising and Administrative Expenses,”
February 19, 2014, accessed May 14, 2016,
http://sectorsource.ca/sites/default/files/resources/files/narrative
-issue-sheet-expenses-en.pdf.
8 David Lasby and Cathy Barr, Talking about Charities 2013:
Canadians’ Opinions on Charities and Issues Affecting
Charities (Edmonton, AB: The Muttart Foundation, 2013),
accessed May 14, 2016, www.muttart.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/11/3.-Talking-About-Charities-Full-
Report-2013.pdf.
9 Kennard Wing and Mark A. Hager, Getting What We Pay For:
Low Overhead Limits Nonprofit Effectiveness, Urban
Institute, August 1, 2004, accessed May 14, 2016,
www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-
pdfs/311044-
Getting-What-We-Pay-For.PDF.
Page 3 9B17E003
giving again was greater than the likelihood of securing new

ones.10 Facey understood that investment in
stewardship was a critical component of sustaining and
increasing fundraising capacity in the long term
and that it ultimately enabled the organization to realize its
mission and carry out its remarkable
programs. Positive donor sentiment that was spread by word of
mouth enhanced the DI’s reputation
within the community and attracted other prospective financial
supporters.
The DI was only one of more than 24,000 non-profit
organizations and charities in Alberta’s non-profit
sector, which had been affected by recent drops in the price of
oil and economic uncertainty (see Exhibit
2). According to a survey by the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary
Organizations, more than twice as many
organizations expected their finances to worsen in the
subsequent year. Approximately three-quarters of
organizations surveyed took steps to prepare for the fallout from
Alberta’s economic downturn, including
reviewing or changing existing organizational budgets, creating
contingency budget scenarios based on
different funding levels, diversifying funding, and increasing
fundraising.11
THE CALGARY DROP-IN & REHAB CENTRE
At the DI, Facey was in full agreement with the social service
agency’s mission: to “prevent
homelessness where possible, offer care and shelter when
needed, and provide opportunities for people to
rehabilitate and rebuild their lives.”12 As an incorporated, non-
denominational, non-profit, charitable
organization administered by a full-time staff and a board of
directors, the DI was the largest organization

of its kind in North America and had served the city of Calgary
for more than half a century. It offered a
complete range of wrap-around community support—from meals
and shelter to clothing, medical
services, counselling, volunteer opportunities, education, and
permanent supportive housing for over
10,000 people each year.
“People think of a homeless shelter as a bed for the night, but
that’s one of the least important aspects of
the DI,” Facey explained:
Poverty comes upon many people through a snowball effect. A
young man loses his roommate
and can’t pay the rent. He’s forced to use his limited income for
food and then ends up on the
street without a job. He can’t get an interview because he can’t
afford a haircut; he can’t afford a
haircut because he can’t get a job. Our barber gives him a trim,
and our employment services
staffing sets him up with a new boss—and he’s off and running
again.
Donors contributed 46 per cent of the DI’s funding (see Exhibit
3). In 2014, the DI utilized over 30,000
volunteers, assisted 10,965 clients, served 1.2 million meals,
distributed 97,382 pieces of clothing, offered
18,572 counselling services, and placed people in 11,574 jobs.
The DI had the capacity to shelter 1,100
people per night, with four levels of accommodations to meet
the diverse needs of the population:
emergency beds, short- and long-term supported living, and
affordable housing.13

Facey was deeply gratified to associate himself with the DI; a
community of kindness focused on
providing more than 50 programs and services to Calgarians
who were experiencing homelessness,
10 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE),
“Fundraising Fundamentals, Section 7.10,” accessed May
14, 2016,
www.case.org/Publications_and_Products/Fundraising_Fundame
ntals_Intro/Fundraising_Fundamentals_section_
7/Fundraising_Fundamentals_section_710.html.
11 Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, “Section One:
Highlights,” 2015 Alberta Nonprofit Survey, accessed June 5,
2016, www.calgarycvo.org/nonprofitsurvey/.
12 Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre, “The DI Today,” accessed
June 9, 2016, www.thedi.ca/about-the-di/the-di-today/.
13 Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre, “History,” accessed June
9, 2016, www.thedi.ca/about-the-di/di-history/.
Page 4 9B17E003
marginalization, and extreme poverty. Coordinating the
resources to make these good things happen
presented many challenges.

THE EXISTING SYSTEM
Regular communication with volunteers and donors was an
important component of fundraising and
donor stewardship strategy, and a high-quality database was
considered an essential investment for any
registered charity. Such systems were typically used to generate
statistics and trend analyses, schedule
reminders for donor meetings, and create targeted mailing and
invitation lists through segmenting. Many
non-profit agencies leveraged cloud, mobile, and social media
technologies to help deliver better
programs and services, engage the community, improve
communications, and increase fundraising
revenue. The emergence of crowdfunding and multichannel
fundraising campaigns that made use of mail,
Internet, and telephone made centralized management of data
regarding donors and volunteers more
necessary than ever.
Facey knew that the DI’s existing IS process for capturing
volunteer and donor information was in crisis.
With more than 55,000 donors, the organization’s Microsoft
Access database hit its limit. A new instance
of the database was created for each new capital campaign, and
this led to multiple historical versions.
The DI staff had tried many times in the past to manually
cleanse the data to remove duplicate donors and
addresses with limited success. Facey recognized that the mess
was due to the sheer number of donors
and separate databases.
The existing database structure had been developed more than a
decade earlier under the guidance of the
former IT director. Small upgrades had improved functionality
over time, but changes had been limited

because of the DI’s lack of technical expertise. Maintaining
multiple discrete databases was challenging
and led to many errors. For example, when it came time to
create a donor appreciation event, separate
databases from every capital campaign had to be exported to
spreadsheets and consolidated, which led to
duplicated donor names and inconsistent addresses. Donor data
could not be easily mined to assist with
fundraising campaigns, provide analytics on the effectiveness of
existing strategies, or identify the most
loyal volunteers and donors for proactive communication. Facey
also found it impossible to determine
whether volunteering led to donations or vice versa. This
translated into a shortfall in fundraising and
volunteering, and it meant the organization was unable to truly
understand and steward donors. Simply
put, donor data were not very accessible.
Open and unrestricted data-entry fields presented a primary
source of errors. Staff and volunteers used
different techniques and formatting standards when entering
data, and this led to inconsistencies, such as
four different records for “Talisman”—one referring to an oil
and gas company and another to a sports
facility (see Exhibit 4). Some donors appeared multiple times,
depending on how their first names had
been captured (for example, “Michael,” “Mike,” or “M.”); given
names were not stored in a separate field
from surnames. Errors were sometimes caught by the end-user
reviewing the mailing list, but this was a
hit-and-miss endeavour. Some donors received multiple copies
of an annual report, leading to negative
feedback. One donor had recently expressed her frustration over
continuing to receive duplicated reports
despite having called several times to request that the error be
fixed. Why donate money to an

organization that squanders it on useless postage?
The leadership team had often discussed replacing the existing
legacy system to better capture donor and
volunteer information, and the recent retirement of the former
IT director had provided the necessary
impetus to finally move this project forward.
Page 5 9B17E003
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Selecting an IS system was one of the most significant
investments a charity could make in support of its
fundraising strategy and activities, and it was critical to make
the correct choice. “We want to keep it as
simple for entry as possible to take out ambiguity and eliminate
error,” Facey said. The DI reviewed the
potential options available and took a close look at other
comparable organizations’ fundraising in terms
of receipted activity, overall revenue, and the systems they were
using to capture donor information (see
Exhibit 5).
One option open to Facey was to build a new, in-house system
to replace the current Microsoft Access
database system. This would involve hiring a full-time

programmer to create a system around the basic
requirements and customize this to the DI’s needs and staff
preferences. All donors and volunteers would
be captured in one central database, which would allow the
organization to identify duplicates and merge
records. Lists and reports would be generated based on criteria
specific to the needs of the DI. The
programmer would be able to ensure the database was connected
to existing systems in the DI, such as
gift processing through Beanstream Internet Commerce, Inc. (an
online payment processing company).
The programmer would also be available for ongoing issues,
upgrades, and troubleshooting, acting as an
on-the-ground resource for the DI. This option would cost
approximately $150,000, would take eight to
12 months to implement, and would require servers and security
to store the data, at additional costs.
Another option was to purchase software specifically developed
for non-profit fundraising and
relationship management, such as Raiser’s Edge or
DonorPerfect. There were many software options for
small, non-profit organizations like the DI, and such software
had been used by non-profit groups in
health-care, faith-based ministries, foundations, and the arts.
The DI would need to review and adjust its
current processes to fit an out-of-the-box solution, but it would
be able to review data, understand donor
retention rates and segmentation, and generate standardized
general-purpose reports. Such software would
be installed on personal computer desktops, and staff would be
trained on the application, which would be
integrated with basic, online marketing tools and mobile apps.
Technical customer service would be
managed by the vendor. Sample pricing in 2013 was US$10,050
for a single-user licence; a non-profit

organization requiring three user licences would spend
US$20,025 in the first year, then pay ongoing
annual maintenance fees of approximately US$3,000, including
support.14 Servers and security to store
the data would involve additional costs.
Finally, the DI could adopt a cloud-based fundraising solution,
such as Salesforce for Nonprofits or
Raiser’s Edge NXT. This solution would allow the DI to store
information on a secure, shared platform.
For 100,000 records, the standard version of Raiser’s Edge NXT
would cost $21,800 per year with a
three-year contract, and the professional version with additional
modules would cost $32,000 annually
with a three-year contract. Through an online-hosted system,
the data would be centralized and backed up
in a protected environment. This would allow individuals
working at the DI sites to access and edit donor
and volunteer information online. A range of permission levels
would be implemented based on the
degree of access reasonable for specific groups. These platforms
would be supported by off-site customer
services and security experts supplied by the vendor.
Implementation would take seven to nine months,
and the platform’s open design would allow further
customization and integration with other systems and
applications.15
14 Elizabeth Pope, Andrea Berry, Laura S. Quinn, and Kyle
Andrei, A Consumers Guide to Donor Management Systems,
(Portland, OR: Nonprofit Technology Network [NTEN],
October 29, 2013), accessed June 9, 2016,
www.nten.org/NTEN_images/reports/2013idealware_dmguide_o
ctober29_0.pdf.
15 “Raiser’s Edge NXT Nonprofit Fundraising Software,”

Blackbaud, accessed June 9, 2016,
www.blackbaud.com/fundraising-and-relationship-
management/raisers-edge-nxt.
Page 6 9B17E003
Facey had recently learned that the Mustard Seed, an
organization that also offered services to the
homeless population in Calgary, was expected to launch a
customer-relationship-management transition
project. This project entailed moving from Raiser’s Edge to
Salesforce for Nonprofits and recruiting a
data analyst to work on predictive modelling and future
fundraising initiatives.16
WHAT NEXT?
Facey thought about the people the DI served, such as the
woman born 60 years ago with mental
limitations whose mother died when she was 11 years old, and
who had lived on the streets for years
before ending up at the DI. Success to Facey meant meeting
these people at their point of need—a meal
for the hungry or a bed for the weary. He surveyed the
proposals strewn over his desk. Which option

would best set up the DI for future success?
16 The Mustard Seed, “Data Analyst,” accessed June 9, 2016,
http://theseed.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/201604-06-
Data-Analyst.pdf.
Page 7 9B17E003
EXHIBIT 1: THE CALGARY DROP-IN & REHAB CENTRE
Source: Photo collage by the case authors, from Calgary Drop-
In & Rehab Centre files.

9B17E003
EXHIBIT 2: OIL PRICE TRENDS MIRROR THE FINANCING
OF ALBERTA’S NON-PROFIT SECTOR
Source: Created by the case authors from Calgary Chamber of
Voluntary Organizations, “Section Two: Shifting Context,
Shifting Mood,” 2015 Alberta Nonprofit Survey, accessed
September 1, 2016, www.calgarycvo.org/2015-alberta-
nonprofit-
survey-pg2/.
EXHIBIT 3: THE CALGARY DROP-IN & REHAB CENTRE’S
SOURCES OF FUNDING
Source: Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre, “The DI Today,”
accessed September 1, 2016, http://www.thedi.ca/about-the-
di/the-di-today/.
Corporations
Private Donors
Faith Groups
Foundations,
46% Government of
Alberta Ministry
of Housing and
Urban Affairs,

50%
United Way, City
of Calgary &
FCSS, 4%
Page 9 9B17E003
EXHIBIT 4: SCREEN SHOT FROM THE CALGARY DROP-IN
& REHAB CENTRE’S CURRENT
DONOR DATABASE SYSTEM
Source: Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre.
EXHIBIT 5: SYSTEMS USED BY OTHER CHARITIES
Registered Charity 2015 Receipted
Donations

2015 Total Revenue System Used
Calgary Drop-In & Rehab
Centre (The DI)
$1,737,021 $26,011,348 In-house Microsoft Access
database
Hope Mission $7,469,753 $18,334,905 Raiser’s Edge
Volgistics Volunteer
Logistics
Edmonton City Centre
Church Corporation (E4C)
$523,522 $15,576,397 Raiser’s Edge
The Mustard Seed $9,631,954 $15,087,448 Raiser’s Edge;
planned
migration to Salesforce for
Nonprofits
Canadian Red Cross $65,447,370 $275,720,312 Raiser’s Edge
University of Calgary $49,352,091 $1,248,306,806 Raiser’s
Edge
University of British
Columbia
$39,628,000 $2,197,214,000 Blackbaud Nonprofit CRM
(enterprise solution for
large charities)
SickKids Foundation $59,685,495 $261,067,425 Blackbaud
Nonprofit CRM
Salvation Army $92,214,268 $282,694,074 Raiser’s Edge

CRM = constituent relationship management
Source: Created by the case authors, based on information from
the “Canada Revenue Agency Charities Listing,” accessed
May 31 2016, www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/lstngs/menu-
eng.html, and from organization websites and/or telephone
calls.
9B17E003CALGARY DROP-IN Centre: Donor information
systemTHE CHARITABLE SECTOR IN CANADATHE
CALGARY DROP-IN & REHAB CENTREthe Existing
SYSTEMPOSSIBLE SOLUTIONSWHAT NEXT?EXHIBIT 2:
Oil price trends mirror the financing of Alberta’s non-profit
sectorExhibit 3: THE Calgary Drop-In & REHAB Centre’s
SOURCES OF FUNDINGExhibit 4: Screen Shot from The
Calgary Drop-In & REHAB Centre’s Current donor database
SySTEMExhibit 5: SYSTEMS USED BY OTHER CHARITIES
Managing Groups & Teams
MGT 567
Dr. Brandon Randolph-Seng

Self-Assessment
Pair of statements should equal 5 (e.g., 0, 5; 1, 4; 2,3).
1)
I’m interested in and willing to take charge of a group of
people.
I want someone else to be in charge of the group.
2)
When I’m not in charge, I’m willing to give input to the leader
to improve performance.
When I’m not in charge, I do things the leader’s way, rather
than offer my suggestions.
2
Self-Assessment
3)
I’m interested in and willing to get people to listen to my
suggestions and to implement them.
I’m not interested in influencing other people.
4)
When I’m in charge, I want to share the management

responsibilities with group members.
When I’m in charge, I want to perform the management
functions for the group.
5)
I want to have clear goals and to develop and implement plans
to achieve them.
I like to have very general goals and take things as they come.
3
Self-Assessment
6)
I like to change the way my job is done and to learn and do new
things.
I like stability, or to do my job the same way; I don’t like
learning and doing new things.
7)
I enjoy working with people and helping them succeed.
I don’t really like working with people and helping them
succeed.
Determine your leadership potential score by adding up your
score for the first statement on each question.
4

Self-Assessment
Q1: Whether you want to be a leader or follower?
Managers: planning, organizing, leading, controlling
Not all managers are leaders not all leaders are managers
Follower: influenced by a leader
5
Leadership Defined (Northouse)
Leadership is the process whereby an individual INFLUENCES
a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.

6
Self-Assessment
Q2: Good followers give input and influence leaders
Influence: communicating ideas, gaining acceptance, motivate
to support and implement ideas through change
Q3: Influence is the essence of leadership
7
Self-Assessment
Q4: Influence is also about the relationship between leader and
followers
Willing to be influenced and learn from each other
8
Self-Assessment

Q5: Influence followers to think not only of their own interests,
but interests of organization through shared vision
Come best in the form of clear goals
9
Self-Assessment
Q6: Influencing and setting objectives is about change
To be an effective leader and follower you must be open to
change
10
Self-Assessment
Q7: Leadership is about leading people
Must be able to get along with people
11

Leadership in the Everyday world:
http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership.ht
ml
What are the Attributes of Effective Leaders in Teams?

13
14
Internal locus
of control
Integrity
High energy
Flexibility
Dominance
Sensitivity
to others
Self-confidence
Intelligence
Traits of
Effective
Leaders
Stability
Traits of Effective Leaders
Summary
Heading. Text.
Heading. Text.
Heading. Text.

Heading. Text.
Use this space for overall reminders or special tips linked to the
slide or occasion. Simply select this text and replace it with
your own reminders.
Leadership Paradox
Teams usually need leaders, but the very presence of a leader
can threaten the autonomy of the team
What can be done?
Leaders needed for effective team work:
Monitoring performance/Shape goals
Coordinate efforts/Resolving conflict
Motivate and focusing members
Top-down, command-and-control approach will not work
Leadership Studies Time Line
to 1930s
1940-mid1960s
mid1960s-1980s
1990s on
Trait
theories
-----
Leader
selection

Newer
theories
-----
Charisma
and
beyond
Contingency
theories
-----
Leader-
situation
matching
Behavioral
theories
-----
Leader
training
16
Great Person Theories
“Great Man” Theories (early 1900s)
Focused on identifying intrinsic qualities and characteristics
possessed by great social, political, & military leaders
Trait Approach: one of the first systematic
attempts to study leadership

17
Leader Behavior Approach
Task Focus
Plan & Define Work
Assign Responsibility
Set Clear Work Standards
Urge Completion
Monitor Results
People Focus
Warmth
Social Rapport
Respect
Sensitivity
Mutual Trust

18
Trait & Behavior Approaches
Hard to determine which type of leadership was more effective
in the real world
Neglected the environment in which behavior demonstrated
19
Great Opportunity Theories
Leadership often has more to do with the environment than
one’s own personality
Situational Factors often make the leader

20
Contingency Approaches to Leadership
The Role of Context
Path-Goal Theory of Leadership
Situational Leadership Model
Predictions of Path-Goal TheorySituationAppropriate
Leadership StyleWhen employees have high role ambiguity
When employees have low abilities
When employees have external locus of controlDirectiveWhen
tasks are boring and repetitive
When tasks are stressfulSupportiveWhen employees have high
abilities
When the decision is relevant to employees
When employees have high internal locus of
controlParticipativeWhen employees have high abilities
When employees have high achievement

motivationAchievement oriented
Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Model
Leaders adjust their styles depending on the readiness of their
followers to perform in a given situation
Readiness—how able, willing and confident followers are in
performing tasks
23
Leader Behavior
S1: Telling - Giving specific directions and closely supervising
work; a high-task, low relationship style.
S2: Selling - Explaining task directions in a supportive and
persuasive way; a high task, high relationship style.
S3: Participating - Emphasizing shared ideas and participative
decisions on task directions; a low-task, high-relationship style.
S4: Delegating - Allowing the individual or group to take final

responsibility for task decisions; a low-task, low relationship
style.
24
25
Implication
Match the leadership style to fit the followers’ level of
readiness and/or current task

26
Contingency Approach
Any problems w/ using a contingency approach?
27
Contingency Approaches to Leadership
In the real world it is not always possible to match the situation
to leadership style or to the needs of the followers
Contemporary approaches focus more on the interaction
between personality and behavior of leaders and followers and
the given environment

28
29
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
* The quality of the exchange relationship between an employee
(follower) and his or her superior (leader)
Contemporary Approaches to Leadership

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory
High quality LMX relationships have mutual respect between
the leader and the followers
Low quality LMX relationships portray lower levels of trust and
respect between leaders and followers

31
According to the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) approach,
the unique, trust based relationships leaders develop with
employees is the key to leadership effectiveness
Antecedents
Leader-Member Exchange
Consequences
Leader fairness
Leader delegation
Effort in building good relationship
Employee feedback seeking

Employee flattery of the leader
Personality similarity
Liking
Job satisfaction
Organizational commitment
Job performance
Citizenship behaviors
Lower turnover
Buffer against stressors
Ethics
Favorable interpretations of behavior

Quality of LMX
Strongly influences subordinates’ communication satisfaction at
the interpersonal (personal feedback), group (coworker
exchange), and organizational (corporate communications)
level.
Central to influencing follower’s affective, cognitive, and
behavioral experiences; roles; and fate in organization
32
33
Transactional Leadership

*Employees demonstrate the right behaviors because the leader
provides resources in exchange
Transformational Leadership
*Employees focus on company’s well being rather than
individual pursuits
Contemporary Approaches to Leadership
Transformational leaders lead employees by aligning employee
goals with the leader’s goals
Transformational Leaders

Individualized consideration
Inspirational motivation
Intellectual stimulation
Charisma
Transformational Leadership and Inspirational Motivation
Inspirational Motivation: Having a vision that is inspiring to
others
Creates higher levels of commitment and increased intrinsic
motivation

35
The CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, is a leader who demonstrates
passion for her vision and energizes those around her
toward her vision for the company
Transformational Leadership and Intellectual Stimulation
Intellectual Stimulation: Challenge organizational norms and
status quo, and encourage creativity and hard work
Increases performance and creativity
37
Transformational Leadership and Individualized Consideration

Individualized Consideration: Show personal care and concern
for well-being of followers
Builds more effective relationships
38
Transformational
Key for effectiveness of transformational has to do with
TRUST:
Show greater concern for people’s well-being and appeal to
people’s values
People in turn believe the leader is more fair and predictable
39
Source:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ataturk_and_flag_of_T
urkey.jpg
Transformational leaders rely on their charisma
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish
State and first president of the Turkish Republic
Transformational Leadership and Charisma
Charisma: behaviors leaders demonstrate that create confidence
in, commitment to, and admiration for the leader
Personality explains about 10% of variance
People can be trained to be charismatic
Only one element of transformational leadership
Dark side of charisma

41
Charisma: Double-Edged Sword
Gandhi; Churchhill; Manson
MLK, Jr; JFK; Hitler
42
How can you differentiate between positive and negative
charisma?
Primary orientation:
Own needs vs. needs of followers and organization
Self-glorification vs. self-transcendence
Organizational driven goals: empowerment, personal growth,
equal participation (vision and mission of organization)
Leader driven goals: obedience, dependency, submission
(restrict info, preserve image, external threats)

43
Warning signs:
Devotion to self more than ideals, self-serving decisions,
ideology is a ploy, personal identification of affect over
internalization
44
Authentic Leadership
Leaders are self aware

Not afraid to act the
way they are
Possess high levels of
personal integrity
Leaders are introspective
Understand where they
are coming from
Retain a thorough understanding of their own values and
priorities
Who are authentic leaders?
Take responsibility for and dedicated to own development &
growth becoming:
Genuine people who are true to themselves and to what they
believe in

Acknowledging shortcomings and admitting errors
46
What do they do?
Engender trust and develop genuine connections with others
(enduring relationships)
Passion for work, compassion for people serve, empathy for
coworkers, courage to make difficult decisions
Set high standards for self and others
Accept full responsibility for outcomes and holding others
accountable for performance
47
Authentic Leadership
Derive strength from own past experiences
Find own style based on personality and life experiences
Behave in ways consistent with values
High levels of personal integrity
Requires understanding oneself and feedback from others

Results: Greater trust, satisfaction, performance, and well-being
from employees
vs.
Complexity
Planning & Budgeting Targets/Goals
Organizing & Staffing
Controlling & Problem Solving
Change
Setting Direction --
Visions
Aligning People
Motivating “Inspiring/Moving”
Rational
Intuitive
Managers
Leaders

49
WHAT LEADERS DO...
Recruits, doesn’t just hire
Breathes vision into people
Models positive behavior
Challenges, provokes
Is intellectually stimulating
Doesn’t interfere, has courage to let it happen
Discovers talents
Builds the habitat for creativity
Instills ownership
50
Course Notes
Last Live Session: July 2nd @ 8:30 PM Central
Team Development Part III Due on eCollege by July 3rd @
11:59 PM
Peer-evals due on July 3rd
Complete on your own and kept confidential (make sure to
include the total score and to do a separate one for each member

of your team including yourself)
June 2013 (12:2) | MIS Quarterly Executive 111
MISQUarterly
Executive
Enterprise Business Analytics Capabilities1
Companies increasingly deliver value through business analytics
(BA), which includes the
people, processes and technologies that turn data into the
insights that drive business decisions
and actions.2 As Figure 1 illustrates, organizations with
enterprise BA capabilities establish
a sound foundation of high-quality, usable and integrated data.
This data is delivered to
business users via a diverse portfolio of business analytics
tools, including query, reporting and
advanced analytics software. Business users identify insights
from the data, make decisions and
solve important business problems, thereby triggering actions
that generate a wide range of
tangible and intangible business value. The data provided
through BA is also known as business

intelligence (BI). Over time, organizations manage and evolve
their BA capabilities through IT
and data governance mechanisms.
The Enterprise Business Analytics Capabilities Model3, shown
in Figure 1 is a lens through
which we can examine how companies are building, managing
and changing their business
analytics capabilities. From an analysis of emerging practices
recently reported by almost two
1 This article is based on research sponsored by the Advanced
Practices Council of SIM.
2 Eckerson, W. Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from
Information Insiders, Technics Publications, 2012.
3 For more information about the Enterprise Business Analytics
Capability Model, see Wixom, B., Watson, H. J. and Werner, T.
“Developing an Enterprise Business Intelligence Capability:
The Norfolk Southern Journey,” MIS Quarterly Executive
(10:2), 2011,
pp. 61-71.
Maximizing Value from Business
Analytics
CIOs need to maximize the value from the significant
investment their organizations
make in business analytics (BA) initiatives. We explore two
themes for maximizing BA
value—speed to insight and pervasive use, and present a BA
case study at GUESS? INC.,
a fashion retailer. We provide recommendations for how IT
leaders can maximize value
from their BA investments.1
Barbara H. Wixom
MIT Sloan School of

Management (U.S.)
Bruce Yen
GUESS?, Inc. (U.S.)
Michael Relich
GUESS?, Inc. (U.S.)
112 MIS Quarterly Executive | June 2013 (12:2) misqe.org | ©
2013 University of Minnesota
Maximizing Value from Business Analytics
dozen companies, two themes emerged that
characterize how companies are attempting to
maximize business value from their enterprise BA
capabilities: speed to insight and pervasive use.
In the following sections, we describe these two
themes and some contemporary practices that
facilitate them.45
Speed to Insight
Speed to insight is concerned with how
expeditiously organizations transform raw
data into usable information. Practices that
facilitate speed to insight can be categorized as
automation, business requirements and reuse
(see Figure 2 and Appendix 1).
Some practices, such as data standards and
metadata, help organizations automate data on-
boarding,6 integration and quality processes.
The more automated these processes, the faster

data can be physically transformed into usable
information. For example, a healthcare company
initially estimated a project to on-board more
4 Adapted from Wixom et al., op. cit., 2011.
5 The primary data source for identifying the two themes was
the
applications submitted in 2011 and 2012 by 23 companies for
the
emerging practices category of The Data Warehousing
Institute’s
(TDWI) annual business analytics best practices competition. A
summary table with the specific practices reported by each
company
is shown in Appendix 1.
6 On-boarding is the process of incorporating new data sources
into
a company’s data infrastructure.
than 30 new data sources into its business
analytics environment would take two months.
By shifting to configurable, metadata-driven on-
boarding processes, the project was accomplished
in five business days. And an IT company cut the
estimate for a data integration project by 30%
after implementing automated data mapping.
Other practices, such as agile development
methods, sandbox environments7 and co-
locating developers with business users, enable
development teams to more rapidly identify
business requirements for data and then translate
those requirements into business analytics
products and services. Until a few years ago,
agile development was rarely applied to business
analytics projects, but that has changed as

companies have seen the positive impact of
agile development on delivery schedules. For
example, an insurance company moved to an
agile development process for all BA projects,
adopting techniques like paired programming,
story walls and test-driven development. The
company realized a four-fold increase in analytics
usage over two years, attributed to increased
development productivity (i.e., increased BA
delivery).
7 Sandboxes are technologies outside of an organization’s core
systems that, in this context, are used by analytics professionals
to
develop ideas for new applications.
Figure 1: Enterprise Business Analytics Capabilities Model4
Data BA Tools
Business Value
Business Strategy
Use
Governance
Finally, companies that invest in reuse, which
includes such practices as data services, design

catalogs and parameterized reporting, can get
information into the hands of business users
more quickly. A healthcare company reduced
data on-boarding from 1,700 hours to a few
hours by using a data-as-a-service approach.
The company estimates that use of data services
reduced developer time by 25% and data
store redundancy by 75%. Another healthcare
company uses a catalog of best practice
approaches for designing dashboards to meet
various objectives. Use of the catalog shortened
the company’s delivery time for dashboards from
12 to five days.
Pervasive Use
On average, 25% of an organization’s
employees use some form of business analytics
to do their jobs.8 Companies can increase this
8 This figure is cited by Cindi Howson in many of her webinars,
which can be found at
www.biscorecard.com/businessintelligencewe-
binars.asp.
percentage by adopting practices that encourage
more pervasive use of business analytics across
the enterprise, such as graphics, mobility and
user engagement (see Figure 3 and Appendix 2).
Visually appealing software interfaces using
graphics encourage pervasive use because the
adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”
holds true in business analytics. Users react
positively to appropriate uses of maps, colorful
dashboard displays and advanced visualization

approaches. One retailer found that adding
photographs of products to reports positively
impacted adoption and analyst productivity.
A second driver of pervasive use is mobility—
delivering business analytics via mobile devices
such as cell phones and iPads. Companies
reported particularly high adoption success
and user enthusiasm with iPad-based BA
deployments (as described in the GUESS case
below). In general, the key benefits of mobility
are portability and ease of access to business
analytics. For example, a healthcare company that
Figure 2: Drivers of Speed to Insight
Speed
to
Insight
Automation
Business
Requirements
Reuse
Figure 3: Drivers of Pervasive Use
Pervasive
Use
Graphics
Mobility

User
Engagement
transitioned from web-based BA to mobile BA
attributed part of the benefits it gained from the
iPad’s “cool factor.” Benefits of mobile BA include
more frequent analyses, instant decision making,
more consultative decision making, increased
self-service and increased productivity. A biotech
company estimates that members of its sales
force save between 30 and 90 minutes each day
through its mobile BA application, and that time
saving translates into $4 million annual savings or
increased productivity.
Finally, companies can deepen BA usage
through practices that promote user engagement.
This broad category includes self-service
approaches (e.g., report wizards), gamification9
(e.g., incentivizing use) and collaboration
techniques (e.g., rating, discussion and sharing
portals)—all of which draw users into BA and
engages them in an interactive way. An Internet
company set up a collaboration portal to support
its anticipated BA growth from 1,000 to 4,000
users. The portal offered users a way to share and
rate analyses, discuss ideas and even “follow an
analyst.”

Speed to Insight and Pervasive
Use at GUESS
For more than 30 years, GUESS?, INC. (referred
to as GUESS) has been designing, marketing,
distributing and licensing collections of
contemporary apparel and accessories for men,
women and children. A $2.5 billion company,
GUESS competes globally in the fashion retail
industry, operating in 87 countries.
GUESS operates using a variety of business
models that vary geographically. The U.S. is
predominantly a retail business, with sales to
consumers accounting for 85% of business
and 15% going to wholesale (e.g., department
stores). Europe is about 75% wholesale. Asia is
a mixture of retail and wholesale. In Central and
South Americas, GUESS engages in partnership
arrangements. Although these diverse business
models require localized business processes,
GUESS centrally controls its brand and delivers
a consistent customer experience across its
distribution channels.
GUESS succeeds by placing the right apparel
in the right store at the right time to appeal
to its fashion-savvy shoppers. To do this well,
9 Gamification is the integration of game mechanics or game
dynamics into an information system.
the company needs to be good at fashion and
at distribution. To accomplish the former,
GUESS employs designers who identify fashion

trends and create appealing styles. A staff of
buyers, planners and distributors ensure that
merchandise is routed appropriately across the
GUESS network.
The BA industry has recognized that GMobile,
GUESS’s business analytics iPad initiative, is an
innovative and game-changing BA application.
GMobile uses several practices that facilitate
speed to insight and pervasive use of business
analytics (see Table 1).
The Origin of GMobile
GUESS’s CIO and his BA director initiated the
GMobile project while attending a BA vendor
conference. As the conference keynote speaker
described the potential value of the iPad for
BA delivery, the CIO realized that the iPad’s
portability, graphical nature and trendiness could
be a good fit for his highly visual and creative
business users. During the talk, he texted GUESS’s
procurement department to order several iPads
for his team so they could begin exploring the
iPad’s potential when he returned.
“Twenty minutes into the conference
presentation, I was convinced that this
was the perfect device for my merchants
to consume data. They are always running
around with 5- or 6-inch binders filled
with hundreds of pages of 8-point text with
every little metric—and they still seem to
be missing key pieces of information. If we

Table 1: Practices to Drive Speed
to Insight and Pervasive Use at
GUESS
Speed to Insight Pervasive Use
• Data Standards • Photographs
• Agile methods • Advanced Visualization
• Co-location • Dashboards
• Shadowing • Graphic designers
• Templates • iPads
• Collaboration
built them a buyer’s workbench, it would be
the perfect application.” CIO, GUESS
At the time, GUESS had significant BA
capabilities in place. For ten years, the company
has had a data warehouse that supported ad hoc
analyses, BlackBerry reports and web-based
dashboards. The BA director, who previously
worked for a BA vendor, not only had deep
technical expertise, but had a strong working
relationship with GUESS’s business users.
However, the CIO and BA director believed that

delivering BA via the iPad could potentially be a
game-changer.
Developing GMobile
As a first step, the BA director asked his team
to download highly rated iPad apps and identify
what made them so popular. The team not only
explored media and productivity apps, but
also games. For example, a vegetable chopping
game showed the importance of color, ease of
use and fun. The team found that exploring and
discussing apps helped with its understanding of
app workflow, the way in which data could and
should be delivered (i.e., how much and when),
communicating instructions and the effective use
of graphics.
The BA director then began shadowing his
users “because the scenarios for which we
were designing were so different from previous
scenarios.” The vision for GMobile was a buyer’s
workbench that would replace binders of reports
and support core work for the GUESS knowledge
workers responsible for product distribution. The
BA director visited stores with users. “We sat in
their meetings. We had never asked them to open
up that much to us before, but I think they realized
that it would be very cool to have a tool that could
help them at those meetings or when they were on
the road.”
The BA team engaged a graphic designer to
help develop GMobile. “We wanted the graphic
designer to polish the app and make it look really
good so that people would be drawn in. We wanted

our users to wake up Saturday morning, read the
newspaper and look at sales on their iPad app.”
The designer helped to implement a visually
appealing app that incorporated a Hollywood
theme with related graphics and colors. The app
also included product photos and geospatial
mash-ups.
“We didn’t want to create a series of
dashboards. We wanted more of a multi-
dimensional, interactive workflow where
a user can tap and quickly get to more
insight and more detail. And you can go
back to your beginning point easily. Think
of it as one of those old ‘Choose Your Own
Adventure’ books that we read as kids. Flip
to page 73. You open the door on the left.
Page 14, you open the door on the right.
And each choice leads to a different path
through the book.” BA director, GUESS
The type of information delivered via the
iPad evolved over time as users asked for more
and different functionality. For example, the
app initially provided best-sellers by stores.
Over time, users asked for store best-sellers
categorized by additional dimensions, such as
style and color.
GMobile Data Foundations
GUESS’s varying local business models
require localized point-of-sale systems and
regional ERP systems. The company achieves
data standardization through a centralized
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system

that serves as the GUESS system of record. All
style information—whether about a fabric, trim
or garment—is created in the PLM system and
then pushed into the ERP systems to achieve
consistency with local execution. Additionally, the
three regional data warehouses (for Asia, Europe
and the U.S.) use the same data model with
common attribute definitions. This ensures that
regional reporting is consistent and that data can
be integrated into a single global view.
“We built our own data model. I have a core
team that has worked for me on average
for 15 to 17 years. A lot of these guys have
worked for me at four different retailers.
They have a lot of retail experience. Since
we’ve looked at many industry data models,
we are familiar with what is out there—
and know what other retailers have used.
We created what we consider the best of
breed.” CIO, GUESS
The regional data warehouses, running on
traditional data warehousing technology, had
met GUESS’s needs for the past decade, but the
IT team found that GMobile generates different
technical requirements. iPad users expect
extremely fast response times, yet the iPad

does not have the technical capacity to support
techniques such as caching. This means that the
data warehouse has to close the performance gap.
To improve performance, the BA team ported
the North American data warehouse to a column-
oriented data warehouse appliance. While the
previous data warehouse took 20 to 30 minutes
to run complex analyses, such as product affinity
or market basket, the column-oriented appliance
performed the same analyses in seconds.
“We named the new data warehouse ‘the
Maserati.’ I told our users ‘We were driving
around in a Volkswagen beetle—but now
we are running around in a Maserati. It
is light years ahead in terms of speed.’ …
It’s been a huge enabler because GMobile
requires that we serve up queries quickly.”
BA director, GUESS
GMobile Business Analytics Tools
Prior to GMobile, GUESS’s business analytics
software portfolio had evolved from ad hoc
queries to reports delivered via BlackBerries
to web-based dashboards. Throughout this
evolution, users became more comfortable and
familiar with using reports and dashboards—and,
in general, with using data for decision making.
The GUESS IT group believes that the iPad
had potential to be a game-changing method for
delivering business analytics because it combines
the best of all worlds—the portability of a
mobile phone, the functionality and screen size

of a laptop, and the rich media, interactivity and
appeal of a current “hip” technology. The latter
proved particularly true. The IT group suspected
that some users signed up for GMobile simply to
receive an iPad. This did not concern the team
because, over time, users with iPads ultimately
would become highly engaged BA users.
The iPad’s rich media support is important for
GMobile. The app incorporates a variety of charts,
graphs and maps that depict best-sellers and
store sales information. The development team
discovered that its decision to include product
photographs into the app excited its business
users (Figure 4 shows a GMobile screen shot).
“It was a breakthrough in realizing that
visual analytics didn’t mean a geospatial
tool or a lot of time creating charts and
graphs. There was a missing piece of
analytics that we could bring just by doing
something as simple as adding a picture
instead of listing styles so that the users
could visually see what’s happening.” BA
director, GUESS
Figure 4: GMobile Screen Shot
The development team leveraged two
important roles when creating GMobile. The

first was a graphic designer, who worked with
the IT group to make the screens attractive
and consumable. The designer incorporated a
“fun, Hollywood theme” into GMobile to create
an appealing user experience. Additionally, the
designer focused on making the app easy to use
by supporting an intuitive workflow and ensuring
that users could always find their way back to an
earlier screen or to the app home page. This was
helpful for the less tech-savvy users, who found
the iPads highly approachable.
The second role was an app developer.
This person ensured that GMobile leveraged
the nuances of the iPad, such as swipes and
gestures, within the interface design. The app
developer also ensured that GMobile did not
simply replicate previous dashboard reports that
were developed for the web; in fact, the GMobile
app delivers data that was previously reported
through 12 different dashboard applications. The
iPad supports a more interactive, versatile way to
deliver data, which supports a wide range of user
work styles and work flows.
“Different people work in different ways—
and they like to see information in different
ways. Through the app, you can manipulate
and view data however you need it.” Director
of Mexico & Latin America Support, GUESS
One drawback of deploying BA through the
iPad was that the device technology was still
fairly new when development began, and many
bugs had to be fixed. The team needed to develop
workarounds and seek BA vendor assistance to

solve issues with memory management, security
support and networking. “We basically had a
lifeline to them,” explained the BA director. The
team also had to address “bring your own device”
(BYOD) issues for users who wanted to put
GMobile on their personal iPads.
Generating Value with GMobile
The GMobile app generates a wide variety of
tangible and intangible business value for the
company that can be categorized as transactional,
informational and strategic (see Table 2).
Transactional Benefits. GUESS is gaining
several productivity improvements from
GMobile that result in bottom-line cost savings.
As anticipated, the iPad devices have replaced
reams of paper reports, reducing paper costs and
increasing eco-friendliness.
“I like that I can carry the iPad and not carry
an inch of paper as I did in the past. When
information is not in GMobile, I create PDFs
and have that available through a PDF app.
When the visual team goes out to stores
and creates actual windows with product,
they take pictures and send them to us. The
iPad is a piece of equipment with a lot of
information in it.” Director of Planning,
Retail, GUESS
Since the GMobile app was created to answer
many more questions than its predecessor
applications, users spend less time finding

answers and fewer analysts are needed to
prepare reports.
“Four years ago, we had about 12 planners,
and now we are down to seven because we
are doing less reporting. And the reporting
is more cohesive.” Director of Planning,
Retail, GUESS
People at GUESS no longer need as many
meetings as previously to “get people on the same
page.” Traditionally, GUESS held a weekly meeting
for 40 representatives across the company to
discuss best-selling items. Now that meeting is bi-
Table 2: GMobile Business Value
Transactional Informational Strategic
• Less paper
• Time savings
• Fewer meetings
• Reduced headcount
• Faster cycle time
• Convenience
• Factual decisions
• Real-time decisions
• Single version of the truth
• Business pattern discovery
• More collaboration
• Speed to market
• Improved business understanding
• Reputation

monthly because the GMobile app communicates
best-seller information so effectively.
Informational Benefits. As business users
adopted GMobile, the IT group observed that
the nature of some work began to change,
particularly in the way users collaborated
and communicated with each other. Since the
iPad became most users’ primary information
repository, they incorporated other kinds of
reporting, note taking and even photographs into
their decision-making processes. Users now take
photos using the iPad to capture store layouts,
window designs and even competitor marketing
efforts. These photos are then incorporated
into future decision processes or referenced in
meetings with others. Overall, GMobile provides
users with more and better information, leading
to improved, more fact-based decisions.
Strategic Benefits. BA also delivers strategic
benefits to GUESS. One important benefit is
that users develop a deeper understanding
of the business. GMobile users cite numerous
examples where this understanding has
resulted in stronger business performance. One
merchandiser used the app to understand how
the launch of a new product performed in its
very early stages within North America and how

that performance translated into South American
market performance. This understanding led to
better purchasing and distribution decisions,
and, ultimately, more sales of higher profitability
items in her region. Another user applied BA
to identify size profiles for stores, discovering
that some stores tend to have customers who
purchase smaller sizes and other stores tend to
sell a greater number of large-sized clothing.
“Once you incorporate size profiles into
your decision processes, you actually
increase your sales in every store by some
amount, because now all these people who
are extra-smalls are not walking [out the
store], as opposed to other stores where
people who are larges and extra-larges
are walking because we didn’t give them
enough. You increase your business and
you reduce your markdowns because you
no longer have extra units of some items
sitting in a store.” Director of Factory
Planning, GUESS
GMobile also generates intangible strategic
benefits. Use of the iPad app communicates the
perception that GUESS operates in a leading-edge
and “hip” manner, which resonates well with its
many partners around the globe. Additionally,
the adoption and popularity of this iPad
initiative fosters innovation internally at GUESS,
prompting other iPad-related projects elsewhere
in the company.
Summary of GUESS’s Enterprise
Business Analytics Capabilities

Figure 5 summarizes GUESS’s key enterprise
BA capabilities. The company achieves
standardized and high-quality data from its PLM
system and enterprise data model, and delivers
data for analytics via a column-oriented data
warehouse appliance. It also includes photos as
a data source to facilitate consumable reporting.
The company offers a wide array of BA tools
(e.g., ad hoc queries, BlackBerry reports, web-
based dashboards and GMobile) to its executives,
designers and merchandisers across the globe.
The IT team uses agile development methods
and user shadowing to identify business
requirements, and leverages a graphic designer,
app developer and strong vendor relationships to
deliver leading-edge applications that maximize
the device used for delivering BA to users.
Business users adopt BA because the
tools are easy to use and useful to their work
processes; the tools also facilitate collaborative
decision-making processes. The GMobile
iPad app further engages users by offering an
enjoyable experience. The business-savvy IT
team and strong IT/business relationship keep
the BA efforts aligned with real business needs,
resulting in transactional, informational and
strategic benefits for GUESS.
Recommendations for
Maximizing Value from BA
Investments
The following five recommendations—two

concerned with speed to insight and three with
pervasive use—will help IT leaders maximize the
value from their BA investments.
Recommendations to Drive Speed to
Insight
1. Create an Optimized Ecosystem of
Advanced and Traditional Data Technologies.
Organizations should incorporate a variety of
database technologies into data architectures as
BA techniques evolve and new sources of data
become available. There is no longer a “one-size
fits all” technology for BA. Thus, after identifying
unique data processing needs, IT leaders should
invest in a set of technologies to address those
needs. The future data architecture will be an
ecosystem of technologies that can concurrently
process unstructured data, streams of real-time
data and large volumes of historical events.
Speed to insight will correlate with the IT
group’s ability to match processing needs with
processing capabilities.
2. Develop Data Standards, Even if it Means
Creating a Standards Layer on Top of Diverse
Systems. Standardizing data at an enterprise
level will only get harder as data architectures
increasingly evolve to the federated, ecosystem

approach. A federated architecture, however,
does not reduce the need for data standards. In
fact, a data standards layer becomes even more
important for automating data integration and
data-quality processes to achieve fast speed to
insight. If standardized data sources are not
possible, consider enterprise data models, an
enterprise platform system (e.g., PLM at GUESS)
or a master data management initiative.
Recommendations to Drive Pervasive
Use
3. Invest in Business-savvy IT Staff.
Business-savvy IT professionals are particularly
important in BA for two reasons. First, they
ensure that business requirements are
met; research shows that meeting business
requirements drives usage. Second, business-
savvy IT professionals ensure that the business
requirements correctly address the company’s
real business needs. Some IT groups are
fortunate to have staff with long organizational
tenures and deep business knowledge. Those
that do not should consider investing in rotation
or training programs to develop business-savvy
abilities.
4. Encourage User-intensive Development
Practices. Even the most business-savvy IT
professionals may neither understand exactly
what business users do each day nor how and
when they make decisions. Practices that help
developers understand user work styles and
behavior, such as shadowing, agility and co-

location, can improve BA development outcomes.
This is likely a key reason behind the sharp rise
Figure 5: GUESS’s Enterprise BA
Data
•Enterprise data model
•Column-oriented
appliance
•Photographs
BA Tools
•Vendor relationships
•Graphic designer
•Shadowing
Business Value
Business Strategy
•Understand best
sellers
•Place the right product
in the right store at the
right time
Use
Governance
• Business-savvy IT team

in agile development methods for BA projects
over the past few years. The more time that
developers spend with users, the more nuanced
their understanding of how to shape BA to make
tools and applications more useful and easier to
use.
5. Exploit the “in” Technology. IT leaders
should embrace the new technologies that come
to market as a way to excite and engage BA users.
Since each device has both unique capabilities
and constraints, consider hiring specialists who
can exploit the capabilities and mitigate the
constraints of a specific technology. For example,
to leverage an iPad device, consider hiring
app developers and graphic designers skilled
in shaping the technology’s visual experience
to incorporate geospatial awareness and/or
photographic images in workflows. At the same
time, the iPad’s technical limitations and security
risks need to be addressed with appropriate
BYOD policies and other controls.
Concluding Comments
The Enterprise Business Analytics Capabilities
Model offers an approach for articulating key
practices that build and shape BA capabilities.
Our research suggests that once BA capabilities
are established, business value is maximized by
using practices that drive speed to insight and by
making BA usage pervasive across the enterprise.

The benefits from BA will be both tangible
and intangible, ranging from very tangible
productivity improvements (such as less paper-
reporting and time spent in report preparation)
to intangible benefits (such as improved
company reputation and deeper strategic
business understanding). All of these benefits are
important for maximizing BA value.
The experience of GUESS with GMobile
shows what can be achieved. Having established
enterprise BA capabilities over the past decade,
GUESS is now focused on reducing the time it
takes to transform data into usable information
(i.e., speed to insight) and deepening the usage
of BA across the enterprise (i.e., pervasive use).
Further, as BA capabilities evolve to incorporate
new trends, such as big data sources and cloud-
based architectures, CIOs should monitor how
these trends can be leveraged specifically to
drive speed to insight and pervasive use to
maximize value from business analytics.
Appendix 1: Practices that Facilitate Speed to Insight1011
10 This table lists the practices from companies that applied to
The Data Warehousing Institute’s 2011 and 2012 best practices
competition in
the emerging trends category.

11 A software framework that supports data-intensive
distributed applications under a free license.
Company Project Speed to Insight Practices
Healthcare • On-boarding and standardizing new
data sources; ongoing data quality
control
• Configurable, metadata-driven platform
• Ability to self-configure field-level quality control
levels
• Automated business rules repository
Automotive • Agile, iterative development for
data warehousing
• Automated testing to enable real-time feedback
of development changes
Transportation • Data validation and certification
process for on-boarding and sharing
data
• Data standards
• Business rules engine to manage industry-level
data sharing
Financial Services • Daily data processing performance
improvement
• In-database processing
• Parallelism

Aerospace • BI report development • Lean framework adapted
for agile BI
• BI competency center
• Dedicated/co-located teams
Healthcare • Enterprise data integration
architecture, which supports
metadata management and service-
oriented architecture
• Model-driven, wizard-based data services
• Data standards
• Metadata
IT • Data mapping for integration
processes
• Automated data-mapping process
• Integration center of excellence
Insurance • BI reporting • Agile development process (e.g., co-
location,
story cards and four-week roll-outs)
Financial Services • Data integration and delivery •
Virtualization architecture
• Data standards
• Metadata
• Data services
Energy • “Live” operational dashboards • Complex event-
processing technology
• Business activity monitoring
• Visualization
Internet • Data warehousing and reporting on

Internet data
• Hadoop11 solution to process large volumes of
unstructured, real-time Internet data
Financial Services • Compliance reporting • Metadata-driven
reporting architecture that
automatically adjusts to complex changes to
reporting requirements
Healthcare • Dashboard reporting methodology • Dashboard
delivery process for highly visual,
standardized reporting
• Center of excellence
• Dashboard design catalog, which promotes
visualization best practices
Insurance • BI reporting • Agile methodology
• High business user involvement
Pharmaceutical • Master data management • Master data
management platform
Appendix 2: Practices that Facilitate Pervasive Use1213
12 This table lists the practices from companies that applied to
The Data Warehousing Institute’s 2011 and 2012 best practices

competition in
the emerging trends category.
13 MultiDimensionalEXpressions—a multidimensional query
language.
Company Project Pervasive Use Practices
Aerospace • BI reporting • Graphical delivery
• Dashboards
• Prompt-based reports
• MDX13 functions
Insurance • Campaign management • Automated model scoring
• Excel interface
• Sandbox environment
Call Center • BI reporting • Advanced visualization
• Dashboards
• Mobile delivery
• Collaboration supported by having users rate,
comment on and discuss dashboard content
Healthcare • BI reporting • Mobile delivery
• Advanced visualization
• Geographic-specific reporting based on location
awareness
Financial Services • BI reporting • Parameterized reports
• Key performance indicator wizard to generate
custom dashboards
• Advanced visualization
• Gamification framework that wraps a game layer

around operational reporting
Restaurant • BI reporting • Self-service
• Data standards
Biotech • BI reporting • Mobile delivery
• iPads
• Mobility center of excellence
• Video training clips
Internet • BI reporting • Self-service
• On-line portal
• Knowledge management, allowing user to share,
discuss and rate analytics practices
About the Authors
Barbara H. Wixom
Barbara Wixom ([email protected]) is a Principal
Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of
Management’s Center for Information Systems
Research (CISR). Her areas of expertise include
how firms build and deliver business value from
enterprise data capabilities. Prior to joining CISR,
she was an associate professor at the University
of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce,
teaching courses in data management, business
intelligence and IT strategy at undergraduate,
graduate and executive education levels. She

has published in journals such as Information
Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, MIS Quarterly
Executive and Journal of Management
Information Systems, and has presented her work
at national and international conferences.
Bruce Yen
Bruce Yen ([email protected]) is Director of
Business Intelligence at GUESS?, INC. and leads
the business intelligence and data warehousing
initiatives. He specializes in creating a cohesive
data-dissemination strategy that brings
actionable data to diverse user communities
and business needs. He has over 13 years of
data warehousing and business intelligence
experience. Yen is a recognized leader in
business intelligence and has received industry
recognition as an innovative and cutting-edge
information manager for both dashboard and
mobile application design and implementation.
Earlier experiences include consulting for
MicroStrategy and managing the data warehouse
for the North American Bottled Water division of
Group Danone.
Michael Relich
Michael Relich ([email protected]) is Executive
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
at GUESS?, INC. Prior to joining GUESS, he
served as CIO and Senior Vice President of MIS
and E-Commerce at Wet Seal, Inc., a specialty
apparel retailer, and as Senior Vice President,
Engineering at Freeborders, Inc., a Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions provider.
Relich has also held senior-level IT positions
with retailers HomeBase Inc., where he served

as Assistant Vice President of MIS, and Broadway
Stores Inc., where he served as Director of
Merchandise Systems.
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