Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels can tell us so much about the customer’s intentions, motivation, and thinking. This needs to be integrated with other insights about the customer. The CRM solution needs to actively integrate customer social profiles to make this happen.

Currently the majority of CRM solutions are not social media aware, let alone able to manage an active integration of all the components. This change will occur, but sadly to date the majority of installed solutions are limited in their capability. Can your existing solution handle the following:

* extended customer profiles

* customer insights

* collaborative insights

* enterprise collaboration

Extended customer profiling must include links to the many social sites the customer and their key decision makers are active on. These links need to be active links in order to allow specific CRM users access to customer thinking. This can impact the whole way that relationship is managed.

The term ‘active link’ in this context will allow the CRM user to jump directly from the customer profile to a specific social site, and even recognises the possibility that a customer may have many profiles being active on many sites. All CRM solutions include notes fields, these are not appropriate for long term storage of social links.

Drawing out customer insights is a vital aspect of social media intervention. There is only limited value of being active without measuring the customer’s insights. The term ‘measuring’ was used deliberately in this context. For larger corporations these customer insights need to be measurable, through the Business Intelligence solutions and add value to customer interactions. It can allow us to be more responsive. We can also become more proactive in managing that relationship.

Collaborative insights can involve a wide range of people, including industry experts. This allows the business to manage its intervention in the marketplace more effectively, being more responsive to changing market conditions. Ever thought of involving your customers in your product development efforts? Everyone has an opinion and on many of the social media channels people are not afraid to give them. For the listening corporation there are many new ideas available, including the insights that can be gleamed from within the enterprise. These can cover a range of ideas and certainly go beyond the old fashioned suggestion box.

One thing is certain social media is not simply another advertising channel. Business intervention is required to make the most of the channels. The CRM is a business tool that can aid in that intervention.

For Business Intelligence which type of solution is best will ultimately depend on individual business circumstances. The solution type assessment that has been discussed in this series of articles will aid that decision.

We are in the age of careful spending. So companies need to know that each dollar spent is going to provide business value. It is important to develop a consolidated global view irrespective of operational software used. Consolidating data into a common platform is not always easy. The Data Warehouse must always be the single source of the truth for corporate information. This must be based on an open and flexible architecture that is extendible. To be clear, whether the data warehouse database is a bespoke design or implements a packaged solution there is still a large amount of work to be completed. There will always be the need to build a project team and acquire data for the data warehouse.

When ready made solutions provide best results

Generally ready-made solutions provide best results when they offer a high degree of integration for existing operational applications. If using a corporate-wide ERP or CRM solution that provides the backbone tying all corporate applications together then it is possible to utilise the associated data warehouse as the corporate Business Intelligence backbone. The preference for a pre-built database can be strengthened if all of the applications identified can be provided by the same vendor.

Ready-made solutions are becoming increasingly complex as the solution providers learn and adapt their data models based on real business scenarios, these will continue to evolve into the future.

What custom solutions can provide

Custom-made data warehouses are capable of supporting any application that is required to run against it. The primary concern will always be the amount of time necessary to develop any solution. Even where packaged Analytic applications are to be used is it generally necessary to tweak the metadata to enable them to function smoothly against the database. Often these Analytic applications can best be supported through a custom data mart, fed by the data warehouse – the single source of truth.

When custom solutions provide best results

Custom solutions provide the best results when there is a high degree of complexity in the corporate legacy architecture, even if there is an intention trim and simplify the architecture. Custom solutions are also best when the solution itself is likely to be unique in nature, e.g. when your corporation is genuinely the only corporation in the world doing this – however this situation is increasingly rare in today’s business climate.

Five years ago the combination of complex business processes and a complex architecture guaranteed that customised solutions were necessary. Today this is less clear cut. look at some industry models and see whether it is possible to adapt them before making the final decision.

Leveraging the Solution Type Assessment

In the earlier articles the author talked about a Solution Type Assessment. Through this process it is possible to build a score based on firstly mission criticality, and secondly the complexity rating for your organisation. These will act as a weighting factor for the importance of each item covered in the decision process.the weighting factor should be agreed before starting the assessment. In weighting there is a tendency for business to show a low weighting factor for IT issues, this MUST be avoided as the technical obstacles do need to be considered.

The Complexity to Provide column relates to the ability of the current data processing facilities to provide such data in a succinct and meaningful way. It becomes complex if data is stored in many different systems across the world, and in different languages. It is also complex if many types of data storage system are used (e.g. non-relational data stores and relational data bases can provide parts of the data).

Overall taking a solution type assessment will ensure the necessary due diligence considerations are covered. Of course capability has to assessed alongside the overall project costs. Customised solutions can be implemented over a longer period of time whereas ready-made solutions will generally be implemented altogether, even if some data comes on-line at a later date.

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This series will be taking a break for a few weeks, but when it returns the next article will focus on: “Staffing your BI Solution”

Previous:

Part 1: Financing the Business Intelligence Project (Buy or Build?)

Part 2: BI Project Decisions: Ready Made Database Options

Part 3: The Corporate Architecture and Complexity of Data Links

Part 4: Financing the BI Project: Uniqueness Factors (or USP)

Part 5: Starting your BI Project: Suitable Analytical Applications

In this context the adoption of analytical applications includes general reporting requirements (e.g. monthly sales reporting) as well as specialist applications (for example Activity Based Costing). This requires a projection of future need, but is still essential to determining the necessity of a pre-built Data Warehouse. Some applications will be tied to a packaged solution, whilst other options will have general availability.

Indeed when you are defining a ‘greenfield’ business intelligence implementation with a corporation that has few skills in the area it can be difficult to think about advanced analytics. The problem here is that some individuals will hail from other corporations that are analytically rich and these individuals want to launch into advanced analytical applications, when the traditional groundwork has not been laid out (e.g. a long history for analytics and a knowledgeable analytical team in the business).

Having recently worked with a growing mid-sized corporation who had recently appointed a new CFO to assist in their growth, she of-course came to the corporation bursting with ideas that had assisted her former employer to success, yet in the new environment there was no analytical capability and to make matters worse there were two accounting systems. She had a challenge on her hands, none the least being how she could implement the cost analysis modules she required.

The solution assessment  requires ratings for all analytical applications. It is essential to indicate all applications that are intended to be used in the future, even if this picture is currently uncertain. for example:

◊ Monthly financial reporting

◊ Ad-hoc queries

◊Customer Profitability

◊ Product Profitability

◊ Activity Based Costing

◊ Balanced Scorecard

◊ Inventory Analysis

◊ Business modelling

Identifying basic applications is as important the more advanced. It is essential to focus on those elements that are mission critical right now as well as its complexity to achieve. Complexity here is based on a number of factors including the immediate availability of this data. Where data components are not available today then the complexity goes up as the corporation has to consider how to obtain this data.

As an observation the reader will need to analyse the range of applications that are provided in association with any pre-built Data Warehouse in order to assess its suitability. Be aware also that many applications are based on data marts, these are focused data sets that should take data from the existing data warehouse database and restructure it to suit the analytical application being implemented. This mart should never be confused with the role of the data warehouse.

Next: “Which Solution is Best?”

Previous:

Part 1: Financing the Business Intelligence Project (Buy or Build?)

Part 2: BI Project Decisions: Ready Made Database Options

Part 3: The Corporate Architecture and Complexity of Data Links

Part 4: Financing the BI Project: Uniqueness Factors (or USP)

1. A full data model, usually linked closely with an operational application. SAP, Peoplesoft, Siebel and other software suppliers provide Data Warehouses linked with their ERP and CRM applications.
2. An industry ‘template’ that provides a basic model Data Warehouse relating to the industry sector that the business is trading in.

Remember this section is talking purely about the supporting database, the Data Warehouse, rather that the overall BI solution.

Additionally there are Cloud based BI, or BI as a Service, solutions that tend to have their own internal database, most are linked to cloud based solutions. Generally you should consider these to be included with the first choice here as they are normally related to other operational applications. However some cloud based solutions are not extendible, which may be a factor in the decision making.

This is a continuing article based upon: Financing the Business Intelligence Project (Buy or Build?)…

Full Data Warehouse Model:

Many software companies claim to provide pre-built, fully configurable and extensible Data Warehousing solutions. Few, if any, actually provide an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution for the Data Warehouse that is not linked to another application. Most are linked with other operational software, such as Enterprise Resource Planning or Customer Relationship Management, where the business will have committed a significant investment such technology and associated change programmes.

Solutions are likely to be tailored to industry specific business analysis needs and will probably include pre-configured ETL components that may include extraction software for other commonly used software packages. This can act as a considerable advantage as it can reduce Data Integration efforts.

The advantage offered is that where a business uses the supplier’s solution it can have a ready-made business intelligence offering ‘for a few dollars per head more’. The final solution is still customisable, but is linked into key enterprise systems. This is an excellent goal, but whether it is achievable is a question that must be factored into the decision process.

Industry Templates:

Bill Inmon, used to be a great believer in the use of industry templates, or generic data models. Other companies also provide customisable data models, focused on specific marketplaces. The general aim of these templates is to act as a teaser for a subsequent engagement of the supplier’s consultancy services in order to have that organisation complete the full Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence implementation.

Templates or generic data models are therefore an aid, or kick-start, to custom development rather than a full blown ready-made solution. They are discussed here because generic data models are sometimes seen as a solution rather than a step-up on the development process. The template, or generic data model, can provide a boost to the initial Data Warehouse development project. They can be used to:

♦  Provide a foundation that can be built upon

♦  Identify major data classes

♦  Identify common relationships

♦  Identify some common attributes within the data

♦  Identify some common keys and unique identifiers

♦  Get the modelling exercise off to a fast start

In other words, the generic data model is a good starting point for the creation of a corporate data model, upon which the Data Warehouse will be founded. Using the template or generic data model as the corporate data model is inevitably a mistake. They do not alleviate the need to think about the design of any solution; they simply provide a way to jump-start the data modelling exercise.

The template or generic data model is not really a ready-made solution it is really a short-cut to providing a custom solution. Such a model will not include any pre-configured ETL components so these factors have to enter into any decision made.

The Decision:

At the end of the day having a customisable model is important because the Business Intelligence capability should be able to map onto the organisation’s USP. These are factors that you need to use in order to make your purchase decision. The best models are visible and expansible.

It is easy to assume that there is a ready made solution available and today’s choices are becoming increasingly complex, because vendors are learning the lessons from work they have completed for customers in the past and they have therefore extended their models to include a large array of new capabilities. Some vendors have simply extended default models over time others make these capabilities available only for extra cost. Make sure you know all the cost factors before making any decision.

The Next Decision Factor: Your Corporate Architecture and the complexity of data

What I mean here is that during the discovery phase we involve a wide audience, we gather information from everyone. Yet in the documentation phase we will write down our discoveries into a word document that is often only published to a limited audience. Yet there is a distinct advantage in writing our business requirements and specifications on a more modular basis, in a form of documentation that becomes available for comment and change by a larger audience.

My thinking here is that documentation, like programs, relate to specific problems each of which need to be documented in turn. Obviously discussions have to be documented, usually by a business analyst and that is often best accomplished by one person. It is better to publish the results of our findings a few days after the original meeting in order that this is fresh in everyone’s mind. Obviously a good BA has always published their findings, most often done in the form of an email. Many times the documentation is not as visible as perhaps it should be in a world where visibility is increasingly key.

This is perhaps one of the original ideas behind CASE tools to make the documentation available to everyone. However CASE tools are  possibly not the right tools to achieve this goal. Whilst diagrams do convey concepts they often do not include the detailed descriptions. Besides CASE tools have always remained a high-cost per user item and are generally limited to development team members, and sometimes only a subset of them. The idea of a Wiki on the other hand provides the capability to publish our results to a wider audience, and have them remain in the public eye. I would love to see a CASE to Wiki publication mechanism that ensures diagrams that all updates can become visible to a wider audience without having  to manually re-publish. On the whole Requirements Management should be about collaboration within the company.

Some of the pain points should our BA leave the project is having the new recruit understand their predecessor’s thinking. The point here is as far as possible to have the thinking available to a wider audience in the company.

The other aspect that concerns me is that once the project is delivered and the corporation is now working with its shiny new system the documentation is forgotten about, then eventually lost, even if those involved in the project remain in the company. At then end of the day though we need to be able to take the new enquirer back to the “large wall and the bunch of colour post-it notes” (with all the modifications in place of course) so that they may understand the thought processes that were in play. This should short-cut future investigations in this area. The truth of the matter is that we are all busy people and cannot be experted to remember all the aspect of a project that we worked on five years ago, our focus has moved on.

One of the first uses of a Wiki that I encountered was in the area of user documentation and corporate terms. This was useful because it was a public resource and was visible across the corporation.

For me the saving grace is that I am able to combine Outlook with Plaxo which will ensure that my connections are updated regularly.

After the name field there is a catalogue of problems.

The ‘Company’ field, needs to be more intelligent that it currently is. Firstly if I use the name of a company that is already in my database then it should be able to provide options for other fields on the form e.g. address and phone number so that I do not have to re-type these. Maybe an option to ‘copy from another contacts record’ could be implemented. Secondly I know several people that work with multiple organisations and have separate details for each organisation.

I would like to see a series of tabs for each organisation this would allow me to collect information about one person all in a single location. The tabs would probably be something like:

This would then open up room for further information about the contact to be stored. Doing this I can then record several web sites for a single contact for example. The key is that people now have a multitude of contact points they may wish to use at various times or locations, each needs to be stored.

There are also a number of new ways that people can be reached. For example Skype ID’s are starting to be commonly used and can double as either a phone number replacement or an Instant Messenger (IM) connection. Most of my connections who use Skype simply find a place to kludge the ID into outlook somewhere. There should be a field for ID’s that link onto various IM systems and of course to Social Media sites. Microsoft must accept the fact that they are not the only game in town and provide a mechanism to add other services.

I think it is important for a contact to have several IM addresses recorded against them, some can be work related, some personal – there needs to be space for each.

Going next to phone numbers I have always like the fact that you can change the description of the phone number, but there are not enough business ones I would add “Free Phone” 1 and 2 into the list at a minimum or have an option at the bottom of the list that allows me to add more. If my tabs idea is added then phone numbers are added to the relevant tab. In addition that details page can be put in the appropriate location and become more visible.

There is no place currently to record a person’s Social Media site memberships. I think this should be added to the personal tab. I then know what a person’s Facebook page is and can link to it from my Outlook record for example. Of course when it comes to Social Media we are joining a multitude of them so we should be able to leverage our own personal Outlook record to record this information.

On the notes field I often add details about our meeting, but I often forget to date it – it would be good if Outlook could add date details to each change I make.

When I export a person’s details (e.g. drop their .vcf  into an email) I should be able to control what information is sent. e.g. it may be inappropriate to send details of a persons alternative role in that virtual card and certainly no personal note data should ever be sent.

There are other problems associated with Outlook Contacts, but if Microsoft were to take a look at the existing applications then this would be a good starting point.

This is a complex issue. The part that no-one wants to hear when a person complains about application performance is the comparison between what they have now and how it used to be before computerisation. During the course of many BI projects I have moved departments from 95% gathering or organising data to 95% analytical or leveraging data, with the computer doing all the grunt work while the staff are warmly tucked up in their beds.

However we do have to understand the background to every complaint about application performance. Typically whenever we look at a complaint about performance we seek to monitor and improve performance in the areas of:

◊ Load Balancing

◊ Prioritization

◊ Network Optimization

◊ Database Tuning

◊ Compression

Planning Services and Growth

In terms of planning our application, database, hardware, and network architecture we do need to reconsider the requirements for each system as time moves on. When we implement a new system we do look at growth requirements in la large amount of detail, but we rarely track how usage proceeds against the original plan. This is probably the origins of virtualization as someone looked at the number of oversized servers and sought to use the resources better.

Today we are virtualizing in order to make better use of resources, but in the future we will need to check whether we have the right strategy in-place. Software as a Service (SaaS) also offers up its challenges in relation to speed, especially given that services are remotely managed and are no longer maintained my the corporation.

According to Paul Mah “Application performance [is] set to be next virtualization headache” we may have reduced excess capacity in a pure physical environment the factors were easier to measure. Managing the virtual environment is generally more complex than its pure physical counterpart, this is also true when it comes to managing performance.

Understanding the Business Community

The workplace is changing with an increased need to provide services outside the walls of the office complex. We have been imaginative with corporate applications being used in even the remotest parts of the globe. In the current economic climate we know that more of the business community is changing its work patterns. Can we predict every scenario? Unlikely, and at some time we will receive data from a trucker driving across an ice-road in the deepest Alaskan winter.

When users are connecting to a corporate system whether by a VPN or other remote protocols then security becomes another performance impact.

Can we move the applications closer to the user? Certainly mobile applications are better able to work on Blackberrys or iPhones, but they do still have to communicate with corporate servers. For a sales person dependent on data about stock availability and delivery dates performance is critical before he can take a product order from a customer.

Performance Goals and Measurement

In making any commitment for improvement it is important to be able to measure where we are right now, the baseline. We have to set realistic goals for improvement based on the corporate infrastructure, budget, and other factors. Measuring the environment is important, and so is retaining a history.

One of the issues of performance is of-course human perception. We can be perceived as spending money for zero improvement, therefore we have to prove the improvements over time, and always be able to identify changes to the environment over time. Yes we do have to be speed cops.

Improvement goals need to be measurable and attainable. Part of the problem here is that performance requirements are rarely documented well when defining systems. Poor performance can often be perception, but I always think that when there is a perceived problem then we must understand and resolve it.

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Related articles:

Application performance set to be next virtualization headache

Data Centers: Growth or Stagnation

Cisco Launches into the Server Market