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.

25% of the worlds population currently use the internet a massive 1.7 billion people.

The number of users has grown by 380% in the last ten years. The biggest growth areas being the Middle East, Africa, and South America, but growth is occurring everywhere.

0.001% of all information stored on the internet has any relevance to my current goals.

Unable to credit any specific person with this quote and as time goes on the number of zeros between the decimal point and the 1 continues to grow.

On-line advertising response rates are typically lower than 2%.

This is well known and advertisers often forget there are two types of web user the person who is focused on a goal and the casual surfer. The focused person is not interested in the advert irrespective of its relevance – to respond is an interruption. The casual surfer only responds if an advert is relevant.

Visitors make a decision in just eight seconds whether to remain on a web-site.

Marketing Sherpa have given us this gem in their Landing Page Handbook. I know from my own experience that there are some sites that I have visited where the stay is less than two seconds. So we had better make it interesting.

Looking for information, services or products, more than 80% of Internet users rely on search engines.

Naturally without a direct link to the important information we have to search.

85% of these searchers don’t click on sponsored or paid links.

Interesting, maybe people are less inclined to support advertising feeling that un-sponsored links represent a fairer viewpoint. 63% of links appearing at the top of search results get the majority of clicks. This demonstrates the importance of good search engine optimisation.

59.8% of men and 67.2% of women go on-line while they’re watching TV.

We humans are multi-tasking creatures. Have laptop will multi-task. How much is this driven by television advertising is not known or are we all looking up the biographies of the stars of the latest hit show?

China has the largest number of Internet users at 384 million.

Not bad for a country where democratic freedoms are limited. Yet plenty of sales opportunities do exist for the astute corporation.

Each of these has an impact if how we should be focusing many of our business development efforts.

There are many ‘engines’ that can be used to build sites – for example with the Ning on-line service it is possible to have a site up and running in five minutes – although in reality customisation takes more effort. Do you want a web address like “x.ning.com” though? There are other options, that allow a large degree of customisation for the entrepreneur wanting to use their “x.com” web address. These options can take time to implement, but the result can be so much more elegant and  professional.

Other social media open source engines do exist: like ELGG and Community Engine. The process here is to have the software installed on your server. That said it is not essential to go out and buy a new server. The availability of public storage available today does mean that setup and support can all be remotely managed via services like Amazon Web Services.

Let us be clear – setting up a social media site is NOT for every business. If you are seeking to leverage social media as a marketing channel for your business then setting up your own service is not necessary – such a business is best advised to work with existing and upcoming social media channels. Where creating a specialist social media community may be appropriate:

◊ Trade Associations

◊ Professional groups

◊ Education groups & alumni

◊ Community groups

◊ Sports Associations

◊ Clubs

So in setting up a new social media site there are some decisions that have to be made. The major one being having a viable business plan, especially if it is being managed by a commercial concern.

On the business front you do have to have some idea of your prospective audience, which may affect scalability of your solution. If your audience is likely to grow to a significant then an engine based on Ruby-on-rails may not be appropriate appropriate solution. A PHP based solution may be more appropriate.

Foodbuzz.com has an interesting idea in aggregating posts from other food Blog sites.. So they have built partnerships with other sites. You will also need to consider advertising and sponsorship as a possible source of income. The skilled trades social media site Blueholler.com has negotiated sponsorship in its launch plans.

It is not so much a case of an enterprise remodelling itself around a technology, but leveraging a series of technological platforms in order to get closer to its customers and the marketplace at large. Through the aid of Social Media it is relatively easy to visualise how a corporation selling consumer based products can leverage tools like Twitter to build visibility, but it less obvious how this benefits a corporation whose customers are other businesses. There should however be little difference between the approached, it is simply the audience that changes, between the B2C and B2B models, and the amount of work needed in order to win new business.

How the corporation manages that relationship should remain the same. The key aspect is that doing business is being focused more and more on a trust based relationship. Business owners do not want to buy a product because they are told this by an advertisement (whether on TV or in a trade publication) that it is the best they need that statement to be affirmed or denied through their trust network. Building the collaborative corporation does not gain support by “rail[ing] against the old corporate order and proclaim that they’re working for its downfall” this is simply not the case, yet the new world must be understood to be implemented.

Business has always been founded on our ability to communicate, right from the first time we humans ever traded or bartered. According to Ramon Vela how we buy things has changed. People are less influenced by slick advertisements and more by what they know about the person they are buying from and whether they can trust them. Vella provides training for technology sales people entitles “Becoming the Trusted Advisor” – the basic concepts here though can apply to much more than technology sales that is Vela’s forte.

Enterprise 2.0, Collaborative Enterprises, etc and how business leverages Social Media is all the people in the equation not the technologies. It is about visibility and being seen as the expert in your field; contributing the the knowledge base in the marketplace; providing value even before building a commercial relationship; and problem solving. Obviously this article is only scratching the surface of the problem, please add your views.

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)

This article is the third in the series on Financing the BI Solution and follows from “BI Project Decisions: Ready Made Database Options” and “Financing the Business Intelligence Project“.

The decisions we make about the solutions we buy, which must all be made at the start of any new implementation do require analysis of a wide range of factors. In the case of the BI solution these must consider the existing infrastructure and any proposed imminent changes to it. This does complicate the decision making, but it is an essential part of BI project success.

Within any Business Intelligence implementation it is necessary to understand the impact of the corporate IT architecture. The complexity of the architecture can be a key factor in identifying any plausible ready-made solution. Many organisations have a veritable spiders-web of systems and inter-relationships some of which will defy logic, yet exist they do. Whilst it is primarily the operational applications that will be providing data to the Data Warehouse that must be considered to support the solution must take a more holistic view. Any system may hold key pieces of information and is thus capable of providing data to the Warehouse.

If we examine any two companies we will become immediately aware of architectural differences between them (and these are based on real solutions provided in the past).

In one organisation there may be an evolutionary mix of systems of varying ages and types; with few systems integrated together; there are many overnight batch jobs that transfer data between systems, but no integrated approach. How the organisation was formed may have an impact on the solution needed: here acquisition has meant there are separate systems in each of 17 different countries, some are packaged solutions, but most are bespoke. For the global corporate headquarters to gather worldwide information it has to contend with a complex mix of old and new systems using different data storage standards; all potentially making this a complex solution.

Conversely a second corporations is more integrated: all applications use pre-built solutions, based on relational databases; bringing an integrated architecture, that is well documented, and has been at the foundation of its IT platforms. It should be clear to the reader that this company’s architecture is unlikely to be very complex.

It is essential as a part of the financial decision making process to grade both the business and technical complexity of the solution.

Integration of existing systems is always an essential step especially assessing the corporate legacy application architecture. Integration of systems is almost always ranked as one of the most important architectural factor when deciding whether a pre-built Data Warehouse can be implemented. Highly integrated systems can be an enabler for a ready-made database. They are not the sole reason to implement a pre-built solution.

It is necessary to add a word of warning before diving headlong into such an implementation. When companies introduce new ERP, or CRM systems there is immense pressure to introduce analytics at the same time. This can also be true for SaaS, or Cloud Computing solutions. Often this is the integrated ‘Business Warehouse’. When the new ERP or CRM is introduced it is unproven (from the business viewpoint) and there is an assumption that results taken from the out-of-the-can Analytical Application are valid and correct. This is not always the case. An assessment of data quality is as essential to the ready-made solution as it is to the custom built Warehouse. Generally a new system cannot have its data quality assessed until it is in production and has had the wrinkles ironed out of it.

Next article in this series “What Makes Our Business Unique?”

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

1. Whether to use a ready-made solution or have it custom built
2. What degree of external staffing resources are required

This is the first part in a series about financing your BI deployment.

In addition project costs will be impacted by:

◊ The focus of the solution; operational or strategic

◊ The type of architecture selected

◊ The development methodology

These are all issues that the decision maker needs to be aware of whilst working with the business to initiate the project. Financial justification is of-course vital to this process. It is essential that agreement is reached by the project board based upon the holistic needs of the business. How the business interacts with the project and the resulting solution will in the end determine the success of the implementation. This is a corporate-wide decision to make.

Some of the decision may differ in scale when extending an existing Business Intelligence solution, but on the whole the various aspects of this article all have to be considered.

Ready-Made or Custom Built?

This is a decision that impacts the structure of the underlying database, the Data Warehouse. In the past it was a relatively clear-cut decision that few if any solutions provided alongside new operational applications could offer anywhere near the complexity necessary to support strategic decision making. Their only contribution was in respect of operational decision making. The strategic decision making required more data to be aggregated from multiple systems in order to provide the right results.

Each packaged solution requires some customised data and user interfaces to ensure it fits each end-user business. The business is also expected to change its processes in order to work with certain applications. The use of ready-made OLTP solutions has made the task of hiring business community staff and training them easier. E.g. Job advertisements for an Accounts Administrator can specify SAP experience.

So can this experience be applied to the implementation of the Business Intelligence solution? Much depend on the factors making each business unique and the range of applications that will continue to be used within the organisation. Few, if any, of the true BI focused applications feature highly in any business community staff resumes, so training is always essential.

From the systems side a changing IT landscape during the past twenty-odd years where we prefer to buy rather than build encompasses the possible use of packaged solutions for both the Data Warehouse and the BI tool-kit. In order to make such a decision it is necessary to consider the impact of:

◊ The corporate architecture including the complexity of data links

◊ The degree of integration of existing systems

◊ Factors of uniqueness for the business

◊ The suitability of analytical applications

All of which can assist in assessing the suitability of potential ready-made solutions. In all cases it is important to understand the general goals of the business’s market sector, for example in some statutory controls will have a large impact and in others none. It is always necessary to consider what your corporation’s principle competitors are measuring, if only to ensure that you exceed those minimums. It would be great to have a sneak peek at the competitor’s solution, but often industry journals give an expose on what they are doing – these can be analysed to identify the factors being measured.

Another impact is the factors of uniqueness, e.g. what your corporation brings to the marketplace – each company has them, make sure you identify them.

The third factor that need to be considered is the existing legacy IT architecture. Many corporations have already purchased some of the technology that is intended to be used for the solution. Many systems come with data integration elements. From a pure cost effectiveness standpoint you should look at re-use instead of purchasing a new ETL solution. Most companies have them – it is a matter of whether they are fit for the new intended use. Another area to consider is pre-existing and spare licenses for existing analytical tools – many corporations complain about the cost of licensing, yet do not effectively utilise the licenses they already have.

The next article in this series: “Types of Ready Made BI Solutions”

You can imagine what my Sunday morning had in store for me. Yes, you have guess correctly it was the day to poke around what Wave had to offer. It also occurred to me that some of my loyal readers may wish to have me un-peel some of the features for them.

One of the first things to understand is the nature of Google Wave, just what is this beast that is currently competing with Windows 7 as the most exciting new product of 2009. Wave is a collaboration tool IS NOT a social media tool. As a collaboration tool it is therefore useful important to have people to collaborate with. I did find two people on my contacts list, both called Tom, and both CEO’s of their respective firms that I had been communicating with over the last six months or so, but not really candidates for a test message. Fortunately I did have another professional networking connection, Sheryl, who had a Wave account already and had given me her wave address previously.

By way of a quick note: If you use FireFox then you do need to be using version 3.5 and you will need to download the Google Wave Add-in to ensure that the features work correctly.

The first thing you will notice about Wave is the fact that it does look very similar to familiar email type interface. It even has in ‘Inbox’ which is strange because your ‘outbound’ waves are also located in you inbox. My preferred name would be ‘Activity Centre’ instead of Inbox, but I did not name it.

When you sign-up for any system you get the obligatory welcome message, the same with Wave, one of these is about the ‘Extensions Gallery’. These are a series of useful add-ons that can add to the functions.

Have a look at the extensions available, you are likely to find something of interest. Here is the multi-user Sudoku information. Personally I am not sure I want to add this extension and compete with others on this game, but each to their own. I did however download the Ribbit conference call extension and Google’s maps tool. Eventually there will be hundreds of gadgets and probably the majority will need to be consigned to the waste bin, but some good ones will be provided as well.

They key aspect of any of these gadgets is that they can be added into a Wave as can be seen with the map that has been embedded into my wave below. Now I hear you ask surely this is no different than adding a map into an email. True. You can add a map to an email, and many people do, but I have normally found it best to do it via cut and paste. Within the Wave this is a live map and the others in the wave can zoom in or out. Wave allows videos to be embedded right into the message and played in situ. Other extensions will be added in time and these extensions can add powerful facilities that will have serious business use in the future. So here is my “Hello World” test message with embedded maps.

So as I said earlier the key aspect of Wave is its capability as a collaboration tool, and this is where Google must be hurting themselves right now. How can you have a collaboration tool, yet not have people to collaborate with? Most frustrated users that I have heard from seem to have this question on their mind. I think they have a valid point. My first invitations will be sent out to those that I intend to be collaborating with on live projects (right now) or those that I feel I will be working closely with in the near future.

I said earlier that when I started with a fresh Wave account I had two contacts already. I wondered where these came from so explored the ‘Manage Contacts’ hyperlink. This takes you to Google Contacts, which I have found to be very flaky and please excuse me if I do not show you any pictures from it as it is more likely to crash every instance of Firefox running (including this one). Being a pre-existing Gmail user I had several hundred contacts on Google Contacts already (this list must have been built from my recent email traffic) because I use Outlook as my contacts master and do not store contact on Gmail. I imported my outlook contacts list into Google Contacts (1700+ people) and found another half a dozen Wave users in my contacts list.

This is the one aspect that Google needs to work on. I also wonder how you communicate with an email only person, because despite the best intentions of Google many will not move over into the new world in an instant, so a Wave will need to be communicated to both Wave and Email users at the same time. I know that I shall be writing more as I explore more of Wave, and right now I am off to send out some invitations to my close collaborators.