TDWI | Training & Research | Business Intelligence, Analytics, Big Data, Data Warehousing

Crossing the Chasm II - Departmental to Enterprise BI

In a prior blog, I discussed strategies for crossing the “Chasm” in TDWI’s five-stage BI Maturity Model. The Chasm represents challenges that afflict later-stage BI programs. In my prior blog, I showed how later-stage BI programs must justify existence based on strategic value rather than cost savings efficiency, which is a hallmark of early-stage BI programs.

But perhaps a more serious challenge facing BI programs that want to cross the Chasm is migrating from a departmental BI solution to one with an enterprise scope.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on November 16, 20090 comments

Operational BI: To DW or Not?

Operational business intelligence (BI) means many things to many people. But the nub is that it delivers information to decision makers in near real time, usually within seconds, minutes, or hours. The purpose is empower front-line workers and managers with timely information so they can work proactively to improve performance.

Key Architectural Decision. This sounds easy but it’s hard to do. Low latency or operational BI systems have a lot of moving parts and there is not much time to recover from errors, especially in high-volume environments. The key decision you need to make when architecting a low-latency system is whether to use the data warehouse (DW) or not. The ramifications of this decision are significant.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on November 6, 20090 comments

MDM Lessons Learned

Master data management (MDM) enables organizations to maintain a single, clean, consistent set of reference data about common business entities (e.g. customers, products, accounts, employees, partners, etc.) that can be used by any individual or application that requires it. In many respects, MDM applies the same principles and techniques that apply to data warehousing—clean, accurate, authoritative data.

Not surprisingly, many data warehousing (DW) professionals have taken the lead in helping their organizations implement MDM solutions. Yet, even grizzled DW veterans pose fundamental questions about how to get started and succeed in this new arena. Here are answers to the seven most common questions:

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on November 6, 20090 comments

Teradata the Wise

One sign of wisdom is that you become less dogmatic about things. Years of experience show you (often the hard way) that there is no one right way to think or act or be. People, cultures, tastes, and beliefs come in all shapes and sizes. And so do data warehouses.

It’s good to see Teradata acknowledge this after years of preaching the enterprise data warehouse uber alles. President and CEO Mike Koehler said in his keynote in this week at Teradata Partners conference, “We like data marts.” And he could have added “operational data stores,” “appliances,” “the cloud” and so on. Rather than pitching a single platform and architectural approach, Teradata now offers an “ecosystem” of products (i.e. its appliances), enabling customers to pick and choose the offerings that best meet their needs and budget. Kudos!

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on October 22, 20090 comments

Crossing The Chasm Part 1: Delivering Strategic Value

TDWI’s Maturity Model is represented by a bell curve spanning five stages of maturity. The curve, which represents the percentage of companies at each stage, is broken in two spots. The first is the Gulf and the second is the Chasm. (See figure 1.)

The Gulf and Chasm represent the series of obstacles and challenges that early- and later-stage programs encounter during their BI journey, respectively. Companies in the Gulf struggle with sponsorship, funding, data quality, project scope, and spreadmarts. Companies in the Chasm struggle with the politics, logistics, and dynamics of delivering an enterprise BI environment. (An enterprise environment may span the entire organization, a business unit, or profit-loss center.)

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on October 19, 20090 comments

Making Peace with Spreadsheet "Jockeys"

I just finished writing the second draft of a report titled, “Transforming Finance: How CFOs can Use Business Intelligence to Turn Finance from Bookkeepers to Strategic Advisors.” In the report, I interviewed several so-called “spreadsheet jockeys” who dominate the financial alcoves to find out why it is so hard to get them to use BI tools instead of spreadsheets where appropriate. (The report will be published in January, 2010.)

I was lucky enough to interview a lady who used to be a financial analyst and is now in charge of business intelligence. Her perspective is revealing on why the BI team failed to meet her needs and how she is trying to change the situation.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on October 14, 20090 comments

Five Steps to Self Service Nirvana

There’s a lot of talk these days about the importance of self-service business intelligence (BI), but little discussion about the downsides. Unfortunately, I’ve seen self-service BI initiatives go completely awry.

Typically, a small percentage of power users employ the new-fangled tools to create tens of thousands of reports—many of which contain conflicting or inaccurate data—and this makes it harder for casual users to find the right report or trust its contents. Ironically, many turn to IT to create a custom report, which expands the report backlog that self-service BI was supposed to eliminate. In addition, many power users use the self-service tools to query large data sets that they export to Excel for analysis. These runaway queries erode query performance significantly, making the BI environment even less inviting for casual users.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on September 28, 20090 comments

Humpty Dumpty and the CEO

There is a dirty, little secret about data warehouses: we wouldn’t need them if top executives ran their organizations properly.

A data warehouse (DW) reflects the organization—the more fractured and disintegrated the organization, the harder it is to create a robust, highly functional data warehouse. These reporting repositories really are tools to reintegrate a fractured enterprise and provide a holistic and consistent view of data where none exists.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on September 23, 20090 comments

From Data Warehousing to Performance Management

Next year marks the 15^th anniversary of TDWI, an association of data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) professionals that has grown nearly as fast as the industry it serves, which now tops $9 billion according to Forrester Research.

In 1995, when data warehousing was just another emerging information technology, most people—including some at TDWI—thought it was just another tech fad that would fade away in a few short years like others before it (e.g. artificial intelligence, computer-assisted software engineering, object-relational databases.) But data warehousing’s light never dimmed, and it has evolved rapidly to become an indispensable management tool in well-run businesses. (See figure 1.)

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on September 18, 20090 comments

Cognos Two Years Later

IBM Cognos laid out a roadmap for the future and provided a deep dive into the elements of its next major release (due Q2, 2010) in its fourth annual Industry Analyst Summit in Ottawa this week.

Posted by Wayne Eckerson on September 17, 20090 comments