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Copyright © 2011, Intelligent Solutions, Inc., All Rights Reserved

But ItBut It’’s Not My Problem!s Not My Problem! Bridging the Business and IT DivideBridging the Business and IT Divide

Claudia ImhoffIntelligent Solutions, [email protected]

www.IntelSols.comTwitter: Claudia_Imhoff


Claudia Imhoff

President and FounderIntelligent Solutions, Inc.

A thought leader, visionary, and practitioner in the rapidly growing fields of business intelligence and customer focused analytics – Claudia Imhoff, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert on analytical CRM, business intelligence, and the infrastructure to support these initiatives – the Corporate Information Factory (CIF). Dr. Imhoff has co-authored five books on these subjects and writes articles (totaling more than 100) for technical and business magazines. She is also the Founder of the Boulder BI Brain Trust (www.BoulderBIBrainTrust.org) which you can follow on Twitter at #BBBT. Email: [email protected]

Phone: 303-444-6650Twitter: Claudia_Imhoff

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Copyright © 2011, Intelligent Solutions, Inc., All Rights Reserved3

Topics

You’ve attended the conferences

You’ve bought the books

You’ve asked the experts

You’ve talked to the vendors

Where is the business?

Do you think you are READY?Let’s find out!


Topics

Topics

Business versus IT

BI Sponsors

Program Versus Project

Who Funds What?


Business Functions are Aligned

Why is it that business functions in well-run companies seem to work so well together?

A common language – understood by all employees

Executive support and understanding – even interest

Understandable metrics – judging their accomplishments

Well-documented processes and procedures

Well understood roles and responsibilities

Clear mission statements – who doesn’t understand the meaning of “the bottom line”?


Why is This So?

Accounting, Sales, Marketing, etc., have been around for millennia

Long time to work out roles, responsibilities, and common terms like order, customer, revenues and expenses

The departments are relatively self-sufficient

They serve only their particular functions – the enterprise is not that important

Economies of scale are not considered


What About IT?

IT is a fundamentally different kind of department

Support function for all departments

Must strive to find economies of scale for enterprise while satisfying individual needs of each department

ROI is difficult to determine

Metrics for measuring success unclear or change for each project

ROI may span departments or large functions

Must run itself efficiently while producing systems and environments that improve business effectiveness


What About IT?

IT must strive to align itself with the business

This means serving the business first, technology second

IT must fight the tendency to create silos of data and applications for individual departments

IT must ask “How does BI enable overall enterprise’s business, business strategy, or business goals?”

IT should be more focused on its data users (customer- focused) than on technology alone

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Aligning IT and the Business

Executive support

The business cannot be technophobic – no excuse today for business leaders not to understand IT

Nor can IT leaders be ignorant of the business – no excuse today for IT leaders not to understand business

CIO or IT leader should be contributing member of corporate strategy team

Communication improves as corporate leaders learn to associate technology projects with business initiatives

Co-write a business case for each significant project

BPM, BI and balanced scorecard initiatives – good mechanisms to ensure IT-business alignment

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Aligning IT and the Business

IT metrics for success or failure

These are not just metrics that measure technical capacity or performance of BI environment

Need metrics that measure how BI has improved the business (more efficient, better revenues, lowered costs, etc.)

Long term plan & architecture aligned to business strategies

Roadmap for critical IT initiatives (CRM, BPM, BI, etc.)

Permits creation of vertical “silos” for specific functions while ensuring horizontal integration across enterprise

Use common data model, meta data, interoperable technology10


Topics

Topics

Business versus IT

BI Sponsors


Who Funds What?


Critical Sponsorship

There are two critical types of sponsors

Business sponsors

IT sponsors

Lack of sponsorship causes:

Wasted time

Wasted effort

Wasted money!

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Without adequate sponsorship, the project is often doomed for failure.


Business Sponsor Attributes

Is willing to fix critical data problems upstream if necessary

Commits resources to define &implement solution

Buys into the spiral iterative methodology

They do not insist on a one-release project

They are prepared to get benefits a step at a time

They are patient with the incremental projects

Understands importance of strategic decision support environments

And shows his/her support actively throughout enterprise

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

A key role of the business sponsor is to promote the data warehouse throughout the executive team.


IT Sponsor Attributes

Understands

Need for a solid CIF architecture

Need for the iterative methodology

That the business must participate substantially

Knows when to pull the plug (e.g., if the business sponsor is not supportive)

Is respected throughout the enterprise

Commits resources to defining and implementing a solution

And shows his/her support actively throughout enterprise

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Things to Watch Out for…

End users who cannot describe what they want

“I want everything…”

“I’ll know it when I see it…”

“You go build it and tell me about it…”

No sponsorship or weak sponsorship – either IT or Business!

Sponsor who provides money but not people

Sponsor with unrealistic expectations

Limited resources mean limited scope!

Sponsor not willing to fight for the proper architecture or environment

Presenter

Presentation Notes

If these events take place, reconsider your approach. You may need to stop or defer the project if you can’t overcome these. Wait until the company is more desperate or use the delay to educate the business about the reasons for strong sponsorship and reasonable and understandable requirements.


Topics

Topics

Business versus IT

BI Sponsors


Who Funds What?


Your BIEnvironment

is aProgram

BI Environment is a Program


Contrast Program and Projects

Characteristics of a project

One-time

Specific perspective

May not require architecture

Short-term focus

May not realize benefits of standards and reuse for new items

Characteristics of a program

On-going

Broad perspective

Requires architecture

Long-term focus

Realizes benefits of standards and reuse

Includes several projects

Strategy is essential

Presenter

Presentation Notes

A community is much more appealing is it conforms to a master plan.


Program Management Office Functions

PMO is an overarching governance board responsible for:

Obtaining and distributing funding for its projects

Determining priorities for its projects

Establishing standards, policies and procedures used by its projects

Resolving business conflicts and issues

Enforcing compliance or adherence to its standards and guidelines within its projects

Creating generic templates for usage by its projects


Program Management Office Functions

Controlling, directing, or strongly influencing actions and conduct

Entails collaboration across projects

Ensures business alignment

Provides cross-functional consistency

Identifies and mitigates risks

Promotes increasing value

Requires business and IT commitment and participation

Consists of many initiatives, crosses enterprise boundaries


Topics

Topics

Business versus IT

BI Sponsors


Who Funds What?


Corporate Information Factory

Data Integration and Aggregation

Tactical BI

BI D

elivery Workbench

Ope

ratio

nal B

I Operational Data Store

DataWarehouse

Metadata

Governance Center of Excellence

Infrastructure Management

Application Management

Metadata Management

Quality Management

Operational Data

External Data

Internal Data

DataMarts

Strategic BI

Courtesy of Intelligent Solutions, Inc. and BI Research

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The Corporate Information Factory (CIF) is a conceptual architecture that describes and categorizes the information stores that are used to operate and manage a successful and robust business intelligence infrastructure. These information stores support three forms of business intelligence (BI) – operational, tactical and strategic BI. Taken as a whole, the CIF can be used to identify all of the information management activities that an organization conducts. REFERENCES: “Connecting the Extended Corporate Information Factory to the Enterprise” by Colin White and Claudia Imhoff, (www.B-EYE-Network.com) “The Extended Corporate Information Factory Supports the Smart Business” By Claudia Imhoff and Colin White, (www.B-EYE-Network.com) “Supporting the Smart Business: The Extended Corporate Information Factory” By Claudia Imhoff and Colin White, (www.B-EYE-Network.com) “Extended Corporate Information Factory” by Jonathan G. Geiger (DM Review, December 2005) Corporate Information Factory Second Edition by W. H. Inmon, Claudia Imhoff, and Ryan Sousa (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) “Corporate Information Factory” by Claudia Imhoff (DM Review, December 1999)


IntegrationAvailabilityQuality

CapabilityUsabilitySecurity

Business Intelligence

GettingData InGettingData In

GettingInformation

Out

GettingInformation

Out

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The Corporate Information Factory (CIFe) may be analyzed by looking at its two complementary halves. Getting Data In gathers the data from the source systems, integrates it, and loads it into the data warehouse or ODS. Major objectives of this process include providing: Integration Availability Quality Getting Information Out extracts the information from the data warehouse or ODS, aggregates it, and loads it into the data mart. Major objectives of this process include providing: Capability Usability Security As you can see, the goals for each half are significantly different leading to a logical split in the architecture as well.


Who Pays For What?

The CIF can be easily divided into 2 halves:

Getting data in – operational systems, data warehouse, operational data store, data acquisition, meta data

Getting information out – data marts, data delivery, decision support interface, meta data


CIF Organization

STEERING COMMITTEE

Business Intelligence UnitGetting Data In

Competency Center

Getting Information Out

Competency Center

Getting Data In Team


Teams

Operational Data

External Data

Internal Data

DataWarehouse Data

Marts

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Who Pays for What?

Getting Data In

Responsible for infrastructural components

Very focused on enterprise needs

Achieves economies of scale


Focused on business users’ needs

Aligned with business strategies/goals

Benefits from data quality, integration, and economies of scale efforts of GDI folks

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Who Pays for What?

These two halves can be funded by different parts of the enterprise

Getting data in – funded by central IT

Maintains enterprise focus on standards, data sharing, consistency and reliability of data

Can be considered “overhead” like networks, PC, infrastructure

Getting information out – funded by the business community

Business pays for those components that directly benefit them

Maintains strong focus on business solutions

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Final Check List

IT aligned with business?

Got BI sponsors?

Understand program versus project?

Who funds what?

Maintaining focus on business solutions?


Now You ARE Ready

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