These are my Garnter BI Summit 2010 notes, if you also have any notes I hope you would like to share them with me.

About 700 people attended to the summit from over 36 different countries. The main subject was: performance it instead of measuring it.

Andreas Bitterer and Nigel Rayner opened the summit with their Keynote.
Some quotes:
They were referencing to Esperanto. “Like we are able to create one single language for the business. It’s impossible. ”
“All pillars in BI are equal except Finance. They are always higher.”
“Beautiful churches that’s how IT wants BI to look like.
Marrakesh chaos is where the Business ends up with.”
“Business has no choice but building excel silos”
“You need a BI glossary / dictionary”
“If you talk with the business, you can only end up with a massive metrics matrix”
“You need a “Enterprise Metric Framework.”
“What is driving the performance, is what we need to focus on.”
“If you put information on a dashboard then you get the real questions”
“Rational thought versus reading runes”
“Under pressure you make decisions like you always did”

They performed a great Business / IT miscommunication presentation about the term “the Definition Hell.”
Personal note: I think instead of BICC we need a Information CC and a Process CC.

Their tips 3E’s: Educate, Evangelize, Enable
Educate:
- Run a BI CPM workshop. Tell people what BI is about.
- Brainstorm sessions, what if scenarios
- Share case studies

Evangelize:
- Advocate how tech supports BI and Performance management
- Be a Chief information Officer, not a technology officer
- Show Business benefits and best practices

Enable
- Assemble a BI CC
- Create a BI strategy document
- Align BI with the Performance Management Framework

(BI like a Rosetta stone!)

Key note: Andy Neely
You need to connect information. F.e. sales of supermarket connection to medical insurance
A story about the best selling product: Hard Boiled Eggs, and they found out that a hard boiled egg just was a sales registration solution to sell products as hard boiled eggs when the barcode was unreadable.

People:
1) Desire for quantity
2) Unanticipate consequences
3) Need for balance

70% of all BSC implementations is worthless and it’s very dangerous following just a BSC.

Technology is part of Methodology which is part of a measure framework. So you start with a measure framework!
The right information to the right people is not the same as All information to All people. R4IPTD
- Right Information, Right People, Right Time, Right Decision

Metrics Workshop
- What we are doing indicators versus How we are doing indicators
- Forward and lagging indicators
- Financial and performance metrics
You have Business Function Metrics and Business Process Metrics, steps:
1) Intend the strategy
2) Define the goal
3) Describe the processes
4) Measure the indexes
It’s hard to do, so you need a hybrid group
The problem with 360 degrees metrics is the problem “What decision can you make?”
You need to change the view from costs to growth!
“You need to manage performance, else you got a new excel dashboard”

Round table “BI in the Cloud”
Some similar definitions:
- BI from the cloud
- Self service systems
- Software as a service
Isn’t this pushing the problem to another, to the business?
Why should you put KPI’s into the cloud?
You need to become the information aggregator
Open cloud versus secure clouds
Last year 4% – 17% were going into BI as a Service (uploading data to shared warehouses)
How about federated BI
- You need to think about getting BI into your processes
How to add more information into the cloud?
Conclusion: Security and trust!

Round table “Linking BPM with BI”
- Process vendors massively bought BI software
- BAM, is real time monitoring the process, you don’t need high level sophisticated BI software
- The most importing thing is not loose orders during the process
- You need to think about, past, present and future
- Everyone had a problem defining a business process. How does BI suits a Business Process Model what is continuously changing.
- How about a BI and BPM mashup?
Conclusion: There are more questions than answers. When you finished defining the Business Processes they are already changed and they can’t be clearly defined.

GARNTER MAGIC QUANDRANT session
BI Platform:
Oracle / Microsoft / IBM / SAS / Microstrategy / SAP / Infobuilders
Buying is almost over, there is not much to buy anymore
IT centered vendors have large percentage of the market
Business user influences more the buying decision
In memory architectyre and dynamic gui are the mayor shift
There are 2 new vendors
There is not enough market presence for open source
There is an increasing interest in SAAS BI, but it’s still small because business will have a problem to put information into the cloud.

CPM Suite:
Market is growing massively
4 new vendors
Oracle/SAP/IBM are in the leader quadrant and will be challenged by new companies
Microsoft is not on!
First time software as service vendors are in
In memory is an option especially for scenario planning it will be an advantage (my database) but also would be something for prototyping (myDatawarehouse)

DATA Integration tools:
Informatica/IBM/Oracle/SAPBO
9,6% annual growth
A lot of providers / vendors
Master data management and integration is the issue
Just 4 leaders
Some specialists
Open source is a hot subject especially on functionality
This market WONT exist in 10 years and will merge to another

DATAWAREHOUSING:
Hard to define and find out how to count
More vendors then ever
New vendors are pushing the functionality to leaders
It’s always a architecture swing
But no one support all demands u need
DWH Strategy: sourcing, flexibility, reuse and performance
Sharable architectures

SOME DISCUSSION NOTES WITH AUDIENCE
You need to look to total costs of owner instead of licencies
Microstrategy has a high learning curve
Lot of users are tiered to all the buying, MegaVendors must start to integrate and tell how long it takes. Users are already waiting too long!
BI SAAS: A hot issue is to share scenario short term and long term maps. Analytic competitors won’t do that!
Question: how do you measure Gartners definition of Execute. Answer: that are 7 criteria that changes every year. This year criteria are: Product / Vendor liability / Sales execution / Market Response / Market execution / Customer experience / Operations

Discussion subjects between the analysts: acquire / integrate / as a service
When we say no excel, we mean: Don’t program in a spreadsheet like it’s a a storage method.

I am nominated for Business Intelligence Consultant of the year. Please vote for me, click here!
(http://nlbi.blogspot.com/2010/02/bi-consultant-van-het-jaar-er-kan.html)

Thank you,
Regards,
Emiel

Two and a half years ago, I saw a great man presenting on the Dutch BI Symposium. In one word his presentation was really awsome! In 12,5 years I have seen a lot of presentations, but that one really jumped straight into my favorites. Now I am very proud to say he and I will share the same podium at the Garner BI Summit 2010 in London. With our presentation “Boosting value through Oracle BI”, we will try to explain how to get true value out of BI, not only by using BI to support your business processes, but also to excelerate the processes of your customers by delivering BI as a Service.

Here you can read more about the Gartner BI Summit 2010 and find out who I am presenting with.

If you like, you can follow my trip to London on twitter

Ps. Although it feels as if a tiny guy stands next to the master, but it’s like a (professional) dream comes true.

Afgelopen week heb ik deelgenomen aan een online discussie rondom Business Intelligence. Op een gegeven moment werd een citaat van Mintzberg gedeponeerd. In dit citaat kwam de volgende zin voor: “if you can’t measure you can’t manage”. Ik ben altijd op mijn hoeden bij zinnen met het woord ‘niet’ erin. Dus als informaticus ga je meteen aan de slag met het gereedschap van logica. De stelling “if you can’t measure you can’t manage” bevat één implicatie (if then) en twee negatieven (not). Volgens de regels van de logica is {IF not A THEN not B} equivalent aan {IF B THEN A}. Dus middels deze logische transformatie luidt de equivalente stelling: “if you can manage, you can measure”.

Nu is het niet mijn bedoeling het hele citaat van Mintzberg te behandelen, maar de equivalente stelling zette me wel tot denken. Deze stelling is precies waar Business Intelligence over zou moeten gaan. Mijns inziens tevens de valkuil van vele Business Intelligence initiatieven: eerst willen meten alvorens te kunnen managen. Ik durf zelfs te stellen dat je überhaupt niet moet beginnen met management informatie alvorens je kunt managen.

Een aantal jaren geleden kwam een business user naar met toe met de vraag: “Ik wil ook Business Intelligence, jij als BI expert kan dat best wel regelen?”. Vele BI experts stellen dan de vraag, “Wat wil je weten?”. Ik ben van mening dat het beter past de vraag te stellen: “Welk proces wil je verbeteren en wat gebruik je momenteel om dat proces te managen?” De business user gaf als antwoord: “Nou, ik heb helemaal niets, want het proces gaat pas over 1 maand live”. Vervolgens ben ik niet begonnen met BI maar met eerst stabiliseren en onder controle krijgen van het proces. Enkele maanden later hadden we het niveau bereikt om over management informatie na te denken.

Terug naar de stelling: “If you can manage, you can measure”. De vraag die je dan kunt stellen is wanneer kun je managen? Er zijn verschillende volwassenheidsmodellen waarin managen een van de fases is. In de volgende grafiek is “Managed” de derde volwassenheidsfase waarin een organisatie zich kan bevinden. Dat het gebruik van Business Intelligence in deze fase belangrijk is, lijkt me evident. Het is veel interessanter na te denken op welke wijze Business Intelligence past in de voorliggende fases.

Tijdens de ad-hoc fase ligt de focus vaak op het krijgen van het product bij de klant. Hoe het product bij de klant komt is daarbij minder interessant. Dit zijn typisch processen die niet helemaal onder controle zijn. Zo’n omgeving kenmerkt zich vaak door ad-hoc lijstjes. Vervolgens zullen vele organisaties trachten het ad-hoc proces onder controle te krijgen. Tijdens deze fase legt de organisatie haar focus op het proces. Zo’n omgeving kenmerkt zich door excellijsten. Hiernaast de volwassenheidsniveau’s van informatie.
Voor meer informatie lees: het succes achter business intelligence.

Business Intelligence tools zijn er niet echt op gericht om operationele lijstjes te maken. Dat kunnen ze wel, maar dat is niet waarvoor ze zijn bedacht. Business Intelligence tools zijn er ook niet op gericht om excellijstjes te maken. Erger nog, op het BI Symposium 2009 stond “BI als voeding voor Excel” in de top 3 van “worst practices”. Er is dus blijkbaar een correlatie tussen de volwassenheidsniveau’s van een organisatie en de volwassenheidsniveau’s van informatie.

Mijn ervaring en versterkt met de equivalente zin uit het citaat van Mintzberg, durf ik te stellen dat Business Intelligence pas echt tot zijn recht komt als de organisatie op het punt staat te transformeren van de fase “Controlled” naar de fase “Managed”. Als laatste wil ik, om mijn betoog nog meer kracht bij te zetten, stil staan bij de term “Management Informatie”. Het lijkt alsof dit informatie is, bedoeld voor het management. Dat is incorrect, management informatie is informatie om te kunnen managen.
Wat trouwens niet wil zeggen dat de BI tools niet kunnen helpen om een proces onder controle te krijgen. Dat kunnen ze wel degelijk, maar richt ze dan ook zo in en leg vooral geen verbod op Excel. Of deze manier van werken onder de noemer Business Intelligence valt, dat laat ik graag aan anderen over.

Samengevat is mijn advies: als je BI wil inzetten om management informatie te creëren, leg dan eerst de focus op managen en ga dan pas meten en vooral niet andersom.

Yesterday I had a very nice face to face meeting with Frank Buytendijk. We both held a speech at Oracle Netherland’s 25th anniversary. Between his presentation and mine there was a 1,5 hour gap. So we talked about our speeches while drinking a diet Coke. It’s always a pleasure to talk to someone with a similar passions and similar thoughts.

While driving home that evening I was thinking about our conversation and both our speeches. Suddenly 1 word came to my mind: combinations. We are living in a Combination Economy. Product leaders have been doing it for several years now. There are a lot of examples: At Volvo you can assemble your own car, Senseo is a cooperation between Philips and Douwe Egberts, at Build-a-bear you can create your own teddy bear, at Adidas you can create your own running shoe. And now it’s everywhere: we want to combine home and work, even families are being combined nowaday’s.

To get back to both Frank’s and my own speeches: it’s all about creating functional elements on business levels. Let’s call them Business Elements. Functional business elements are needed to be able to create combinations. Thinking in processes is not the solution for this anymore. Frank was giving a presentation about management Excellence. When put in my words, what he did was creating the business element ‘Management’. By breaking down that business element he derived the management activities ‘Gain to sustain’, ‘Investigate to invest’, etc. Every management activity was divided into 5 activities. By having that decomposition of the Business Element ‘Management’, Frank was able to create management processes on the fly. (Click here for Frank’s presentation)

My speech was about transforming business processes to business functions. Let’s call them Business Elements too. I stated that by having business elements we are able to combine Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture and Business Intelligence. Business wise we would be able to be cross operational by combining our excellence logistic services within other supply chains. So it’s all about creating combinations. (Click here for my presentation)

But why hasn’t it been happening with IT and the Business? IT and the Business are not up to speed when it comes to concepts like these. I think it’s because of all the “finger pointing”. Yesterday too, I watched someone lecturing about collaboration. It was a very nice presentation with a lot of good elements. Unfortunately he kept using sentences like: “IT doesn’t understand the business”. I think addressing IT people that way, isn’t very collaborative. On the other hand, IT people always talk about “the Business not understanding the new technology”. Both worlds create new solutions. IT wants to get in business through Service Oriented Architecture, a solution so complex that the business user really doesn’t understand it. And the business wants to put everything in the cloud. Like if the business wants IT to be invisible, or at least as far away as possible.

But we shouldn’t drive those worlds apart. Both need to get closer. IT and the business need to combine their knowledge. The best way for combining that knowledge is using Business Elements to create new primary, secondary and management processes. Only together IT and Business can create success within the combination economy.

>@marcel: thanx for the review