Posts Tagged ‘data’

The title of this post is an homage to Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher and TED speaker.  He argues that the traditional methodology for teaching math is fundamentally flawed.

“I sell a product to a market that doesn’t want it, but is forced by law to buy it.” – Dan Meyer

Watching his talk, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the way the Business Intelligence concepts and methodologies have traditionally been presented to non-techies.  Is it just a matter of complex tools?  Or is it deeper?

“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill”  – Albert Einstein

Meyer references this quote by “the man”, Albert Einstein.  Can you think of how B.I. manages the formulation of data schemas, hierarchical data models, nesting, etc?  Bust open a textbook or Wikipedia, read it, then ask yourself, how engaging would this content be to someone who:

1. Lacks initiative

2. Lack perserverance

3. Lacks retention

4. Has an aversion to word data problems

5. Eagerness for formula reporting output

Meyer highlights these factors as being emblematic of his captive audience in the classroom.  I’ve made a couple of adjustments to tweak the context to that of B.I.  If you don’t agree that these factors apply equally to the vast majority of business users of B.I., please speak up.

Advances in technology are creating the ability to put the tools into the hands of the end user.  Our technology is proof of that; however, we still have some serious work to do on the owner’s manual.

For example, How would you deconstruct the process of building a data hierarchy to facilitate creation of a Data Mart?

I’ve recently started volunteering with Junior Achievement teaching business concepts to 5th graders.  You can see the attention of my little budding capitalists wax and wane throughout the session.  They haven’t yet learned to hide their expressions so when they “check out” it’s pretty obvious. But I’m glad for it.  I know exactly when I need to inject some PT Barnum into the act.

Let’s do the same for Business Intelligence.

Here’s Dan Meyer’s suggestions for fixing math education delivery.  Let’s do the same and give Business Intelligence class a makeover.

The Fix

1. Use multimedia

2. Encourage students business users intuition

3. Ask the shortest question you can

4. Let students business users build the problem

5. Be less helpful

I encourage you to watch the whole talk (below):

Enjoy!

Everyone wants meaningful Business Intelligence (B.I.).  At least, everyone who hopes to do well in business endeavours to do so intelligently.  Everyone I know anyways.

Recently, someone kindly pointed out that B.I. is actually DETERMINISTIC as opposed to intelligent by its very nature…. being just a construct of rules and structure within an IT system.

This comment was brought about through a discussion around creating B.I. solutions, what is a good approach.

The talk actually ended sounding more like a Philosophy class than an IT group.  Inductive and deductive reasoning.  Asking questions.  Treating matters objectively.

Stuff about helping management understand their own strategy by questioning manifest business processes.  In order to arrive at answers to seemingly imponderable business questions.  Things like, “What are your business goals?”

Some Focus Points

- Let outcomes guide decisions

- Let goals guide focus

- Let value guide priority

* NORTH STAR Business Intelligence

The above-mentioned firm put on a talk through TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) in Vancouver last Friday and I was fortunate enough to attend.  For anyone local who is looking to better understand the B.I. space, these monthly meetings are a good start.  The local chapter is fairly “young”, but it’s been growing and I’ve got to say, the meeting was quite interesting.

Some other points that jumped out were:

- B.I. is a technical issue, but success is a human issue

- Always keep the broader vision in mind

- Understand that business processes, definitions, and meanings change over time

- Greenfield B.I. projects have an advantage [over existing systems (i.e. no baggage)]

- Think big picture, work the details

and – Choose for impact!

It appears the growing consensus in this group is that the technical barriers aren’t what is standing in the way of getting good B.I. spread all throughout the organization.  But it’s organizational psychology that sometimes stinks.

There’s a delicate balance that has to be struck.  Top management don’t want to feel like they are being lectured, or questioned.  But it’s education and Socratic inquiry that are required if the end B.I. solution is going to work.

In my view, part of the difficulty is that management doesn’t necessarily have their strategy worked out to the level of detail really required to get a “perfect” solution.  There’s a lot of moving parts regardless of business size.  But don’t look at me I’m just a software vendor.

Do you think I could be counted on to whip business strategy into shape?

Anyway you slice it, I think B.I. and strategy will always be inextricably linked.  As mentioned in the talk, these are tied into part of a feedback loop.

Helpful to remember this stuff.

Enjoy!

For anyone who already knows who Gary Vaynerchuk is, the title of this post will be a not-so-subtle homage to his mission of changing the wine world whether they like it or not.

Here at the office, we’re big fans of his show, Wine Library TV.

Gary’s intro sets the tone from the word go.  He warns Gretzky before the start of Episode #660, “careful, I’m about to get real loud“.  One might respond, no lie, no lie.

Gary’s got a fantastic take on wine tasting.  Whether it’s describing a wine as “fresh catcher’s mitt” or “dark, no moon, in a cave, I’m scared, kinda dark”, his illustrations get the experience of wine across to people in a way that’s easy to understand.  But, not dumbed down.  There’s play in there as well, always good.  He takes the burden off of understanding wine in a more meaningful way.

Here at Indicee, we’re all about increasing understanding so we thought we would have some fun with Gary’s Ratings Spreadsheet.  “Vayniac” Chris Stanisci (SS Chris) created and maintains the spreadsheet that details all of the wine tasted on the show with rating.  (Based on my understanding of the numbers, you’ll generally want something high 80′s or above.)

I uploaded the spreadsheet into Indicee and managed to generate the following reports on a lark.

Then, with the help of Scott Pledger, our new VP of Marketing, we came up with a value calculation.

Gary’s Score / Price = Value Score

And lastly, here’s a report showing the PRICIEST wines that have been on the show.

Gary’s at the big South by Southwest (#SXSW) Conference this weekend in Austin.  We’re sorry to be missing the party down there, but maybe these reports can be our contribution.  I’m sure the information contained could make for a good conversation!

And a big shout out to SS Chris for being the Spreadsheet Jockey on this!  Good on ya!  But, we do gotta talk about Data Quality at some point.  Ping me.  There’s a ton of potential to generate more reports, but we need to clean up the Data.  Don’t make me unleash the DataFlux crew on you.  Maybe we can farm out some of the grunt work for you.

Want to see the Data live? Join our free public group here!

Enjoy!

A friend, he was in Sales at the time, explained to me his reasoning for getting out; to pursue an MBA and leave Sales.  He said that in Sales, “you’re just a waitress” for the business.  He was tired of schlepping the watered down drinks and cheap grub that was, in his mind, the reality of the work.  I assume.

At the time, I replied,

“Well if that’s the case, if Sales are the waitresses of the business, than Accountants are the dishwashers.”

I was Controller at the time.

You might think the worst aspect of washing dishes, I’m talking commercially here, is the fact you are cleaning up other people’s messes.  I don’t think it is.  I think the worst part is mind-numbing repetition.

Welcome to hell. Population: You

Until next time…

Similar to my initial thoughts on my Spreadsheet Nation post, I jumped into this topic of Data Quality without really testing the waters.  In this case, I thought I could just jump in, rhyme off some platitudes about Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO), and go on my merry way.  Instead, what opened up to me was a vast sea and I was a fish out of water.  I was standing on shore clueless about what lay beneath the surface.

Malaspina Strait, British Columbia, Canada

Data Quality really is one of those topics that tends to lurk under the surface – elusive to capture.  We are talking about “the state of completeness, validity, consistency, timeliness, and accuracy that makes data appropriate for a specific use” (definition courtesy of the Government of British Columbia).  Or if you prefer, there’s the Dragnet definition: “Just the facts”.  For accountants, we are talking about all that stuff we enter into our systems (or gets generated by other systems) that we need to access later for producing reports and analysis.  The Data Quality refers to how effectively we can gain access to and generate meaning from these volumes.

A great deal of energy tends to go into our design of ways for inputting data.  How much thought has gone into the processes designed for getting the data back out?

According to IDC, a leading technology research firm, very few companies have systems in place to make use of their data, and [they] often struggle to classify data in order to find it again.  There’s a great quote on the V3 blog from Benjamin Woo at IDC:

“The key is to take the data and make money from it”

I think that this frames the issue in language we can understand.  We incur costs for gathering, processing, and storing data.  We may even incur further costs cleansing, reworking, and managing the stores of data.  What does the data do for us?  Are we developing an asset that creates future value?  Or, are we plugging an expense?

Until next time…