Growing short term business intelligence solutions into long term success
There is no more daunting and complicated a task then correctly implementing business intelligence (BI) solutions for a chosen company. This information, if interpreted correctly can take a company from the brink of failure to the pinnacle of success. Therefore, in order to grow a short-term solution into a long-term success, the following principles can be followed for maximum development:
- Realistic goals must be set, and then executed in a timely manner. Each goal factors into the individual success of specific subsets within the BI divisions. Each employee’s skills and what they can achieve in their department is critical to the alignment of business decisions. Overall, the potential functions of BI in each department must be nurtured towards a scaling economic model of the company.
- As the BI solution continues to grow, it is often the end-user who is left in the dark as they muddle with an overly complex application that is built more with a programmer or developer in mind. User adoption rates plummet as the BI system grows in complexity without an interface that is functional enough for any team-member to utilize. Once the BI solution grows to a certain level of complexity, then it is time to invest in a user interface in the form of an intuitive dashboard that can be ramped up in complexity according to user specification. Keeping the UI simple is the best advice.
- Map out each phase of the project in manageable chunks, instead of creating a behemoth of a project that ultimately fails due to poor planning. If each phase of the project is assigned to different teams, this will actively encourage user adoption across the board instead of alienation due to an overly complex application. Start small, and grow piece by piece.
- Ramp up the organisational structure, building a strong support base with a strategic programme that eventually envelops the simple project that the BI started out as. Pulling together a strong team with key members is step one; step two is to grow the team within each department of the BI project. Treat the BI solution as a small project that will ultimately grow into a massive, dynamic development.
Tips for successful Business Intelligence data warehousing
Business Intelligence data warehousing
Keeping a steady grip on business intelligence (BI) data is vital to the success of any business. By using a series of collated information, correct business data will enable continuous scrutiny of all operations from year to year. Benchmarking performance indicators, utilising predictive analytics and mining data are all various functionalities that business intelligence data warehousing can provide. Listed below are certain techniques and strategies that can be readily applied to a company’s data warehousing solutions for further success:
- Selecting the correct software or series of applications that will work in harmony with the needs of the company is the first step in creating a BI data solution. Small to medium –sized businesses can make use of spreadsheets and basic databases for a cost-effective solution. Large companies can grow as the data warehousing requirements expand, with a web-based system that can be expanded via new modules and features.
- The primary function of data warehousing is trend analysis. Common uses include analysis of business operations on ad-hoc basic. Concentrate all efforts on a long-term examination and eventual operational forecasting. These reports should be set to read-only as user input can muddy the data prediction, with new queries being created in order to keep current data intact.
- Accurate creation of data is critical when building an overview of any business. Useless data will provide inaccurate reports and ultimately, poor choices for the various directions of the company. Leading business intelligence experts knows that the systems deliver reports based on the quality of the information; therefore the correct data must always be inputted into the central data repository.
- Precise reporting is made possible (or at the very least, easier) with the inclusion of data quality teams. Quality control teams review all data, as well as the process of capturing the data itself. These auditors are solely responsible for BI data strategies.
The needs of the company determine the growth of the BI data warehousing solutions. Additional functionality keeps the software fresh and relevant to the specific requirements of the business and as goals are met, the software grows almost organically to match the demands of the end-user.
New Divisional Director for Intellient
Bruckner de Villiers
Bruckner de Villiers has been appointed as a Divisional Director for Intellient.
Business and IT Alignment: An Oracle View
If you’re a CIO or IT strategist Oracle’s view on Business and IT Alignment could help you design and evaluate IT strategies so that you can build a business case for IT.
As part of that view, Oracle introduces three elements; management excellence, operational excellence and technology excellence. Most people are familiar with the term operational excellence; optimising cost, quality, and speed. It has become a prerequisite to fuel the next level of competitive differentiation — management excellence — which is characterised by three other attributes; smart, agile, and aligned. Neither can be achieved without technology excellence; an IT strategy that focuses on being complete, open, and integrated.
So much has been said about business and IT alignment (BIA), what could possibly be added? There are IT governance principles, IT architectural concerns, areas of IT innovation, IT key performance indicators, and IT cost saving elements. However, ask ten people for a definition of what business and IT alignment means, and you will get twelve answers.
But, what about the business side? Although the business often challenges IT to show their benefits and overall value, most of the BIA discussions take place within IT. Alignment can only be successful if it comes from both sides. Is there an equally structured discussion taking place on the business side about how to receive the benefits from IT?
Is there a discussion on the business side on how to adapt corporate strategy to IT-driven innovation? Most CIOs have plenty of business performance indicators on their scorecards, but how many business executives manage their business with IT performance indicators? BIA doesn’t seem to be as reciprocal as it should be. And, while we are at it, what about business-to-business alignment?
IT can only be efficient and successful in the long term if it is based on a decent architecture. Long term success is difficult to achieve if the business treats IT in a stove-piped way, forcing business cases to focus on departmental benefits only.
Download the full story from Intellient whitepapers – Business and IT Alignment: An Oracle View
If you’re looking for performance management and risk management solutions for your business contact Intellient
Uncertainty Management: Risk and Performance, Two Sides of the Same Coin
This article is from an Oracle thought leadership whitepaper.
The bottom-line role of management is balancing performance and risk to create stakeholder value.
This requires both performance management and risk management. Performance management focuses on achieving the desired goals and targets of the organization, but is often practiced in business silos based on the organizational structure and decision authorities in place.
Risk management is another critical discipline, yet is hardly ever performed across an entire organisation. Performance management and risk management are often pursued as different and separate activities; frequently disconnected from each other. This, simply, should not be.
EPM is a management discipline that embraces and combines all management processes. These management processes include strategic ones, such as gain-to-sustain, investigate-to-invest, and design-to-decide, as well as tactical and operational management processes, such as plan-to-act, analyze-to-adjust and record-to-report.2
EPM creates a competitive advantage for those organizations that adopt it by enabling them to reach a state of, what we call, “management excellence”; anticipating and responding to changing business conditions faster and with more insight than their peers, improving their strategic agility to act on those insights, and improving alignment and collaboration between individual business units and external stakeholders.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a management discipline which is performed to deal with possible threats to the organisation and seize opportunities in line with business objectives. By identifying and proactively addressing risks and opportunities, business enterprises protect and create value for their stakeholders including owners, employees, customers, regulators, and society overall.
To succeed, in a sustainable way, performance and risk management must be performed in tandem across the entire organization. These disciplines should not be performed as separate activities as they are two sides of the same coin. What’s the name of that coin? Uncertainty management.
Any management decision inherently carries some uncertainty. It doesn’t matter if the decision is about an investment, a new product introduction, or budget plans for the future, there is always a chance that the expected outcome may not be achieved. Performance and risk, therefore, are two important perspectives from which uncertainty in making business decisions should be studied.
Download the full story from Intellient whitepapers – Uncertainty Management – Risk and Performance, Two Sides of the same Coin
If you’re looking for performance management and risk management solutions for your business contact Intellient
GRC: Risk Management: Protect and Maximise Stakeholder Value
The following GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) article from Oracle is relevant if you want to protect and maximise stakeholder value.
Recent economic volatility has given risk management a new focus and eminence. The strongest companies are the ones that are able and willing to adapt, who actively integrate risk management as a critical factor at all levels of management process from strategy to success.
Regrettably, organizations have been hampered by pitfalls in traditional approaches to risk management. Seen as a back-office function, risk management may be limited to annual assessments that are not integrated with strategic and operational planning.
Without the ability to apply a common taxonomy and weighting for different risk categories, organizations are forced to manage risk in functional silos, unable to see the interconnected nature of multiple risk events.
Internal control and external risk transfer methods are largely manual, leaving firms open to unnecessary exposure.
Business survival requires organizations to take risk. Successful firms manage risk well while those that do not suffer. The unprecedented breakdown of credit markets and eye-opening demise of well established financial institutions have led companies small and large to pause, look at themselves, and ask: What’s our risk? Do we have a handle on it? Is that good enough?
Recent actions from regulatory bodies and ratings agencies have also highlighted the need for risk management. For example, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is guiding audit firms to pay more attention to the level of risk associated with management processes. Assuming management is likely to accept greater risk when acting under economic pressure, the PCAOB is encouraging auditors to adjust their audit plans and increase monitoring for high risk behavior.
Download the full story from Intellient White Papers – Risk Management – Protect and Maximise Stakeholder Value
If you’re looking for GRC and risk management solutions for your business contact Intellient
6 Tips for Better Business Intelligence
- Select the Right Service Provider
Shop around. The right service provider should demonstrate a unique appreciation of your needs and the challenges you are facing. They must be involved in the roll-out of the solution and provide training to all users. Make sure they also offer on-going support once the solution is up and running. Get references and follow these up. - Suitability
Be sure to choose a BI solution that is right for your business. Have a specific business need in mind when shopping for a solution. Before purchasing a complete data warehouse solution, do some research – your current challenge may not require a warehouse solution. Instead you could save money and time with a simpler solution that locates and extracts data from its current location as required. - Ease of Integration
Your service provider should be familiar with the systems your business relies on and should provide a solution that integrates easily into your current business infrastructure. The best BI application will be one that meets a specific business requirement and fits into your business processes seamlessly. - Flexibility and scalability
Your BI requirements will change as your company grows and develops. It is important to plan for this by selecting a modular solution that can be adapted and expanded to suit your changing needs. - Keep it Simple
While it may be tempting to go for the most sophisticated, top-of-the-range solution, often the simpler option is easier to work with. Consider who will be using the system. Don’t forget the true end user and include them in the selection process. Their technical proficiency will determine the level of complexity you may incorporate in the solution. Remember, a good BI solution should save your employees time – not force them to struggle with a complicated system. - Insist on Security
Data security is crucial – especially in the increasingly mobile business world. The ideal BI solution should deliver accurate, targeted information at maximum speed; while protecting your data from falling into the wrong hands.
Getting to the Financial Truth: Financial consolidation and data warehouse
Financial consolidation is at the basis of management information and management processes in most organisations. But financial consolidation has some specific architectural, procedural and practical requirements. This particular management process is better off not using a data warehouse as an intermediary in the closing process. The best practice is to directly link financial consolidation to the general ledgers.
The Bottom Line – Keeping financial consolidation outside the data warehouse architecture is not an ‘exception to the rule’, but a matter of architectural soundness, combined with an understanding of governance issues and simply a practical solution. Key to keeping the architecture ‘clean’ is the understanding that financial consolidation is not a management process, but transactional of nature.
Source: Oracle – Frank Buytendijk Vice President and Fellow frank.buytendijk@oracle.com
Download the full story from Intellient’s white papers page – Best Practices, Financial Consolidation and Data Warehouse PDF
If you’re looking for Financial Consolidation and Data Warehouse Solutions for your business contact Intellient
Financial data quality ensures stakeholder buy-in
According to Michael van der Merwe, Manager – BI & Enabling Technologies at Oracle, further benefits of managing financial data quality are the speed and agility of information retrieval, leading to rapid implementation of corrective actions when required. It also plays a key role in improved visibility through dashboards, providing a big-picture overview of the financial situation of the company at any point in time and the ability to drill down to the general ledger.
Quality data also means that Sarbanes Oxley regulations are more easily supported and assessment requirements more easily achieved. Probably the most important benefit of sound financial data quality management is that the origin of a specific value can be found and confirmed with little effort.
Van der Merwe supports Oracle’s Hyperion FDQM (Financial Data Quality Management) application for empowering clients to achieve data visibility, integrity and verification in their financial reports.
“The return on investment with a system like this is more productive time and increased ownership for the end user,” he says. “Probably the biggest benefit of sound financial data quality management is the increase in confidence levels, while lowering the cost of compliance through the elimination of data collection and validation errors.”
For enterprise leaders, however, simply being sure they have the correct data, even with the high levels of confidence an FDQM system can provide, is not the objective. The ultimate objective of any company is increased net profit. With the correct information at hand, managers can make informed decision with full insight into the activities of any part of the business. They are even able to understand the real cost contribution of each customer, ensuring high-value clients receive the appropriate service and low-value clients can be encouraged to look for better value from the business.
The Hyperion FDQM system is not a standalone offering, but fits into other Hyperion application suites such as enterprise planning and profitability, as well as cost management systems. It can access data from almost any database system, even external to the company, when required. It effectively supports the consolidation process of the holding company and ensures there is no longer a gap between the general ledger and consolidation and reporting.
“The financial figures derived are real and queries can be tracked by drilling down into the source data, no matter where it comes from,” adds van der Merwe. “FDQM closes the door to incorrect and confusing reporting, giving stakeholders confidence to make decisions on data that they know is accurate.”
When working towards increased investor confidence it is important to provide complete transparency, van der Merwe says, adding that a sound profitability and cost management system, linked with quality and trustworthy financial data will enable scenario analysis by region, product and client. It will also assist in the allocation of variable costs, while taking fixed costs into account.
“Such a scenario is bound to build confidence with the most cynical financial analysts and have a positive effect on share prices and investor confidence, both crucial aspects to thriving in this market,” he concludes.
Protecting Financial Institutions from Operational Risks
- Human Error
- Systems Failure
- Process Failure
- Inadequate Controls and Monitoring
- Financing techniques that reduce credit and market risk, but enhance operational risk
Measuring and Managing Operational Risk
- Enterprise-wide culture and commitment
- Governance for operational risk management
- The role of regulation
- Technological changes that improve an organisations ability to measure and manage operational risk
- Potential responses to operational risk
- Dynamic risk identification
