If you want useful answers, you need to ask the right questions. It's no good blaming the software.
You can contact David Harvey, the author of this section, by e-mail on dharvey@olapreport.com if you have any comments, observations or user experiences to add. Last updated on February 11, 2006.
Looking at the recently launched web analytic software from Google, Andy experienced a child-in-a-toyshop rush of excitement. See what you can do with this, he enthused, careering from one goody to another: geo-maps of your visitors' location, data visualization tools, time-series charts. All-in-all, a rich array of slickly-presented information.
A cooler voice was heard asking: "Yes, it's impressive. But what are you going to do with all this information?" It is the killer question for every enthusiast who gets carried away with the latest software release and a vision of information El Dorado. Unless you are able to pose well-focused questions, all the tools and data under the sun will not give you useful answers.
Paul Strassmann, the information technology measurement expert, was once asked at a seminar by an eager IT manager who wanted to know how he should measure the value of information in his organization. Strassmann's response was that it was a meaningless question. Any information sitting in a data warehouse only acquires value when it is applied.
Software and data provide the tools and raw material, but they depend on a whole chain of processes, disciplines and working practices to be turned to good account. It is not sufficient that some piece of business analytical software can tell you more about your data than you had ever dreamed was possible.
Throwing sophisticated business intelligence tools at an organization in the hope that they will help people make sense of a mass of information is not the way to spend time and money. There are at least three conditions that need to be satisfied for analytical tools to earn their keep:
- There must be an actionable business decision that can be supported with relevant data. Without that follow-through, you are just staring at so-what? data.
- There must be a managerial process into which any insights can be fed. For example, you might see that you are falling short of, or exceeding, a target, but what action does this trigger?
- There should be a virtuous feedback loop that enables questions to be refined and supplementary analysis produced, leading to even better questions and smarter actions.
Obvious stuff? Perhaps. But the majority of organizations miss these targets by a mile. A number of characteristics single out the minority of effective business intelligence users including:
- Well-defined business aims and a sound performance management framework and culture
- Structured opportunities to drive performance and meet strategic goals
- A strong link between the vision and strategy of the organization and the practical provision of information.
Get these things right and business intelligence and performance management systems may be worthy objects of wonder.
To find out more about winning strategies for business intelligence and performance management systems, see the article Applying the SPM Maturity Model in the Analyses section.
This page is part of the free content of The OLAP Report, but ten times more information is available only to subscribers, including reviews of dozens of products, case studies and in-depth analyses. You can register for access to a preview of some of the subscriber-only material in The OLAP Report or subscribe on-line.
