Business Intelligence

The prize is often regarded to implement than the largest factor influencing the decision, a business intelligence (BI) system.

Do not despair. You can BI be realized with a tight budget. However, doing this requires strict discipline and adherence to a philosophy that can conflict with the opinion of the vast (read: expensive) global consulting company. Following our philosophy, is not only the success possible, but probable, and at a price far below typical expectations.

Sometimes everyone is willing to tell you what not to do, or to describe the pitfalls in your BI application to be avoided. Experts may even be willing to in vague generalities about things that you do what they do not give, should talk to a lot of “business secrets”. Here are 10 keys are specific to your BI project complete with a tight budget:

1 stick to an established method

The selection of a provider that uses a clearly defined process for the development of reproducible system will affect the successful implementation (or implementation) of the BI project. System integration or vendor development of software to choose, a methodology that clearly defines the processes is also required for quality, suitable for software that have met your needs and goals and produce at competitive prices.

Continuous improvement should be the mantra of a supplier with a well developed, a clearly defined method to be determined. You can get a little more confidence when hiring a vendor to the methodology, if you see a focus on continuous improvement, cleaning, clearing and consolidation processes.

Carefully evaluate a potential supplier of process and methodology, if a reproducible determination), b) defined and c) focus on continuous improvement. If a provider that has little or no method or methods in place choose, you risk to pay, slipped schedules, cost overruns, the expansion and total failure – the expensive, both your project and your career.

2 clearly define the requirements up front

In his book, Quality without tears, notes Philip Crosby, the costs of preparation of the “price of non-compliance (WNCP)” because “that’s what elects not to pay management to ensure the work is good first time.” Rhetoric of Revolution is a giant in the quality. double in dollars and cents rework usually costs (or more) to get the actual price it right the first time. It only makes sense intuitive point of view, because you pay for the hurt, and then pay again (at least) to do more. There is a whole industry that has grown around the unscrupulous sellers who offer low, fixed price estimates for projects to earn your business. These suppliers flooded its customers with the necessary changes to orders up to $ 5K and $ 10K per order or more. But keep this discussion at a later date.

In a well-established method (see point 1 above) requirements are a valuable asset to be managed very carefully. In fact, “The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Software Process Improvement” by the Software Engineering Institute, said: “The purpose of Requirements Management is to create a common understanding between the customer and software project customer requirements for software project to be addressed. “Of course this is also the creation and maintenance of agreed project requirements and expectations clearly defined for all involved.

Expect to pay for a first assessment of your needs. This is to make payment only through diligence and fees for a scoping phase and requirements gathering to project costs, if you and the seller agree to move forward.

3 GB with a supplier at a fixed price

We have all budgets. We all try to feel the stress, “time and material costs” go to seller in an attempt to what is actually necessary to guess to do the work. We all hope for a 95th suppliers finding percentile to be on board and honest in the time and billing equipment.

A majority of the work is a seller of a fixed price can go to be removed. A vendor offers a package of the expenditures that are made in advance are available or can be planned in advance with little or no surprises. With a fixed-price seller that you also eliminate adversarial relationship created by the constant vigilance of the statements and reports of projects to try to prove their value, can be promoted.

However, there are some key points to note when a seller at a fixed price. First, careful to change the order unnecessarily. The unscrupulous seller a fixed price for a low price, agree to get the job change, then continue to issue commands that run prices. Here are some ways to protect against the most unscrupulous providers. The seller offers to a meeting requirements or scope of the project effort forward in force. This allows several things, including well-established that the requirements to minimize changes to be clearly defined framework, the seller can make a proposal for a fair price to develop risk reduction, and time for your team to discover problems and obstacles that require more attention from you.

The second salient point when working with a fixed price seller is a point which can in some of the success of similar projects out there. A similar project is not necessarily in the same industry (or even within the same industry – federal government vs. state / local or commercial). It is important to a provider that a BI of comparable size and complexity, or look for larger accounts. The size is usually a measure of the number of users and applications and the amount of data. Things are starting to be more complex when things like “global footprint” holds, 24 / 7 user activity (which means there is virtually no time to perform the routine tasks of the system to), the complexity of ETL ( Extract, Transform and Load) requirements, the number of data sources or data streams, and other factors.

4 Stress-Grade Door Hardware

Moore’s Law (named after Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel) is that the computing power of processors doubles about every year. The material is usually a significant percentage of expenditures for all BI project, and wise use of dollars in equipment can be a difficult decision for an organization. Since Moore’s Law in your decision, your choice easier. Leave improves to the high value, low-cost hardware rack of quality and updated every 2-3 years Machinery. In addition, the recent evolution of blade servers allows multiple servers in a single, inexpensive device rack, fully scalable architecture exploits (most under 5) are packed, what a rapid growth and increased adoption of industries – construction of tomorrow expansion . Server vendors offer blade servers in a variety of configurations and prices that match your needs.

to consider a similar axiom is Kryder’s Law – by Mark Kryder, whose comments to increase the disk capacity are called amazing. Since the development of disk space in the year 1956, per square inch jumped more than 50 million times. The result of reducing a storage capacity more and the costs that are a clear focus on the low-cost storage.

A well-known developer of small systems has been asked by a customer, a federal system of transition, which would only, could be utilized by the global provider of a proper system for large, expensive equipment, accommodation and get built building software. After several years of low cost, smaller providers, has a value system to grow and develop to serve thousands of users with the equipment support and other quality principles described in this article. By the way, build the first customers to costly mainframe and made the small seller “Match” system was the “official” source of information in its functional area – date is a role they continue to fill up to.

5 start small and scale as needed

Traditionally, the projects have acquired large, the database servers muscle – Teradata, Oracle or DB2, which is fine if you need this kind of horse power. But to build cheap, we need to support the equipment quality described above stick. The key is scalability – the way a solution to a problem only if the problem is growing in scope and scale. If you build a system of superlatives that meets your needs today, but in a year is not in a position to meet the increasing demands, lack of scalability.

Over time the business requirements change, the challenges become more complex, growth, increasing the number of employees should develop the reports in order to intensify the analysis of needs, and so on. You have to build today in the morning on the eye. Taking into account the use of quality racks (see 4 above), a scalable architecture makes more sense than ever before. The key to scalability is to concentrate on the area of “great pain” first and work outward from there. Focus on a small part of your company, industry or region or function, reports on high or needs analysis. In the meantime, other areas of your business or other entire industries. This approach allows the first set or must be smaller, and you can prove the value of the system. This approach opens the door to growth and the gradual increase in the system until it is used a tool in the value chain and by virtually every organization. This modular approach is an extension horizontally by scaling to support adding additional servers to the extra weight of the integration of other sectors.

Another advantage of this “off scale” approach, which is intensified in the normal product redundancy. Redundancy is less disruptive migration or transition users a new service for your growth and the extent of the system.

The example started above in paragraph 4 with a two-Server, 200-300 users supported. The same system “scaled” to a comprehensive system that now supports 15,000 users worldwide 600k processing ad hoc queries per month – with 85% of all calls answered within 10 seconds or less. The original architecture has never had to be changed because it will be built with scale-out and horizontal growth in the mind from the start. Scalability Make a design feature from the start removes the need for specialty “Band-Aid” has been fixes. During the first development build standards as a condition without compromising scalability.

6 Select a high value, rich user interface unit

There are two basic types of toolkits BI user interface available today: those that are free and they cost money. Both categories have has advantages and disadvantages, and each has its own set of features and benefits.

The high end (expensive) tools have a place and I recommend them to customers who really need and budget ready for inclusion in their project.

In a very narrow approach, however, the price tag on most BI tools prohibitive. In these cases, I recommend one of the BI or almost free. Microsoft ® support its Reporting Services and Analysis Services with SQL Server. SQL Server does not have the reputation of the force necessary to compete as a “serious” data warehouse product. There is a misconception that far from those who do not understand either, the strength and value of SQL Server or in a position to benefit from its competitors is increased. In the example in the previous system used in servicing 15,000 users worldwide using Microsoft ® SQL Server.

On the other hand, you can choose to go to develop a proprietary solution you have selected provider. Several manufacturers offer a powerful, feature-rich, fully integrated OLAP, dashboards, ad hoc reporting, management reporting and much more, especially for large data warehouses and data marts at no additional cost to support their customers. Ask your provider what they offer – and be sure to check references, confirm the value offered by the tool.

There is also an excellent tool, since there the Pentaho BI Project provides enterprise-class reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining and workflow, helping organizations more efficiently and effectively operate in an open source project.

In short, there are options to select a high value, feature-rich business intelligence tools that will not break the bank.

7 Focus on the improvement of the system from the beginning

Just like you need to focus on scalability from the start, it is also important to focus on improving the system. Improving the system means to optimize the performance improvements, changes and clarifications to the business rules is the adoption of technological advances, etc. This is your chance to take a cue from your supplier. If we take the methods discussed above, we mentioned that the best of this continuous improvement and development processes emphasized. You should strive to a BI project which does exactly that: to improve constantly. Things that are important to you today may not be in six months. Queries based on your analysts now be meaningless in the next year. Techniques such as recording and analysis of statistics on historical questions that you understand your data and help as your customers need to use it. This knowledge is invaluable to give you details, contact your system at peak performance. Building a thorough internal analysis in your system and processes use, develop, assess exactly the way the system customers.

Monitoring and analysis of use allows you to compare and quantify the improvements in performance, trends and recommendations for improvements and extensions to your customers and users. Perhaps most importantly, this analysis gives you a great story that you sell your newly installed capacity to more users. According to a recent Gartner study, 50% of BI initiatives as a failure of the number one reason was considered a lack of use by the target group. Start now to find out how to avoid some of these statistics by the planning of a strong solution, the more useful to its users have over time. Improved performance and capacity increases, the number of users who rely on the solution, the improvement of the intrinsic value and the perception of your system.

8 internal leverage functional expertise

We can not say enough about their own internal leverage functional experts. There are many advantages, but the rewards are the primary cost control, maintaining the internal know-how and to maintain intimate contact with the user community.

The savings are obvious external consultants cost serious money. Other less obvious costs include the payment from outside in order to use their own processes, that knowledge and against you (other than non-disclosure agreements) with your competitors. The seller should reasonably minimize the impact of your employees. Additionally, the opportunity for professional development that should your team members are encouraged to participate with enthusiasm.

Additionally, if you “farm out” the expertise in a particular area in the long run you will find at some point that you lost all biological capacity to meet these requirements. It is common practice in some industries consultant gradually replace the organic assets and human capital contracts with personnel, with the intention of one day all the skills in this area. This guarantees an effective source of income while you still – are running out of options to find the biological expertise – the customer. Outsourcing accessories not essential and nonessential services and functions is a great business move – what you really well and outsource the rest is a common approach for enterprises today. However, it must be taken when releasing your grip on areas that are important to your company or for a critical functional domain.

Finally, it is important that your home, keep organic functional experts maintain close contact with end users. The individual or group with the greatest contact and interaction with end users is the most influence with them and to have. If you want to outsource completely the functional expertise, you may lose your ability to interact on a basic level with your key customers – the users. Enter influence not your ability, your customers.

9 Make sure you implement the right solution

If your business is doing well, but provides only needs reporting and analysis function, BI, why make an expensive global consulting firm to convince you to the basic processes, the fundamental keys to success were profit-think you? Many times a Process Reengineering (BPR) effort stemming from a consultant to recommend a particular product or system that is technically and functionally, but not good in the workflow of the company. Instead of selecting a product or a different system, a company may believe his heart craft change processes so that they align with the process flow system. In some cases, it is a valid approach, and ultimately the performance of the company improved by increasing the productivity and value. However, this is rarely an easy task and requires a comprehensive, sweeping, costly changes in the corporate culture at its core philosophy. One reason may push suppliers for BPR is that they are paid on time and material (T & M). It is in their interest to extend the duration and / or scope of the project (see point 3 above).

If your business really need a commitment RPR, then a BI implementation can not solve your problems. If, on the other hand, you have to be to simplify and improve your operational reporting and analysis, and data presented consistently across different systems, you may actually need a BI solution, not a BPR effort.

Make sure that the real problem and we simply do not sell an expensive undertaking that the cost of doing business, while not addressing your reports simply increase and demand analysis.

10, Performance cut prices

What are the main factors that influence the price movement? There are many technical factors, but a handful have the greatest influence. Database systems are inherent issues such as indexed views, materialized views, partitioning and clustering, the integrated effects of their achievement. Although these and other techniques on system performance and the subsequent costs of that service, how can they be designed and implemented the most important impact factor. The most important factor in lowering prices for our services is the chosen supplier. This may on the surface of the hand, but probably for the wrong reasons. I do not support the choice of suppliers, the lowest price but the seller that offers the greatest value quotes.

I tell you a short history of ribs and southern culture. I’m near Birmingham, Alabama, and was told that we rib joints more per capita than any other city in the U.S. (no, I have no data to back this up). Such a rib joints of fame is Dreamland BBQ. Dreamland began as a cottage beside the railroad tracks in rural Tuscaloosa County about an hour west of Birmingham. For years they had a sign that said: “We do not serve: baked beans, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, potato salad, green beans …” and then click the name and the things they were not used. What’s the point? Dreamland BBQ ribs served period. And it better than anyone. Because they specialize, they become (and still are, actually) were very, very good. They were able to do it at a reasonable price. If you want ribs, go to Dreamland. They offer a great product and value it very, very good.

If an implementation of Business Intelligence, a list of vendors, all other qualities that we have here to meet a seller described. Then you can go and look at your list, that is specialized for business intelligence. Find the “Dreamland BBQ” data. Find the provider that small enough to be flexible enough to be healthy enough experience to manage the complexity of applying concentrated, and enough to experience any of the information accurately. Select is a provider of business intelligence and does it very well.

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