Identifying BI Opportunities

For This Week Read Pages 113-143 of Business Intelligence Pages 1-64 of Process Mapping Quiz 3 on Wednesday covers these readings On CULearn – Open 7:30 – 11:30 AM

Identifying BI Opportunities Step 1: Do Your Homework The 5 Ws plus an H Where will BI be used/needed? Functional Areas Business Units Who will use and benefit from BI? Higher Levels Lower Levels Who, What, When, Where, Why and How We make assumptions constantly about words the cabin burning in the woods example the cabin was an airplane Sacred cows make the best hamburger meat What are the sacred cows of the bookstore They must sell books! The president of CU expects to see books even if they are loosing money on the book sales The ability to identify the sacred cows will differentiate successful vs. less successful business people

Product contributions and costs Customer group contributions and costs Must Examine Product contributions and costs Customer group contributions and costs Corporate strategies top down Business intelligence is bottom up Ask Questions … Ask Questions … Ask Questions Does it make sense to continue to sell textbooks? Who are the bookstore’s best customers? Management incentives? How do you get the organization to do what you want if they aren’t incented to do so?

Different roles – who does what? Different levels Lower means more detail Higher means summarization using hierarchies and multi-dimensions crossing functional areas Process modeling helps you identify these roles

Measures / base and calculated What Information? Measures / base and calculated Consider critical success factors for functions and business units Trends assist higher level managers Dimensions By time, products, customers, demographics, location, employee, business unit, shift, etc. If you can’t measure it you can’t analyze it, improve it, incent it

What Information? Level of Detail Summarization can be derived from detail Detail costs more so need must be considered

Sharing/Collecting Ideas Brainstorming teams specify measures and dimensions Examine processes and information from business perspective (BO, BT, SO) Find Why questions that lead to What questions Answers define system objectives including measures and dimensions BO - Business Objectives BT - Business Tactics SO - System Objectives

Organizing Info Requirements BI Blueprint (Table 9.1) derived from sticky notes with Measures and Dimensions Group requirements by Opportunity Areas (Table 9.3) to address specific questions based on common dimensions Reference BI blueprint on Page 127 Understand what’s in a BI blueprint SPEND SOME TIME REVIEWING THIS CHART Reinforce that the students should be working on their projects NOW!

Evaluating Alternatives Smaller group of individuals synthesizes brainstorming results Requirements -> Areas of Opportunity E.g., demand forecasting, product margin analysis Example in Table 9.3 Rank the Opportunities (the BI Scorecard)

Opportunity Areas (Table 9-3) Product Geography Customer Call Class Sales Rep Time Product Margin Analysis Amount Sales product # region NA month Cost Margin Sales Analysis district cust ID rep ID week

Grade Opportunities by Importance Actionability? Business Tactics Possible? Materiality? Value or Business Objectives Impacted? Tactical vs. Strategic? Short or long term? Risk? Management Commitment? Higher level and more cross-functional are strategic, but more risky Applying the importance criteria Table 9.4

Importance Criteria (Table 9-4) Actionability Materiality Tactical or Strategic Overall Product Margin Analysis High Strategic Sales Analysis Tactical Medium Customer Support Low This is the type of stuff you will be tested Based on data/information from the bookstore The more you work on your project the more questions you ask and the better you will do on the exams

Grade Opportunities / Difficulty Cross functional? Data exist and accessible for each measure and dimension? New measures? More detail? Calculation complexity? Multiple sources? Applying the difficulty criteria Table 9.5 Why is it more difficult if it is cross functional?

Difficulty Criteria (Table 9-5) Cross-Functional Availability of Data Complexity of Calculations Overall Product Margin Analysis Hard Medium Sales Analysis Easy Customer Support These tools are flexible change the headings e.g. the film major example

BI Opportunity Scorecard Business Priority and Level of Effort on two scales (Figure 9.3) High Priority / Easy – Go for it! Low & Medium Priority / Easy – Confidence! High Priority / Hard – Pilot! Others – Case by Case… SHOW FIGURE 9.3 on WHITEBOARD

Quantification? Cost/Benefit BI makes it tougher / intangibles Convert intangibles to increased revenues and reduced costs System/Business Tactics cost $ Business Objectives provide benefits

Cycle of Learning Learn from successes and from failures Enthusiasm leads to upward spiral where success breeds success Team effort with executive support Think big and start small / pilots and proof of concept Leave system tactics to IT with oversight