Gut Check: Managing Data Proliferation to Create Opportunity

By Steve Morandi / July 21st, 2009 / Comments Off

I do not believe anyone would disagree that we live in a time where available information is scaling exponentially both in the consumer and B2B domains. This can create both paralysis and opportunity at the same time. After all, a once small company you may have heard called Google has had some success bridging the chasm between data anxiety and opportunity.

In fact their corporate mission statement reads: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible anduseful. There are three thematic threads in this statement which are worthy of discussion to help focus the data proliferation solution:

1.Organizing and integrating data

2.Universal access

3.Usefulness

Organized and Integrated Data: Organizations should be thinking about their ability to provide interactive, intuitive, and accessible measurement, analysis, and reporting solutions that considers all cross functional data and sources. Most, if not all businesses, operate with disparate databases and sources. Even those entities that have standardized on a global ERP system still have data housed in a variety of other execution systems (call centers, CRM systems, planning systems, warehouse management systems, etc), as well as budgeting and plan information that may reside in spreadsheets. Consider the environment and data sources that could be of interest to help analyze and obtain a comprehensive view of your customers (their satisfaction, your delivery, and resulting financials) as depicted below:

Multiple Sources of Business Intelligence Data

Providing the business user with a platform that unifies and organizes the rich data in this cross system puzzle in an accessible form is a real value driver. This helps provide context and leverages the data to enable actions that are thoughtful, strategic, and aware of all of the critical, yet sometimes competing, factors. In fact, Aberdeen Group’s Services Chain Practice (I feel one of the most comprehensive analyst groups when it comes to Services) published some findings in a June Services Benchmarking and Measurement report indicating that ~ 30% of the Best-in-Class (BIC) companies they surveyed are planning to undertake actions to integrate data into a common service performance database and 45% of these best-in-class companies are using an Enterprise-wide Business Intelligence / Analytics System. Perhaps these BIC companies are onto something.

By way of example, imagine the ability to select and prioritize your suppliers not simply by spend performance but also by other relevant operational metrics that impact your performance and customers. You might want to create a supplier scorecard containing a composite score and ranking of suppliers by the following metrics (from a variety of sources):

•Total Spend and Purchase Price Variance

•Supplier Cost Productivity

•On-Time Delivery

•Order Fill Rate

•Inventory Days of Supply

•Defect Rate

•Invoice Accuracy

This holistic view of your supplier base clearly provides a more strategic perspective than just spend analysis and positions you for profitable growth and improved customer service.

Universal Access & Usefulness: Let’s assume you agree with the premise that rich data that is integrated and has context is a worthy objective. You pursue the hard work to make this a reality…. now what? What I have often witnessed is this data is now guarded and locked down within IT organizations. Instead of the Data Warehouse promoting ubiquitous use it starts to feel more like the “Data Vault”. I would argue you need to expose this rich resource to your business community in a platform that is easy to access, intuitive, requires limited training, and is meaningful. This data could even be exposed to strategic external supply-chain partners and customers where appropriate. This collaborative approach and data access starts to create some real differentiation. Yes data needs to be compartmentalized, and there needs to be serious Access Control Logic that enables role-based security at the report row level, but these capabilities already exist in most reporting solutions.

Lastly, make sure when you embark down this path you spend some focused time creating reporting that is targeted at specific functional needs and which helps operating teams answer the questions at hand. IT and the business leadership team need to coalesce around reporting, KPI, and dashboard solution requirements. Leverage existing domain expertise that is available within many solutions but make sure there is enough flexibility to tailor this business intelligence system to your unique situation. One size does not fit all.

Next up on this customer experience blog will be a discussion on the importance ofEnterprise Accountability — Instill a culture of customer accountability across the enterprise… it is not the sole responsibility of the services team.

Until then, good luck with your mission to organize your company’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

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Tags: business intelligence, performance, managing data, opportunity, six sigma