In the Field with our Experts

New Years’ Resolutions: Assess and Revise Your BI Strategy

By Dick Voorhees, Senior Consultant

The New Year is upon us. And for many, the coming of the New Year involves making new resolutions, or reaffirming old ones. This resolution-making process includes corporations and organizations, not just individuals. In terms of personal resolutions, some undertake this process in earnest, but many seem to deal with resolutions superficially, or at least not very effectively. The same is frequently true for organizations as well.

So how then should an organization go about deciding which “resolutions” to pursue in the New Year, which goals and objectives are both worthy and achievable? Often there are no "good" or "bad" opportunities, a priori, but some are more likely to result in a successful outcome and/or have more significant payoff than others.

1. Take stock of the opportunities, and develop a list of key potential initiatives (or review the existing list, if one exists). Consider recent or imminent changes in the marketplace, competitors’ actions, and governmental regulations. Which of these initiatives offers the possibility of consolidating/increasing market share, improving customer service, or represents necessary future investment (in the case of regulations)? And which best supports the existing goals and objectives of the organization?
2. Assess the capabilities and readiness of the organization to act on these initiatives. An opportunity might be a significant one, but if the organization can’t respond effectively and in a timely manner, then the opportunity will be lost, and the organization might better focus its attention and resources on another opportunity with lesser potential payback, but that has a much greater chance of success.
3. Develop a roadmap, a tactical plan, for addressing the opportunity. Determine which resources are required – hardware, software, capital, and most importantly people – what policies and procedures must be defined or changed, etc…

Then be prepared to act! Sometimes the best intentions for the New Year fail not for lack of thought or foresight, but for lack of effective follow through. Develop the proper oversight/governance mechanisms, put the plan into action, and then make sure to monitor progress on a regular basis.

These are not difficult steps to follow, but organizations sometimes need help doing so. We’ve found that clients who call us have learned the hard way – either directly or through stories they’ve heard in their industries – that some careful planning, deliberate program design, and – if necessary – some skill assessment and training can take them a long way in their resolutions for success in 2011. Good luck!

photo by L.C.Nøttaasen via Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

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Dick Voorhees is a seasoned technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in information technology, data integration, and business analytic systems. He is highly skilled at working with and leading mixed teams of business stakeholders and technologists on data enabling projects.

Consulting Terms of Engagement: a Readiness Checklist

By Carol Newcomb, Senior Consultant

Having worked at least half of my professional life either with consultants or as a consultant myself, I need to offer some practical advice on increasing the probability of success on a consulting engagement.

Remember, a consultant is just another tool in your management toolbox that provides either the leverage (expertise/experience) or the hard skills that you and your staff are missing today.

There are three main reasons to hire consultants:  1) you want coaching from expert advisors to mentor your existing team and provide tactical advice; 2) you don’t have the skill-sets that you need (ETL programmers, software/hardware experts, etc.); or 3) to provide frameworks and processes to build and sustain ongoing programs (like business intelligence or data governance).

Regardless of the type of consulting engagement, your staff need to be on board with the presence of consultants in their midst.  Ask yourself, as the sponsor, some basic questions:

• Have you explained to your team what the purpose of the consulting engagement is intended to achieve and their role in making it successful?
• Are you as a sponsor willing and able to provide authority for the consultants on the ground?
• Are you willing to spend time with your team and the consultants in the same room, to work out issues, questions, strategy and tactics as they evolve over time?  Don’t think you can just punt and run.
• Do you have committed resources on your team to help with knowledge transfer?  This is not an “all other duties as assigned” task for your staff.
• If consultants will replace or supplement existing staff, is your staff aware and comfortable with this?  This will inevitably become a problem if the expectations are not managed upfront.
• Are IT and Business ready to start working together?
• Do you have true business users and are they ‘on board’ with your project?
• Is there a way to prioritize issues as they come up?  One thing all consulting engagements do is bring to light an unsightly set of issues that become obstacles to progress.
• Can you be honest about your culture? Are their repeated patterns or behaviors that could sabotage a key project?
• Can you comfortably “park” issues that are not showstoppers in order to move ahead despite them?

There are probably many more items I could include on this “preparedness checklist.”  The point is that consultants can often be perceived as disrupting the natural order of things.  Either you, as their sponsor, will need to introduce them and guide them through the organization to ensure they are effective, or you need to clearly delegate to your staff what the expectations are for them to do the same.  If technical knowledge transfer needs to occur, don’t just assume it will happen.  I have seen too many consultants spend the first few weeks twiddling their thumbs either because they don’t have access to key systems, or they don’t understand the environment and haven’t been provided any documentation to work with in the meantime.  How much time will you allow for consultants to become proficient?

If the consulting engagement is to collect facts, conduct interviews, summarize findings, provide best practices, roadmaps or assessments then make sure they have a political lay-of-the-land upfront.  Otherwise, they will attend meetings they have no context for, they will assume things that may be incorrect, and they will be off-target in their recommendations. Also, many consulting firms sell their methodologies as separate and packaged products. If you expect your consulting firm to transfer its intellectual property as part of the engagement then your consulting contract should stipulate that. If you have secured the funding to bring consultants into your organization, you need to ensure that the project is a win-win.  The risks to you are probably larger than to the consultant group, because at the end of their engagement, they go away.  A good consulting firm will have ensured knowledge transfer along the way, but your staff carries some of the responsibility for that, too. 

If you’re considering or starting a consultant engagement, here are a few things to consider:

• Is your department/division receptive to advice or change?
• Are department heads, directors and managers on board with the engagement?
• If ‘best practices’ are recommended, does the department have the appropriate technical tools and agility to put them into practice?
• Have you done everything within your control to ensure the success of this engagement?

If the answer to any of the above is NO, then reconsider your readiness, regroup with your staff, and discuss alternative strategies with the consulting group you are working with.

If you have an opportunity to change and improve your department, leverage the effort to instill that change.   You may not get more than one chance.

photo by mykpwedding via Flickr (Creative Commons License)

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Carol Newcomb is a Senior Consultant with Baseline Consulting. She specializes in developing BI and data governance programs to drive competitive advantage and fact-based decision making. Carol has consulted for a variety of health care organizations, including Rush Health Associates, Kaiser Permanente, OSF Healthcare, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and more. While working at the Joint Commission and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, she designed and conducted scientific research projects and contributed to statistical analyses.

Dirty Little (Data) Secret: Baseline in the Field

Inasmuch as Baseline’s partners and senior consultants are in the industry and on the speaking and publishing circuit, our bread-and-butter business is working with Global 2000 businesses to deploy business information. This business information is cross-functional. It’s strategic and operational. And often, it originates from cryptic legacy systems that don’t talk to one another, much less well-meaning programmers. The data is dirty, to say the least. The BI tools are ready, but in the course of the data deployment they may have gotten a bad rap. And clients often don’t know what to do next.

We help them with all these things. In the course of doing this work we’ve become acutely aware that with every client engagement comes another lesson learned. Or two. Or three. The mission of our In the Field blog is to share those lessons. Many of them are hard-won. Many of them we see on almost every engagement. And many of them are likely in your future. So let’s talk about them here. We look forward to seeing you here—and reading your comments. Come back often to see what’s happening in the field!