After years of effort, the data warehouse was up and running. With fanfare, the BI interface had just been presented to the management team in the boardroom. Like the vendor demo from months before, everyone was impressed by the versatility, the graphics, and the ability to drill down and through data.
Following closing remarks on the high ROI calculated for the effort, the applause died down. The C-level executive, just back from a briefing on data visualization, requested some charts put back on the screen. For one graphic, everyone was asked to compare South American to European sales as a percentage. As he listed the responses on the whiteboard, there was a gasp, as different people put the figure anywhere between 35 and 105 percent.
How could this happen? So much work had been done to carefully source, cleanse, and appropriately process the data. Now, the data visualizations - the very last step of information delivery - were causing a disparity in what managers perceived the data to be. The new executive dashboard, replete with dials, bars, pies, and stoplights, no longer seemed to offer much ROI without clear communication of the data.
In BI seminars I give around the world, I often ask participants why they are attending. Most respond with narrowly focused operational or tactical goals, and a few identify strategic issues. While no one ever verbalizes their answer quite this way, they invariably agree when I suggest that their response can be distilled down to one core objective - a high-bandwidth means of communicating the reality buried in databases to the mind of management. Achieving this objective defines a successful BI implementation.
In chess, it is clear when the game has been won, with a checkmate. Teaching children the rules of how the pieces move is necessary but not sufficient to help them learn what it takes to win. When you watch children playing chess with little sense of an endgame, you generally see them adeptly applying their narrowly focused skills until each is running around the board with only a few pieces left. "The endgame," says D.B. Pritchard, the chess writer, "may be described as that stage of the game in which both sides are so reduced in forces as to be unable to win by direct attack."
What is required in chess is a strategy for winning before both sides are reduced in force. With BI implementations, even when all the right moves have been made selecting and implementing technology, there is often a sense that technologists and business managers have been at opposite sides of a virtual chessboard. From the dispassionate view of a consultant, often called in after sides have been drawn, I typically observe that well-meaning professionals have been adeptly applying narrowly focused skills. Without a high-level strategy for success, these efforts will result much like the children's chess game: many moves adeptly made, and little accomplished toward a successful goal for the organization. Without this strategy, the end-result is consistently sub-optimized for communicating the reality in the data to management.
The Great Paradigm Shift Defines 'The BI Endgame'
The technical infrastructure for BI is built with personnel who focus on issues such as sourcing and cleansing data; ETL functionality; warehousing; integration/transformation; aggregation/consolidation; timeliness/reliability; and query optimization. Moving through these stages involves software interfaces and a flow of electrons within the electronic circuitry. When the work is done, clean, timely, reliable data is presented on a visual display device with tables or charts.
Neither the behind-the-scenes data processing technology nor the visual display technology is relevant to end-users. The management team for whom BI systems are built is eager to focus on their own issues such as exploring and analyzing data; discerning trends and patterns; deriving insights; drawing conclusions; communicating findings; and effecting change. They may use a computer screen, a projector, or even a piece of paper, and while the ability for interaction may vary, they still see the same tables and charts of data.
At the surface of that visual display, the long trail of electrons stops. Now, it is a flow of photons (light) that carries the data the last step to the mind of management. This is precisely where 'The Great Paradigm Shift' occurs, and precisely where the BI endgame begins.
This is where we need an incisive strategy - before everyone is reduced in resources and 'unable to win.' No longer are we dealing with software interfaces. Now perceptual interfaces must bear the heavy burden of delivering a successful BI implementation. Now, the paradigm of visual perception must deliver "a high-bandwidth means of communicating from the reality buried in our databases to the mind of management." Delivering on this objective is the responsibility of effective data visualization.
Discerning business leaders observe how pervasive the visual display of quantitative information is throughout their organizations, and now realize that rudimentary training is not a sufficient background for a successful BI endgame. Some insightful executives share privately that they believe a focus on how they use data visualization will build a core competency giving their corporation a distinct competitive advantage.
Now, the BI endgame has taken on a whole new complexion. Going well beyond a concern for calculating ROI, a successful BI endgame offers a competitive advantage to an entire organization. Achieving such success with the BI endgame requires a new approach to visual data communication and a significant role for management in being actively engaged in the process.
Howard A. Spielman, M.B.A., Ph.D., President of Management Semiotics International Inc., can be reached at HASpielman@ManagementSemiotics.com.
