Thursday 25 November 2010

Single version of the truth, philosophy or reality?

We all hear this a lot. The purpose of our new (BI/Analytics/Data Warehouse) project is to deliver 'a single version of the truth'. In a project we are engaged with right now the expression is one version of reality or 1VOR. For UK boomers that will almost undoubtedly bring to mind a steam engine but I digress.

I have to admit, I find the term jarring whenever I hear it because it implies something simple and  attainable through a single system which is rarely the reality.

In fact it's rarely attained causing some of our community to ponder on it's viability or even if it exists. Robin Bloor's 'Is there a single version of the Truth' and  Beyond a single version of the truth in the Obsessive Compulsive Data Quality blog are great examples.

Much, on this subject, has been written by data quality practitioners and speaks to master data management and the desire, for example, for a single and consistent view of a customer. Banks often don't understand customers, they understand accounts and if the number of (err, for example Hotel Chocolat) home shopping brochures I receive is anything to go by then many retailers don't get it either. Personally I want my bank and my chocolatier to know when I am interacting with them. I'm a name, not a number, particularly when it comes to chocolate.

This problem is also characterised by the tired and exasperated tone of a Senior Manager asking for (and sometimes begging for) a single version of the truth. This is usually because they had a 'number' (probably revenue) and went to speak to one of their Department Head about it (probably because it was unexpectedly low) and rather than spending time on understanding what the number means or what the business should do, they spent 45 minutes comparing the Senior Managers 'number' with the Department Heads 'number'. In trying to reconcile them, they also find some more 'numbers' too. It probably passed the time nicely. Make this a monthly meeting or a QBR involving a number of department heads and the 45 minutes will stretch into hours without any real insight from which decisions might have been made.

This is partly about provenance. Ideally it came from a single system of record (Finance, HR) or corporate BI but it most likely came from a spreadsheet or even worse a presentation with a spreadsheet embedded in it.

It's also about purity (or the addition of impurities, at least) It might have started pure but the department head or an analyst that works in their support and admin team calculated the number based on an extract from the finance system and possibly some other spreadsheets. The numbers were probably adjusted because of some departmental nuance. For example, if it's a Sales Team, the Sales Manager might include all the sales for a rep that joined part way through the year whilst Finance left the revenue with the previous team.

It will be no comfort (or surprise) to our Senior Manager that it is also a Master Data Management problem too. Revenue by product can only make sense if everyone in the organisation can agree the brands, categories and products that classify the things that are sold. Superficially this sounds simple but even this week I have spoken with a global business that is launching a major initiative, involving hundreds of man hours to resolve just this issue.

It's also about terminology. We sacrifice precision in language for efficiency. In most organistions we dance dangerously around synonyms and homonyms because it mostly doesn't catch us out. Net revenue ... net of what? And whilst we are on the subject ... revenue. Revenue as it was ordered, as it was delivered, as it was invoiced and as it is recognised according to GAAP rules in the finance system. By the way does your number include credit notes? And this is a SIMPLE example. Costs are often centralised, allocated or shared in some way and all dependent on a set of rules that only a handful of people in the finance team really understand.

Finally, it's about perspective. Departments in an organisation often talk about the same things but mean subtly different things because they have different perspectives. The sales team mean ordered revenue because once someone has signed hard (three copies) their job is done whilst the SMT are probably concerned about the revenue that they share with the markets in their statutory accounts.

So is a single version of the truth philisophy? Can it really be achieved? The answer is probably that there are multiple versions of the truth but they are, in many organisations, all wrong. Many organisations are looking at different things with differing perspectives and they are ALL inaccurate.

A high performing organisations should be trying to unpick these knots, in priority order, one at a time. Eventually they will be able to look at multiple versions of the truth and understand their business from multiple perspectives. Indeed the differences between the truth's will probably tell them something they didn't know from what they used to call 'the single version of the truth'.

Friday 5 November 2010

Five Cloud Myths

I know, this is a BI Blog, not a Cloud Blog but the Cloud is affecting everything and whilst BI in the Cloud will be difficult, it's journey from on-premises to cloud might be long but ... it is inevitable.

In any case, I have heard and would like to dispel the following five myths that I have heard at least once in the last few weeks.

Myth 1. Cloud will Dis-intermediate
I remember a keynote presentation from a presenter I deeply respected on the explosion of the web and how it would bring about dis-intermediation. The logic was sound. Consumers can connect directly with providers so the need for brokers, intermediaries and miscellaneous third parties appeared to be unnecessary. The growth of cloud computing has caused some to predict the same and yet a cursory glance of the services on offer will demonstrate there is no reduction in intermediaries or intermediation opportunity. If a service, offering or product will make things easier for a consumer then they will buy it. It might be comparison, consolidation or simply cheaper prices but if you can add something and make the connection painless then you can come to the party and make money for adding value.

Myth 2. Cloud is Bad for Services
With infrastructure issues 'solved' and the availability of commodity services that fix common problems like tax  and currency exchange calculations some are suggesting that the opportunity for consulting provision will diminish. My educated response to this is 'yeah right' I have yet to meet the business that has solved all the issues and is not looking for any more innovation to reduce cost or get a competitive leg-up. If the simple things are going to get solved in one place then fantastic, we can all move on to innovating and adding real value. We're all tired of solving the same problems so let's get the solutions in the cloud and build some real innovation on top of them.

Myth # 3. Cloud Means Blue Sky
Hmm. Cloud encourages a lot of blue sky thinking. But there are few businesses starting with a clean sheet (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) There are on-premises systems to integrate, proprietary solutions that will not leave the office without a fight and that's without thinking about how difficult Cloud BI can be given that it involves the complex integration of what is often large volumes of data. And multi-tenanted solutions need everyone to play nicely so those queries from hell need to be reigned in or it stays on-premises.

Cloud is (like Performance Management) a journey that needs careful planning whilst delivering improvements along the way.

Myth # 4. Cloud is ASP
This is usually suffixed with the phrase 'but marketed differently'. Of course, it has some commonality with the principles of application service provision but to dismiss it as 'the same as' is to miss the point as profoundly as  Cloud will change our industry.

Myth #5. Cloud is a Fad
Actually Myth #4 is often rolled out as 'evidence' of just how faddish Cloud is. In fact Cloud is having an impact on all system wherever it is physically located. Users now expect their systems in the office to be as easy to use and visually appealing as the web sites they use at home. In fact they do both in both locations. Cloud has also set the expectation that all systems will be available on all devices. It's not mobile or desktop anymore, it's a range of devices.

As final evidence that Cloud is not a fad, it's clear to me that to be a successful cloud vendor, like Salesforce, then you have to continue to show value month after month or your users will go elsewhere. As Phil Wainewright, CEO of Procullux Ventures put's it ... software used to be a holiday romance but cloud requires a long-term relationship. If that means I am married to Marc Benioff then I might need to re-think the analogy but there is no doubt that Cloud vendors need to play the long game.