OC CIO Minutes, January 13, 2011

1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 13, 2011 meeting

Present: Hendrik Gerryts, Paul Gray, Jeff Reid, David Mann, Jon Hahn, Jon Grunzweig, Stephan Birnbach, Keith Golden, Bob Houghton, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips

Our thanks to Hendrik Gerryts, RJT Compuquest, for making the presentation on BI.

It was nice to see Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on a rare visit. We welcomed Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty.

2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht

Topic: Business Intelligence

Hendrik gave several definitions of BI – techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data; technologies which provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations; DSS by any other name; bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format. The chart on page 4 of his handout is good. He gave a short history of BI, starting with a 1958 article by Hans Luhn, and the relationship between a BI system and a data warehouse, based on Forrester definitions. BI can be applied to measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration and knowledge management within an enterprise. There are many keys to a successful BI strategy, including choosing the right C-level sponsor (not the CIO), common data definitions, understanding what the user/business needs, and choosing the right tool and systems integrator. He also included a list of CSFs for the implementation of BI. He quoted a Gartner paper from 2009 on the future of BI – I’m not sure the members totally bought into the predictions, but the following trends seemed reasonable. By 2014, one third of BI will be delivered through mobile devices, analytic processing will use in-memory functions, and more of the spending will be on system integrators not software vendors. The last 3 slides contain a list of BI products which contain a reporting tool, BI vendors and a 2 by 2 chart showing challengers and leaders.

We asked those present to share with us their experiences with BI.

Paul Gray, who wrote the first book on BI, is a member of INFORM, an applications group which does OR and analytics. IT tends not to be into modeling or analytics. This is an opportunity for IT to get involved with OR to become closer to the end user.

Jeff Reid reminded us that he has just started with a new company, and they are not heavy into BI as yet. They have a data warehouse application, and are trying to consolidate data more efficiently. They are a SAP shop and will look at compatible tools.

David Mann said that they had no BI implemented as yet either, but plan to this next year. They will aim to use the tools to provide them insight into patient loyalty, claim analytics, and fraud detection, and are interested in the use of mobile devices.

Jon Grunzweig said that he works for a private company in the office/retail/industrial warehousing business, which has just completed a 2-year study of BI tools and applications, but lacked a user sponsor/investor driving the effort. They went through a process of building a portfolio analysis capability using Microsoft BI tool set, but it wasn’t until the owner started to understand the potential that they gained traction within the company – a great case study.

Jon Hahn said that he also had just started with a new company (since May), and his near term goal is to modernize all the systems. BI comes relatively low on their priority list at the moment, but they do have one BI application for reporting purposes.

Stephan Birnbach said that he has a tale of what not to do with $1M. They ended up with a COGNOS application with low adoption. IT took over ownership of the system, and never gave it back to the user. They do have an analytics application in use.

Keith Golden is also only ¾ months in a new job. His predecessor purchased COSNOS but it will take a full year of basic blocking and tackling to get it effectively implemented. Yesterday, they listened to a presentation by Microsoft on their tools but it seems that Excel and a spreadsheet approach will be still in major use.

Bob Houghton spoke about his years at Western Digital, DDI and RealtyTrac - all three had implemented BI. A CSF is to get business ownership of the effort. The biggest fight he had was from within IT in the choice of the “right” tool, but if you do it right then it becomes indispensable.

William Zauner said that they use a DW and an application called Business Objects, which is a good tool other than single sign doesn’t work. The DW applications are pretty extensive and they have some analytics capability. The presentation tool (Excelsius) and its mobile application are loved by the executives. The biggest problem has been to get one version of the truth - one definition of the data.

Jennifer Curlee took over the reporting, after she convinced the CFO and his people that there was a better way, using the BI tool to report the data from the DW. There are still two versions of the displayed data, and she has to deal with a friend of the CEO who has other reporting ideas.
Jeff Hecht explained that this was their 3rd attempt at a BI project. They will use Microsoft tools, and they have several of the problems that are common to most of us – multiple ownership of the data and multiple legacy systems. Several years ago they built a dashboard application, but the owners never really bought into it, and one version of the truth is still a major problem.