As a 19-year veteran of SAP BusinessObjects, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to be a “social ambassador” for business intelligence and analytics for SAPPHIRE NOW in Frankfurt.

Whether or not you have any SAP products, and whether or not you’ll be attending the physical events, there’s going to be lots of great new information of interest to anybody involved with business intelligence and performance management. My job will be to help you get the most out of the event, through a combination of blog posts (on this site, and on the SAPPHIRE NOW blog site, tweets, and on the SAPPPHIRE NOW YouTube video channel (and no, I don’t intend that to involve being a “we love SAP faux presence” — I’m passionate about BI, and intend to share what I find interesting and useful)

This year will see the fruition of lot of the plans we’ve been working on since the Business Objects was acquired by SAP in October 2007. Along with the traditional product updates and customer experience presentations, here are the topic areas I think will be of particular interest:

1. The increased integration between SAP BW with BusinessObjects front-end technology. The conference will include sessions from real-life integrations experiences, for example Accenture and Shell will give a detailed review of their experiences with BusinessObjects and BW
2. The integration of SAP in-memory processing technology with BusinessObjects front-end tools for “instant value” against ANY data source
3. The continued development of BusinessObjects technology into cutting-edge areas such as on-demand, enterprise collaboration, social networking analysis, mobile BI, and augmented reality.

This post covers some of high-level logistics of SAPPHIRE NOW, and points out some resources that might be of interest — since everything is going to be recorded and available online as part of the http://sapphirenow.com web site, I’ve included sessions that might interest you from both Orlando and Frankfurt.

SAPPHIRE NOW in a nutshell

• As part of a move towards the “conferences 2.0”, there will be live coverage on the SAPPHIRE NOW web site, for free, with over 400 live sessions in HD video (and on-demand after), which may make it one of the biggest online conferences ever — register now!

• Two simultaneous physical locations: Frankfurt and Orlando, May 17th-19th (Orlando also features sessions organized by ASUG)
• Keynotes from visionaries and SAP executives, on business trends, current products, and future directions. (Frankfurt, Orlando)
  
• Four “campuses” (Industries, Lines of Business, Innovation, and Small Businesses and Midsize Companies), each with a full agenda of panel sessions, presentations, and discussions, and live demo areas (Frankfurt, Orlando)

• A full set of programs from the on-site Broadcast Centers. You can attend the sessions live in the studios, or follow them online.

BI, Analytics and BusinessObjects @ SAPPHIRE NOW

The BusinessObjects portfolio of products will be ubiquitous at SAPPHIRE NOW, present in all four campuses, and featuring in over TWO HUNDRED sessions (full lists Frankfurt Orlando). There are suggested, customizable agendas in the online agenda builder:

Frankfurt

• Business Intelligence (I’ll be attending as many of these sessions as I can)
• Finance

Orlando

• Business Intelligence for Data Centric user
• Business Intelligence for Managers/Executives
• Business Intelligence for SAP Users New to SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio
• SAP BusinessObjects for New Customers
• Finance – Compliance
• Financial Planning, Forecasting, and Profitability

These agendas only scratch the surface of what is available, so I’ve tried to group some of the key sessions by topic of interest below. Note that most presentations are a short-and-sweet 20 minutes long (which will be available online for viewing after the event), but are then followed by a separate interactive 20-minute discussion session in an adjoining room – make sure you remember to build that into your agenda if you’re physically on site and interested in participating.

Understanding the product line

The SAP BusinessObjects suite of products helps close the loop between strategy and execution – here’s a short video that gives an overview:

Here are some of the key sessions for understanding what products are available, and how they fit in with your needs and technical landscapes:

• The SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio: Solutions from A to Z. Long-time BusinessObjects employee Paul Clark delivers his famous portfolio overview.
• Choosing your BI Solution for your SAP NetWeaver BW Landscape will take a look at the options you have as a customer, which deployed SAP NetWeaver BW as your data warehouse solution.
• Pick the right SAP BusinessObjects BI Tool. This session will explain how you can use your user requirements and match the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio to those requirements and select the right tool for the job. This session will be relevant independent of your underlying data sources.

We’re also working on a brand-new SAP Solution Advisor for BI tool. If you would like to provide feedback, please register for a Test Drive session.

Customer presentations

Hear how organizations like yours are using analytics and performance management to improve the way they do business. Note that this is only a small selection of the many sessions available. You can use the Advanced Search option to find customer sessions in your industry (Frankfurt Orlando)

Frankfurt:

• Unilever’s Workflow for Master Data: Unilever, a global consumer-goods company, is pioneering the use of SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management and SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management to create business processes that manage master data through creation and registration to establishment and enhancement. Learn about the strategy behind this initiative and the techniques involved in making it happen, moving from pilot implementation to global rollout.
• Shell’s SAP BusinessObjects Decision Dashboard Built On SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse: With Shell’s Financial Mgt and Operational Reporting decision dashboard, 6500 managers in 23 countries are making better decisions. The dashboard delivers a standardized, organizationally aligned, and vertically integrated solution using SAP BusinessObjects WEBI and Xcelsius for the frontend, drawing data from an SAP Business Warehouse which consolidates the data from a completely heterogeneous system landscape. Learn how Shell is minimizing complexity and cost, reusing global processes and tools; and decommissioning standalone solutions with this groundbreaking management tool.
• See, Think, and Act Clearly to Drive Performance in Upstream Operations. The primary success criteria for an upstream oil and gas enterprise is safe, efficient, effective, and responsive production of hydrocarbons. See how companies can manage the performance of their operations, while simultaneously balancing safety, production, and cost objectives and constraints across their asset operations. Discover the new capabilities SAP is delivering for upstream operations performance management
• PANEL: Managing Information for the Enterprise: Insights and Actions for Executives. Information is a valuable corporate asset, yet less than half of companies have effective business intelligence and enterprise information management strategies. Listen to a panel of successful organizations using information for competitive advantage to deliver better business insights, improve efficiency, and ensure compliance mandates.  (Along with representatives from Shell, Unilever, and Harrods, this session will feature SAP’s CIO, Oliver Bussmann, SAP’s own CIO, talking about how we implement BusinessObjects at SAP)
• Clarity at Consol Glass. Glass containers use colors, such as amber, to protect content. But, to see the liquid with clarity, it must be poured into colorless glass. See how Consol Glass is seeing with clarity by pouring its business intelligence content into SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, uncovering never-before-seen insights.
• …and many others

Orlando:

• Why public service programs need good data?. A major challenge with CRM projects is managing data-quality and integrating all business-partner information. Learn how Florida Department of Revenue (FDOR) uses SAP BusinessObjects Data Services to integrate, cleanse, and standardize their customer data and data from external agencies.  For FDOR it is more than just managing data quality, it is about ensuring that bad data doesn’t impact the public citizens and participants of the various public service programs. This session will demonstrate how SAP BusinessObjects Data Services and BI/BW in CRM projects has replaced FDOR’s complex ABAP routines, and transformed FDOR data into a trustworthy corporate asset.
• Harnessing the Power of SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions. Discover how Newell Rubbermaid leverages SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions to make faster, more informed, and accurate business decisions. By combining the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA) with SAP BusinessObjects BI software, Newell has achieved usability, speed, and scalability targets to fully leverage investment in SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions – including SAP Objects Explorer Accelerated, Mobile, Web Intelligence, and Xcelsius.
• Kraft Foods Finds A Single Source of Truth. Learn how Kraft Foods established an award-winning global data governance model by adopting SAP NetWeaver as the backbone of its enterprise information management and business transformation strategy. In less than nine months, Kraft deployed SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management to integrate and consolidate data from SAP and non-SAP legacy systems for its North American roll-out of SAP ERP.
• …and many others

Key BI technology trends covered at SAPPHIRE NOW

Core Business Intelligence. There are some great sessions on business intelligence deployment including Best practices for deploying Web Intelligence to Business Users, Walt Disney Parks on From Excel to SAP BusinessObjects: An Income Statement Story, and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence XI 3.1 – Bring it On!

Finance, Performance Management, and GRC. There are suggested session agendas available for anybody interested in finance (see above). If you’d like a high-level overview, there’s a session on the latest advances and future directions of SAP solutions for financials; enterprise performance management; and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) (Frankfurt Orlando)

In-Memory Analytics. The lower costs of in-memory processing is making huge changes in how we can deal with information. Keynotes (Frankfurt Orlando) and track sessions (Frankfurt Orlando) will cover how this new technology is resetting the bar on what’s possible with analytics, and introduce you to SAP’s products in this area, including BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated. There’s also a panel session with customers discussion how they are using this solution in their businesses.

On-Demand Business Intelligence. There will be a dedicated on-demand area in the innovation campus, featuring SAP’s on-demand BI solutions, and you can sign up for a free account that lets you update and analyze information online, or access it via mobile devices. Get an overview of our BI OnDemand future directions, find out how Enterprise 2.0 platform vendor Jive uses our on-demand BI analytics to power their analytics module, and take part in microforums where you can give your input into SAP’s strategy (Orlando Session 1, Session 2). We also “drink our own champagne” and there’s a session that covers how SAP itself uses BI OnDemand.

Collaborative Decision-Making and Social Analytics. The brand-new SAP StreamWork collaborative decision-making product will be featured in the innovation campus, and covered in sessions in Frankfurt and Orlando ( Session 1 Session 2). But nothing is as good as trying it out yourself, so sign up for the free edition (you can use the same login as for BI OnDemand) and give us feedback in the microforum sessions (Frankfurt, Orlando). In addition, the SAP Social Network Analyzer prototype will be featured in the demo area of the innovation campus.

Operational BI. You’ll see BusinessObjects reports and dashboards embedded in SAP applications throughout the show and there’s a dedicated session, “Operational BI: Expanding the SAP Technology Platform” in the Innovation Campus to show how businesses can gain real-time visibility into a company’s operations (Frankfurt Orlando)

Sustainability Performance Management and Measuring Your Carbon Footprint. Sustainability is a major theme for SAP, and there are over 100 sessions that touch on the subject at SAPPHIRE NOW (full lists: Frankfurt Orlando). There’s a dedicated sustainability area and sessions in the innovation campus featuring the SAP Sustainability Performance Management product launched last year that helps customers drive achievement of sustainability objectives through target setting, measuring progress, and monitoring achievement ( Frankfurt Orlando). There are also sessions covering the SAP Carbon Impact product that helps you accurately measure and report your enterprise carbon footprint (Frankfurt Orlando)

Mobile BI. Mobility will be a key theme of the conference. Help us drive strategy by attending a mobility microforum (Frankfurt Orlando). Find out how Dow Corning has delivered mobile BI to its employees with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer for iPhone and iPad and RoamBI. Check out BusinessObjects Mobile, and try out the products yourself in the mobility area of the innovation campus (and you might even get a sneak peek at a bit of “augmented corporate reality”)

Exhibition hall

If you’re going to be at one of the physical locations, make sure you find the time to visit the exhibition booths for lots of other BI / Analytic products and services from SAP Partners (Frankfurt Orlando)

Other resources

During the show, I’ll be one of the people tweeting out from the BusinessObjects twitter account, and you should follow me directly at http://twitter.com/timoelliott.

So there you have it: more information than you can possibly process, just like the whole reason for BI in the first place.

It’s a sunny Fall morning in San Francisco, and Steve Wylie of TechWeb kicked off the first San Francisco version of the E2.0 event, talking about the changes he’s seen over the last few years. In particular, he pointed to the the rich case studies, larger vendors, and dedicated service providers that are present at today’s event as evidence of the industry’s increasing maturity.

Tammy Erickson, President of nGenera Innovation, started her keynote with a prediction that this year will be seen as the “ah-ha” year, when organizations really started implementing Enterprise 2.0 technology. She explained that, as with every new technology, the early focus is on the technology itself, but it will ultimately lead to big changes in the the way organizations work. For example, the invention of the telephone enabled management at a distance, and the creation of head offices far from the plants and factories.

She went on to outline the changes she sees in the future:

Over the last 100 years, we’ve developed organizations perfectly adapted to prior challenges – but not the challenges of the future. The icons of the future will be those organizations that have harnessed the power of Enterprise 2.0 technology in organizations, bringing information together in powerful new ways.

The organizational structures of today’s organizations are not adapted to the new methods. We need more flexible team structures that have ability to effect change. And beyond the structures, there are a series of deeply-embedded assumptions that need to be surfaced and addressed.

For example, there’s assumed to be a tradeoff between loyalty, and protection and care. Most corporate policies – such as pension plans and promotions – are based on this. But we know as employees that we can no longer companies to protect us – but as yet, there’s no replacement pact yet to take its place. Another assumption has been about individual autonomy – the notion that “you do your job, I do mind”, and that peers don’t have any right or ability to comment on my work.

Today, almost all the unwritten rules in our organizations actually discourage collaborative behavior, and this has to change. The future will see a move to more of a “Plug and Pay” structure, where employees can come in for specific roles for which they are best qualified.

nGenera’s research shows there are ten behaviors that enable collaborative capacity:

• Highly engaged, committed participants
• Trust-based relationships
• Networking opportunities
• Selection, promotion and training practices based on collaboration
• Organizational philosophy supporting a “community of adults”
• Executives who create a “gift culture”
• Leaders with both task- and relationship-management skills
• Productive and efficient behaviors and processes
• Clearly defined individual roles and responsibilities
• Important, challenging tasks

Executive concerns about Enterprise 2.0 are clearly diminishing – fewer people consider it a luxury, or simply a sop to Gen-Y employees. Organizations are realizing that these are business tools that have substantial implications for the way we carry out activities.

But there’s still confusion – we lump together a very wide range of different activities and technologies under the “Enterprise 2.0” banner. The reality is that Enterprise 2.0 can take many forms – and it’s not always worth it.

So what do people mean? There are typically “ten collaborative intents”:

1. Connect previously-unrelated ideas
2. Access untapped people or expertise
3. Distribute work or risk
4. Co-create
5. Detect emerging patterns or trends
6. Pool judgments
7. Determine group-wide preferences
8. Air and debate multiple views
9. Influence views or norms
10. Coordinate in time and space

One of the biggest future challenges is engagement: you can’t make anyone collaborate. You don’t really know if I’m really putting forth my “best effort”. So the way we’ve learned to manage, by setting directions and controls, and monitoring success – has to change. The new management challenge will be engagement: the job of a manager is to help employees want to share, to collaborate. This requires a very “authentic” organization – one that is true to “what it means to work here”

Tammy outlined four common corporate positions today:

• Technology-led
• Culture-based
• Executive-led
• Skunk works

In each of these cases, the approach isn’t yet balanced – one of the elements dominates over the others (strategy, structure, culture, technology, or engagement) – or, in the skunkworks case, there’s only some development in each area..

Microsoft’s presentation featured a mock “social speed date”  between Christian Finn, Director of SharePoint Product Management at Microsoft, and Alina Fu, SharePoint product manager.

Andrew McAfee, first coined the term Enterprise 2.0 in an article in 2006, and literally wrote the book about the subject.

He agreed with Tammy that there’s been a sea-change in interest in Enterprise 2.0, and that executives have moved from skepticism to awareness, or resignation, or even some enthusiasm. But there are also some danger signs – hence the title of his presentation: “We have the opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory""

First, the evidence that Enterprise 2.0 is thriving. Andrew’s favorite case study comes from the intelligence community: “if they can do it – with a strong “need to know” tradition of information sharing – then anybody can.” When he asked a member of that community what had
changed, they said:

“Philosophy used to be that if we shared information too much, people would die. But after 9/11, we realized that if we DON’T share information enough, people could die.”

Andrew pointed to the growth of case studies and organizations such as the Enterprise 2.0 adoption council as an example of the increasing maturity of the industry (plus, they have great swag!)

Andrew quoted from various studies including one from McKinsey called “how companies are benefiting from Web 2.0”, which showed big increases in access to knowledge, to internal experts, employee satisfaction, increasing innovation, and customer satisfaction.

What are the dangers? What could we do to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Here are some common mistakes Andrew sees:

Declaring war on the enterprise. As Andrew points out, this is a really bad sales pitch – if the goal is to make the executives go away, they are unlikely to sign up for the plan. Plus, and more importantly, it’s flat-out empirically wrong – there’s still need for some hierarchy, there’s still need for management. To illustrate the point, Andrew pointed to a news story from the satirical journal, the Onion — “Marrxist’s apartment a microscosm of why Marxism doesn’t work”.

Allow walled gardens to flourish. Create mutually inaccessible silos of information. The web works because there’s “a” web, not lots of different webs. He illustrated this with a picture of walled fields from Normandy France.

Accentuate the negative. The risks are manageable, and shouldn’t be ignored, but shouldn’t stop things going forward. For example, one organization implemented a “flag” that could be set to show a potential problem – but so far it’s never been used.

Try to replace email. We’re not going to replace email any time soon. It works well for a lot of people, and in particular, senior decision-makers are happy with it, especially the “one stop shop” aspect of the inbox.

Fall in love with features. Users don’t want more bells and whistles. We have a tendency to cram in more features – but this doesn’t make it any easier to use. The phrase to retain is “what’s the simplest thing that could possibly work?”

Overuse the word “social”. The word is technically accurate, but “I’ve rarely come across a work that has so many negative associations for managers” – it sounds like “technology to organize social hour” (cue picture of Woodstock: chaos, despair, etc.)

In the final keynote of the morning, Rob Tarkoff, VP and General Manager, Business Productivity Solutions for Adobe explained that enterprise software is failing because of the lack of attractive interfaces, and showed an example of healthcare workflow using Adobe’s solutions.

SAP is a Gold Sponsor of this year’s Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston. Unfortunately, I’m not able to attend this year – here’s what I’ll be missing (least until the online versions are available):

Connect. Collaborate. Transform Your Business. Forward looking businesses are using web 2.0 and social tools to achieve new levels of productivity and efficiency in a tough economy. Attend the leading event for business and IT professionals challenging the status quo and leading the charge to Enterprise 2.0.

Over forty sessions across six conference tracks cover the latest trends in Enterprise 2.0 technology innovation and organization-wide change:

• Enterprise 2.0 in Action
• Social Tools for the Enterprise
• Foundations for Enterprise 2.0
• New Ways to Work: Organization 2.0
• Community Engagement Through Social Media
• Executive

There will be a host of Enterprise 2.0 experts from SAP attending the conference, including Beth Beld, Vice President Emerging Technology Strategy. They will be networking with customers, analysts, and partners, and the SAP booth in the Expo Pavillion will be open Tuesday and Wednesday, 11:30 am – 6 pm. Don’t forget to visit to get the latest on SAP’s cloud computing directions, on-demand strategy, and the latest Web 2.0 prototypes from the SAP BusinessObjects innovation center.

Mani Gill, Vice President, OnDemand, SAP will be presenting in the panel on Privacy, Data Ownership and Identity in an Increasingly Social World, 3:30 pm–4:30 pm on Wednesday, June 24:

"It’s IM all over again!" as public services such as Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace increasingly cross from consumer into enterprise. As these tools become legitimate business services for marketing and collaboration, IT must determine how to move from blocking to supporting their use in a manner that’s consistent with requirements for data loss prevention, security, compliance, and management. During this session we’ll explore the challenges in bridging private and public worlds, as well as mitigation strategies to enable use of public services while minimizing potential threats.

This is my subjective summary of the themes I heard most about during the conference.

• Star Schema 2.0 rock!
• Successful BI requires a BI strategy
• BI governance is evolving
• Megavendors dominate
• SAP standardization and innovation
• The future of decisions
• Performance management showdown: the CEO vs. the CIO
• Other coverage 

Star Schema 2.0 Rock!

In the traditional skit opening, Star Schema sang "‘I’ll BI watching you". I learned that Andreas Bitterer is an accomplished musician — and that Nigel Rayner is an extremely brave singer.

Successful BI Requires a BI Strategy

As Gartner announced recently, business intelligence is the #1 technology priority for CIOs for the 4th year running.

This is clearly an indication of the increasing growth and importance of BI as it moves into the mainstream. But it also shows that the problems that pushed organizations to invest in business intelligence remain intractable. In comparison, the #1 priority five years ago (security) is now far down the list, presumably because the more serious issues were effectively addressed. 

Andy Bitterer’s opening keynote presentation gave a great overview of the challenges facing organizations trying to implement BI, and outlined Gartner’s recommended approach to creating a BI strategy and framework.

Choice quotes included:

• "Watch out for the AMEs (airline magazine experts) who say: ‘I just want a simple dashboard — that should be easy, right?’"
• "Putting a dashboard on a flawed data warehouse is like putting lipstick on a pig"
• "It’s about a BI program, not BI projects — it’s like security; nobody ever talks about ‘security projects’"
• "What fails is not the technology"
• "IT people can’t — and shouldn’t — build the business case"
• "You can’t just ask people for their requirements — they don’t know, and they’ll go for the lowest common denominator: reporting"

Andy later summarized the event (over Twitter) as "Bottom line: People, get BI strategy. Now!"

BI Strategy Requires BI Standards

Andy Bitterer’s opening presentation emphasized that BI strategy is about far more than choosing with products to implement: ""When I ask you what’s your BI strategy, please don’t give me the name of a vendor!"

But his remarks also made it clear that a real-life BI strategy could and should include a process of standardization and consolidation:

• "No standards — everybody has their own answer to every question — how can that work?"
• "Zools are zoos of tools… many organizations are saying they have too many tools — no point in that, paying more money than you should"
• "Do you have a BI strategy, or BI anarchy?"

The conference included several excellent presentations that covered successful strategic BI deployments in large, complex organizations.

Network Rail is responsible for the UK rail infrastructure that carries over one billion passengers a year. Enterprise architect Christopher Stanley gave a great overview of Network Rail’s "joined-up approach" to information management — a critical part of their plan to reduce operating expenditures by 21% by 2014.

Historically, Network Rail had a very fragmented approach to management reporting. Although a big part of Network Rail’s business is all about asset management, information was not being treated as a business asset.

One of their first steps (influenced at least in part by a white paper I wrote a few years ago on "practical steps to BI standardization") was to implement a thorough information audit  — talking to the business users, asking them what information they used, and why. The audit revealed many home-grown, fragmented, spreadsheet-based, manually-operated systems, and sub-optimal use of system resources.

Network rail used this information to create a written BI strategy. A carrot-and-stick approach was then taken to encourage business unit cooperation: veto rights over new BI implementations, and financial incentives for corporate standards backed by enterprise agreements negotiated with major vendors.

Network Rail’s BI Strategy included implementing standard processes and tools, and consolidating duplicated resources — for example, to reduce the number of data warehouses within the organization.

Like all other organizations, data quality is an ongoing problem at Network Rail — especially because: some source systems are owned by other organizations; information must be shared with their customers and partners; and because the data is subject to regulatory compliance. Cross-functional "data specialist" teams have been created to ensure a coordinated technical and business process response.

When asked for "three things the audience should do tomorrow", Chris mentioned doing an audit, putting in place standards, and fostering communication between different projects.

BI Governance is Evolving

As several speakers at the conference pointed out, every winner of Gartner’s BI Excellence award has had some form of BI Competency Center: a group dedicated to the successful use of information across the organization.

The form, staffing, responsibilities and governance of a BICC vary greatly between different organizations, but it seems that a rough practical consensus is forming.

The first steps towards a "real" BICC can be run by central IT, such as an architecture team. For example, Network Rail has been successful so far without a formal BI competency center. An early attempt failed because there no single senior sponsor who was willing/able to take responsibility for such a broad overview use of information. Instead, they have chosen to implement a "virtual" or "stealth" approach.

Projects are currently go
verned by a project coordination group (or "program office") they call the Design Authority — over time, it is hoped that this will become a fully-fledged BICC, with a focus on data architecture, people, and process.

AstraZeneca’s "Enterprise Performance Visibility" project won Gartner’s BI Excellence award in 2008. Jane Holmes, Group Systems Manager, returned this year to talk about further developments in the governance and organization of the project.

EPV has been in operation since 1995, and now has over 1400 users and 14 different "reporting suites" for different business areas. Jane is the "owner" of the system and reports to the finance function. She works with a BI Competency Center that reports to the IS organization, and the technical infrastructure (databases, etc.) for the BICC is supported by a shared service function.

The BICC has a 3:1 ratio of contract staff to permanent staff in order to adapt to swings in demand for projects. The BICC is "self-funding": modifications and adaptations to existing report areas are covered out of a general budget, but new projects and major upgrades must be financed by the business units. The BICC has put in place a series of standards for tools and processes and has close links with the various business support teams.

Over the first years of operation, it became clear that having strong standards in place was not enough to ensure the long-term success of the project. Faced with strong demand for its services, the BICC had a tendency to become a "project delivery" group.

In particular, the group struggled with:

• Ensuring that on-going high quality of information and reports available
• Minimizing the total cost of ownership (for example, by eliminating duplication between report areas)
• Delivering an optimized architecture
• Steering and governing new developments
• Promoting innovation and sharing best practice across the BICC

To respond to these problems, Jane (like Chris at Network Rail), identified the need for a "Design Authority", a regular meeting that brings together the wide range of technical and business leaders required for more strategic changes to EPV (BICC program manager, architects, system owners, business leads, etc.).

The DA meets for four hours every two weeks — attendance is encouraged, but not mandatory. The meetings offer an opportunity to take a break from day-to-day delivery pressures and deal with longer-term strategy. It is not merely a discussion group — decisions made by the DA have to be implemented by the other teams.

As the systems owner, Jane chairs and organizes the meetings, and funds all DA activity including pre- and post-meeting work, attendance at meetings, proofs of concept, etc.

Jane gave an example of the type of issue that can now be dealt with more effectively than before: handling email alerts from the supply chain monitoring system. Various options are technically possible (e.g. just sending link, sending link with report, etc.). There are pros and cons of each approach, and the meeting brought together the people needed to balance the technical and business needs.

In addition, the DA steers some cross-functional projects, such as the upgrade to the BusinessObjects XI infrastructure.

There are other Design Authorities at AstraZeneca, to solve similar cross-functional issues, and the BI Design Authority works closely with them.

Benefits of the DA include:

• Collective accountability
• Better design decisions
• Better controlled processes
• Better standards adherence
• Getting contractors up to speed faster
• Better team working
• Speedier decision making
• Lower total cost of ownership

Jane’s key learning points include:

• An empowered Design Authority can provide strong technical governance as a BI project transitions into ‘steady state’ operation.
• Business sponsorship of a Design Authority helps to ensure the BICC remains business focused.
• Involvement of both development and support decision makers in a DA improves the quality of the decisions made.
• Strong technical governance can counteract the issues caused by rapid expansion due to high demand.
• A technical team need time and space to consider design issues which are broader than individual projects to avoid point solutions. A Design Authority approach can provide that.
• Work hard on communications across a BICC to avoid design sub optimization.

The work of the DA has been temporary, however. It has now "stepped down", and part of the work (such as technical governance) will be moved into the BICC responsibilities.

It is replaced with a "BI Excellence Council" that focuses on strategy issues and meets on a quarterly bases. One focus will on maintaining an coherent BI landscape while the organization standardizes their business applications. Jane expects the overall approach to BI governance to continue to develop over time.

Megavendors Dominate

The BI megavendors (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, with HP perhaps "waiting in the wings") dominated much of the discussion at the conference.

For example, the sponsor discussion panel, hosted by Nigel Rayner (far left, below), and Neil Chandler (far right) included (from left to right) Bjorn Rist of Exie (a product similar to SAP Strategy Management), Kristina Robinson, in charge of "Business Intelligence Solutions" division of HP, Dave Laverty, formerly CMO of Cognos, now a VP at IBM, and Donald MacCormick of SAP.

A later session called "Comparing the Megavendors: How do IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP Stack Up?" summed up the competitive position of the different vendors as:

• IBM: Platform+Services=Victory
• Microsoft:From Users to Enterprise
• SAP: The Suite Rules
• Oracle: Cover The Landscape With Porfolio

Oracle & SAP were characterized as application-centric, IBM & Microsoft as infrastructure-centric

There was a separate session on open-source BI, but in general there seemed to be relatively little interest among the (self-selected, so perhaps biased) audience in either open source, SaaS, or the remaining independent BI vendors.

SAP Standardization and Innovation

In the afternoon, James Fisher, Donald MacCormick, and I did the SAP solution session: "Standardization and Innovation: The Yin and Yang of BI", covering:

• The importance of having a standard business intelligence platform and a coordinated approach to business performance and governance, risk and compliance.
• Integration is not the opposite of innovation — how we are making it easier to have a strategic approach to BI with tight integration between previously separate technologies: across the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio of products; with the rest of SAP; and with other applications and partners
• Some highlights of the new and innovative technology coming out of the SAP BusinessObjects labs

It was hard to cram all the information we wanted to cover into the 30 minute slot, but audience feedback was positive.

Click here for a copy of the presentation (powerpoint format, pdf format). (And please contact me if you have an audience that might be interested in seeing a version of this presentation, either live or via webcast.)

The Future of Decisions

Several presentations pointed out the importance of decision-making, and how it is relatively poorly-supported by current technology. For example, Gareth Herschel gave a great presentation called "Does BI = Better Decisions" that included an overview of all the many issues that get in the way of effective decision-making above and beyond getting the right information.

He explained that "We make millions of decisions every day", but that "BI touches only a very few of them today," The presentation had three main themes: "How can we use analysis to drive decisions, how do we ensure that decisions are driven by analysis, and what else do we need for good decisions?"

Gareth cited technologies such as text and speech analytics and social networks as examples of how this area will be better supported by technology in the future.

Performance Management Showdown: The CEO vs. the CIO

Nigel Rayner, Bill Hostmann, and Mark Raskino of Gartner hosted a panel discussion on Performance Management called "The Performance Management Debate — is PM "Nirvana" Achievable?:

They defined performance management "Nirvana" as:

• A defined set of performance management processes
• Implemented in a portfolio of analytic applications that support the needs of managers at all levels
• Linked by an enterprise metrics framework
• Leveraging consistent a data infrastructure
• Integrated into business processes

Nigel Rayner canvassed the audience — very few people indicated that they had already achieved this level. Mark Raskino explained that it was very easy to forget that CEOs have to deal with a very large breadth of issues, and that it was essential to keep things as simple as possible. Complexity is a very real problem in the industry. To a CEO, almost everything is infrastructure, because the term "infrastructure" is often used to mean "everything below what I am interested in."

He described the typical CEO’s reaction to the ongoing problem of not being able to get the information they need: "I tried throwing money at IT, but that didn’t work. Now I’m trying to keep it lean — but that doesn’t work either."

The result is a standoff — CEOs don’t have what they want and CIOs can’t give them what they want. In theory, CEOs could just fire CIOs until they DO find one that gives them what they want — but in fact, the average tenure of a CEO is much shorter than that of a CIO.

CEOs believe that "CIOs need to step up". CIOs spend 1/3 of their time on infrastructure, a 1/3 on vendors, and only a 1/3 on business issues.

In a recent survey, CEOs wanted three things from CIOs:

• For them to take more responsibility for information exploitation, not just provision
• More business modeling development
• More business process development

One big issue (from Frank Buytendijk of Oracle, and the others heartily agreed): Management systematically exempts itself from any examination of its own processes.

According to Raskino, it might take a generation to see any changes. In most organizations, the top and bottom of the organization turn over fairly rapidly, but in the middle there’s a "permafrost" layer that are extremely good at pretending to agree to changes. The recession may cause some "company near-death experiences", which may facilitate change faster.

In conclusion, one could say that the real "BIg discrepancy" that is blocking BI success is between the CEO and CIO.

Other Coverage

The conference was "covered" on Twitter by @markraskino, @shawnrog, @lorita, @aristippus303 and others (I’m @timoelliott). See twitter posts with the #gartnerbi tag.

Gareth Horton, "Document Database"

• Gartner BI Summit Mini-Summary
• Gartner BI Summit Part 2