BI is nothing without process focus

We hosted the BPMG Sydney Chapter meeting this evening and there was some spirited discussion on a range of topics - the one that tickled my fancy was a forceful statement from a Professor in academia.

" BI is nothing without process focus" - and it rings so true - in fact I have blogged it separately here. You can measure to your hearts content and configure dashboards and guages and graphs and "top 10's" until you are blue in the face but until you link the data source to process and the decision outcome from the metrics back to process they are all pretty meaningless.

If you are going to build a BI capability then it may be wise to consider the various levels of KPI applicabale in the business. There will be the strategic KPIs pointing to market share, territory volume sales etc, then there are the process group style KPIs such as inventory management etc, and then there are the individual task KPIs such as supplier invoices with POs declared, DIFOT ratios etc.

When looking at KPIs you need to know how they interrelate to each and what the actual value chain of the business is. Then as the metrics show signs of offending benchmarks you know where to go looking down the line for the problems - and those problems will always be process issues. You have to link performance and process together for both a healthy, wholistic view of the business and also to know how to react when things show signs of stress.

My B-Performance-M = B-Process-M hypothesis was reinforced.

Ask me for a free MSAS cube building script for SunSystems

We have been building OLAP cubes over SunSystems for some time now and more and more the realisation dawns in people's heads that process and performance are just two different ends of the same spectrum. I have blogged on this topic before and won't torture you with any more on that (yet).

What I will do is offer interested parties a free - yes, that's right, gratis and for nothing - SQL script that you can run against your SunSystems MS SQL database to build a little Microsoft Analysis Services OLAP data warehouse.

You will then need a snazzy viewer to allow you to look at your data in a way that you have never seen it before and truly turn it into "information". We recommend Executive Viewer - it is one of those user display tools that just blows people's socks off - and it does exactly what it says on the box - lets executives view their data in a browser (without doing any damage) and allows them to dream up almost any spontaneaous (crack pot) way of wanting to view the data without having to come back to system support to get a report written.

So - do you want a free SunSystems cube builder? What I will need from you is your company name, an email address and your SunSystems serialisation number, then I can make the magic happen.

By the way, this comes with no formal support because once you start tinkering with the script (and I know you, you will!) all bets are off - if you break it, call somone who cares! (I'm not that heartless actually, come back to me and I can give a little help around the edges).

09 Nov 2006 update - While I'm at it, I'll give away a Time @ Work cube builder for those interested - same deal as with the SunSystems one.

Respond to this post in confidence - I won't publish the recipients.