Rethinking Business Intelligence Strategies

July 26th, 2010

dykeh

A new research report from Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang, “Rethink Your Next Generation Business Intelligence Strategy,” offers a sweeping and thought-provoking view of what was, what is, and what could (and should) be the future for BI. As Ray points out on his blog, A Software Insider’s Point of View, “BI continues to evolve from fragmented and historical reporting to pervasive, predictive and real-time decision support.” The implication is that decades-old approaches no longer fit.

The definition and requirements for BI have simply outpaced the practical vision when the term “Business Intelligence” was coined by analyst Howard Dresner. Today BI not only represents the convergence of information integration, aggregation AND analysis, it’s viewed as the user experience that’s leading the information revolution. This heady stuff is what makes Ray’s report so relevant.

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Get to the heart of uptime in the Cloud

June 24th, 2010

Ajay Dawar

SearchCIO recently ran a great piece called, Cloud SLAs: Tips for tackling uptime in the cloud .” The article highlights the best practices approach Shaklee CIO Ken Harris takes when partnering with SaaS vendors like PivotLink. I’m glad the unglamorous subject of up-time is getting the air time it deserves. Here are some key take-aways from the piece.

1. IT has a critical role assuring that the right service is purchased.

It is a myth that IT has no role to play in purchasing and using cloud services. Business users can evaluate service functionality but only IT can counsel on subjects like up-time, integration, availability of data, recovery of data and security. IT should be involved in purchasing cloud services to evaluate the service aspect of the Software-as-a-Service.

2. Businesses should demand a practical up-time, not an idealistic one

It’s important to demand an up-time that meets practical usage requirements. Typically a 99.9% (8.8 hours of downtime in 1 year) is sufficient. Most leading cloud vendors promise 99.9% and typically deliver more. Ditto for PivotLink.

3. For SaaS BI  BI there is more to up-time than meets the eye

Typical contract language discussing up-time and availability can get pretty geeky. What’s most important to understand is how business users will use the service. Each BI deployment has many moving parts.  A cloud BI vendor may provide 99.999% availability for a user to log in and run reports, but if the data in the report is not up to date it won’t meet the business requirements. One needs to think critically about data availability. For example, we recently worked with a well-known retailer that wanted point-of-sales analysis reports ready each day by 7 a.m. because the entire merchandising department met at that time to discuss sales trends. In their case it was more important to have the service available a few hours before and after 7 a.m. each day than at any other time.

4. Validate cloud vendors’ service quality with industry accepted audits

Mature cloud companies are universally SAS 70 Type II certified.  To obtain SAS 70 Type II certification a cloud provider must demonstrate they are delivering a quality service, with well-designed and well-documented processes that assure availability, up time, support and security

SAS 70 Type II is different from SAS 70 Type I, which is less rigorous. SAS 70 Type II shouldn’t be confused with SAS 70 certification for the data center. Beware of cloud providers that use these terms loosely. It is important to specifically ask if the entire service and not just the data center is SAS 70 Type II certified.

For another good read about practical up-time and the costs involved in doing so, check out this post on the SmoothSpan blog.


Aberdeen’s best retailers use PivotLink

June 22nd, 2010

dykeh

The findings are in from a recent Aberdeen Group survey of 117 retailers, revealing how “Best in Class” companies increase consumer and business insight with BI. We congratulate PivotLink customers CarToys, Rossignol and Potbelly Sandwich Works (served by our partner, Distribution Market Advantage) for rising to the top as “Best in Class” companies in the report, titled “Pervasive Retail Business Intelligence: Optimize Internal Performance for External Market Agility.” Aberdeen’s findings confirm that SaaS BI gives savvy retailers a competitive edge, offering strategic insights into operations, inventory, promotions and customer purchasing behavior.

Best in Class companies cited several keys to successfully using BI, such as:

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SAP + Sybase = Here we go … again

May 19th, 2010

dykeh

It’s convenient that SAP rolled out the welcome mat for SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, not far from the Magic Kingdom. Like its acquisition of Business Objects, buying Sybase puts business intelligence users on the monorail loop back where they started, wishing for greater returns from their BI investment.

While industry pundits debate the announcement’s implications for mobile computing, the untold story is what SAP isn’t saying about BI to those CIOs with hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in their software. As customers, partners, analysts and media enjoy SAP’s confab in the Sunshine State, here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Read the rest of this entry »


New BI transforms market, study says

May 5th, 2010

qgallivan

The PivotLink team noticed a profound shift in customer requirements for business intelligence solutions more than two years ago. At that time, businesses started turning away from traditional, on-premise BI systems and began deploying alternative solutions to harness the burgeoning amounts of data housed in internal systems and the Cloud. Many organizations, like VF Corporation – Asia, turned to PivotLink to augment their legacy on-premise BI systems with new solutions that are affordable, secure, and quickly deployed in the Cloud.

CIOs and line-of-business executives also told us they needed to change the way they worked. Business users yearn for instantaneous insight into their business and the ability to manage dynamic market changes without burdening IT, while IT wants to focus more on the strategic direction of BI environments and less on building ad-hoc reports. For some time, we’ve called this emerging market trend “The New BI.”

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Debuting ReadiMetrix and 4.3 at Gartner BI Summit

April 15th, 2010

qgallivan

I traveled to Las Vegas this week with some PivotLink customers and partners to attend the Gartner BI Summit 2010. We not only debuted ReadiMetrix for Sales, Marketing and Human Capital Management to the crowd but we announced the new 4.3 release of our SaaS BI Platform. As the only pure-play SaaS BI vendor in the exhibit hall we drew a tremendous amount of traffic to the booth, where we engaged both line of business users and IT professionals in extensive demos and discussion around the New BI.

PivotLink’s vision for the New BI intends to create a business world where everyone is empowered – especially business users who are ultimately responsible for the decisions and outcomes made using enterprise data. Of the many conversations I had with attendees and analysts, several points stood out in support of our vision for the New BI:

1. Business users are yearning for tools that will allow them to explore and analyze their data independently without waiting for IT
2. IT won’t resist something that makes business users more effective while reducing their workload
3. The New BI will help build a bridge between IT and the line of business thereby driving rapid cultural changes

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How to Select Integration Partners, the DMA Way

April 14th, 2010

dykeh

Just a quick post following the Computerworld SaaScon 2010 conference in Santa Clara recently …

I was very pleased by the extremely bullish outlook on cloud computing voiced at SaaSCon, especially by representatives from some of the larger companies. More than one speaker indicated that the market has reached a tipping point, where the maturity of services and software offered, combined with the current economic climate, are making the cloud much more attractive to large companies. Some, like Bob Sala, CEO of Distribution Marketing Advantage, stressed that moving to the cloud is now a strategic imperative. Read the rest of this entry »


Using SaaS BI to Improve Supply Chain Intelligence at DHL

April 1st, 2010

terie

We recently caught up with Doug Ingram, Manager of Process Enginieering at DHL Solutions to get his insight into how DHL uses PivotLink’s SaaS BI solution to break down data silos and gain laser-focused insight into their business.  As a supply-chain industry veteran, Doug is a firm believer in analytics as a competitive differentiator. ”Fundamental to supply chain strategy execution is the ability for people from inside and outside of the organization to analyze data and map that to metrics that align individual decisions and actions to strategic business initiatives. ”

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DM Radio podcast on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

March 26th, 2010

dykeh

With Software-as-a-Service taking off, organizations need a way to reconcile their on-premise systems with the cloud. Is SOA (service oriented architecture) the perfect recipe for businesses to achieve higher levels of agility, productivity, efficiency and alignment? Bob Kemper, SVP Development at PivotLink participated on a DM Radio panel discussion this week entitled SOA: Better Late than Never to take on this question. Other panelists included Randy Heffner, Forrester; Larry Mieldezis, Liaison; Ash Parikh, Informatica.

Eric Kavanagh hosted the conversation that revolved around a range of topics such as - Why SOA’s time has finally arrived; How SOA enables atmospheric integration; What constitutes a robust SOA; How SOA allows an end-to-end integration platform, right down to the mainframe.  Bob made some striking comments about the business value SAO offers:

  1. Lower costs associated with the acquisition and maintenance of technology
  2. Management of business functionality closer to the business units
  3. Leverages existing investments in technology
  4. Reduces reliance on expensive custom development

To get the full story on SOA from Bob’s perspective and those of the other panelists, download the DM Radio podcast.


ReadiMetrix ™: The New BI for business users – finally!

March 16th, 2010

qgallivan

At PivotLink, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by an executive team whose pedigree runs deep in the BI industry. That said, they each have a chip on their shoulder regarding the failed promise of on-premise BI to provide actionable insight pervasively or deploy tools that are easy for business users to use.

This week the PivotLink team popped the champagne corks on the release of our ReadiMetrix ™ family of pre-packaged analytical applications for business users.  These off-the-shelf, ready-to-deploy applications include specific KPI’s, metrics, reports and dashboards for the Sales, Marketing and Human Resource functions. We call this new kind of packaged analytics offering, Insight as a Service.

For example, ReadiMetrix for Sales™ comes with industry best practices and KPI’s for measuring sales performance, pipeline velocity, forecast accuracy, and win-rate analysis.  ReadiMetrix for Marketing™ allows marketing executives to measure and track KPI’s associated with lead source analyses, real ROI by campaign and lead source, demand creation effectiveness, and opportunity segmentation and profiling.  ReadiMetrix for HCM™ allows HR executives to drill down into KPI’s linked to compensation and benefit cost analysis, headcount/attrition analyses, and performance-to-pay analyses. Read the rest of this entry »