Delusions and Bottlenecks

DelusionsAND BOTTLENECKS Matillion Business Intelligence WIDGET CO MEET WIDGET CO, a company which manufactures and distributes-well, widgets. AND, NOT SURPRISINGLY, Widget Co is a lot like many other businesses today. Namely, its IT SYSTEMS DONT OFFER MUCH HELP when it comes to PROVIDING RELEVANT IDGET WIDGET WIDGET WIDGET OO OO OOO REPORTS and ANALYSIS on HOW the BUSINESS is PERFORMING. All of which causes a lot of GRIEF to people like Jenny, Mike, Sally, Henry, and Charlie. BUSINESS PERFORMANCE REPORT Because, naturally enough, to do their jobs properly, they NEED those reports. AND without those reports, then Widget Co- together with Jenny, Mike, Sally, Henry, and Charlie- MUST BATTLE a combination of DANGEROUS DELUSIONS and BUSINESS BOTTLENECKS. SUCH AS? Well, leťs meet Jenny, Mike, Sally, Henry, and Charlie, and take a first-hand look at how those delusions and bottlenecks affect a typical working day at Widget Co. DELUSION DATA MANIPULATION = DATA ANALYSIS 11 Jenny has set herself a challenge. Today, she's going to analyse Widget Co's profit margins in each of the countries in which it trades. %24 SO WHAT HAPPENS? Well, from 8:30 AM until 4:55 PM, And then, from 4:55 PM until 5:00 PM, she actually looks at the RESULTS. she MANUALLY BUILDS an ENORMOUS spreadsheet. IN SHORT, she didn't spend the day analysing the margin figures at all. She spent the day on low-level data manipulation, and ONLY FIVE MINÚTES on the valuable part of the job-actually analysing the data. True, she'd been busy all day. But the net outcome from all that work was very limited: MINÍMAL İNSIGHT, despite SIGNIFICANT EFFORT. DELUSION MY SPREADSHEET IS BETTER THAN YOUR SPREADSHEET 12 Mike and Dave have been busy analysing sales revenue figures. Dave is very pleased with the spreadsheet that he's built. And his colleague Mike is also very pleased with the spreadsheet that he has built. Flushed with success, they head off to the monthly sales meeting. Mike's spreadsheet led him inexorably to a conclusion about where the opportunities are, and what needs fixing. It's a message he's keen to share. Dave's spreadsheet has led Mike to a very different conclusion. THE RESULT: argument and debate-but not about the opportunities on offer. Instead, TIME IS WASTED discussing why the spreadsheets tell different stories. And in terms of pursuing those opportunities, not much happens. DELUSION THE ANSWERS WE NEED MUST BE IN THESE REPORTS-SOMEWHERE. ln. I'LL REQUEST A NEW REPORT. IT WLL BE FASTER! ERP SYSTEMS GENERATE COUNTLESS STANDARD REPORTS. Bolt-on supplementary systems generate countless more. Because most of those reports are rarely, if ever, used. So when Sally needs a report for a particular purpose, she has no idea if an existing report will meet the need or not. AND then there are all those special reports created by the IT department. Requested by individuals over the years, and lovingly maintained by the IT department, they slice and dice the company's data in every conceivable way. But that doesn't help Sally, the operations director. Consequently, Sally often asks for a NEW REPORT to be created-consuming expensive IT resource-because it's quicker. NOW LET'S TURN TO THOSE BOTTLENECKS.. Today's business systems are COMPLEX. But, as Sally found in Delusion#3 above, they rarely contain exactly the right reports... that companies-and their managers-want. So to plug the gap, they rely on SQL report-writing applications, running queries on the database. But only a tiny handful of people within the business have the SKILLS to do this. One person, or maybe two. BOTTLENECK 1: Too many reports, too few people. And these people quickly become a BOTTLENECK. Especially when they have other responsibilities as well. Simon is one such person. And he's so busy dealing with report requests from the people at the top of the business that he rarely has any time to prepare reports for anybody else. Even when-ironically-those reports might add more value to the business. VIP Report Requests Report Requests Widget Co produces reports by interrogating the live database. In other words, the same database that is being used to add new orders, produce invoices, and track order progress. BOTTLENECK 2: Get off the system! We need to run a report. everything down. Reports run slowly, order entry But using the live database for reporting slows screens slow down, even the warehouse can grind to a halt. Which is Henry's problem. He's the Finance Director at Widget Co. And when he want to run his end of month reporting suite, there's only one thing to do. Send an e-mail around the company, telling everybody to log off the system. Or his reports won't run. Meet Charlie, a programmer in the IT department at Widget Co. He sits next to Jo, the business analyst. Who sits opposite Claire, who keeps the ERP system going. But don't make the mistake of thinking that their job titles describe what they do. Oh no. Because what they really do is build reports. Even when much more important jobs need tackling. BOTTLENECK 3: Forget your job title, just build reports. And we can't tell you what their boss, the IT manager thinks of it, because sadly it's unprintable. Because with major IT challenges to address, scarce resource is being squandered building reports. Charlie Programmer Report builder Jo Business Analyst D Report builder Claire ERP Speciatist Report builder Self-Serve Reporting and Business Intelligence software that's fast to implement and easy to use. www.matillion.com Pesu Шиппi