How to Satisfy Business
Users Every Time and Make Them Beg for More, Part
1
By Rick Sherman
What do business users want from their business
intelligence (BI) systems? Information! Information
to do their jobs. And they don’t want to
have to work hard to get it. It’s that simple.
Why then are so many people frustrated with BI
systems? Why do so many businesses feel forced
to build shadow IT systems when they can’t
get information they need from the data warehouse?
Myth 1: All business
users want feature-packed BI tools so they can
slice and dice data.
Your IT staff partners
with the business on most BI projects in order
to learn what the business needs and gets buy-in
and participation in the development and deployment.
That’s great in theory…but often the
business-user representatives are what we call
power users – the ones who use the BI systems
the most. On one hand, this makes sense because
other business users depend on power users to
get data and reports. Relying on power users,
however, may lead you in the wrong direction.
Here’s why:
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- First, power users are closet geeks who like BI
tools for the joy of using new technology. Your average
business user, on the other hand, has no interest
in learning and using yet another tool. That’s
true no matter how feature-packed the BI tool is or
how easy it is to use. If you have to go to training,
it’s not that easy to use.
- Second, power users know where the data is (or will
learn it) while most business users don’t feel
they need to master data architecture to get the information
needed to do their jobs. The power users’ job
has become to find, get and deliver the data.
- Third, power users are the very people who developed
the IT shadow systems that compete with the BI system
you’re developing. Power users just need the
data and not necessarily the BI tools because they
have Microsoft Access and Excel to deliver information
to business users. If your BI system does not meet
expectations, the shadow IT system stays in business.
Hmm, do I smell a conflict of interest here?
- Finally, sometimes power users are more like IT
than business users. They may not be as in touch with
business needs because they have been spending their
time on technology.
I’m not suggesting that you stop partnering with
business power users. The reality is that they are key
influencers for the other business users’ acceptance
of your BI system. However, don’t let them become
gatekeepers. You need direct access to mainstream business
users not only to understand their needs and discuss
the technology, but you also have to sell them on your
BI system.
Myth 2: Static reporting is dead.
Six-inch-thick, monthly green-bar reports may be all
but dead, but static reports are still more than one-half
of a company’s BI requirements. No longer printed
and delivered with a loud thud on the desk, static reports
are distributed over the Web (HTML, PDF, XML), e-mail,
pager or cell phone. This makes it easy to deliver them
more frequently and even to issue real-time alerts.
Static reports are now filtered, summarized and aggregated
to the specific needs of each business user, who no
longer has to wade through six inches of irrelevant
data.
Ignoring the fact that static reports are often just
what business users want, we try and shove feature-rich
BI tools down their throats. We choose tools because
they have lots of features and let users manipulate
the data to their hearts’ content. But if we just
listened, we’d understand that most business users
only need static reports containing the information
they need to do their jobs.
Sometimes business users do need to drill down into
the details and slice and dice the data. Rather than
offering the easy, automatic delivery of static reports,
the BI systems put the burden of obtaining the information
on the business users’ shoulders and assume that
every time they want information they want to go through
this process. It’s like the 80/20 rule in reverse
– we put 80 percent of the business users through
a process that only 20 percent need. Then we wonder
why business people use IT shadow systems with Excel?
(More on that next month.)
This year the major BI vendors realized the need for
production reporting. Cognos and MicroStrategy introduced
production reporting capabilities within their product
suites. Business Objects purchased Crystal Decisions
to offer this capability.
BI systems often replace hundreds or thousands of reports
generated from legacy systems. Usually you can’t
simply replace the reports with slice-and-dice tools.
You need to provide replacements that meet the business
users’ needs. Eventually you will be able to replace
these reports with efficient and cost-effective systems
but don’t expect business users to sign off on
the BI system until they feel comfortable they will
get the information they need. This is a clear indication
that production reports are still a significant deliverable
in BI systems.
Next Month
Next month we’ll explore a few more myths:
Myth 3: Excel spreadsheets are the work of the devil.
Myth 4: Executives will use dashboards to save them
time.
Myth 5: Standardizing on a BI tool will solve the problem.
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