Gert Fahrnberger ’s BI log

PerformancePoint Server really is a new animal in the Microsoft Zoo (Official Launch September 19th 2007). The competive positioning among Hyperion, Cognos or Business Obejects (Cartesis) suggests that deep knowledge of subjects like financial planning or statutory consolidation will be necessary beside all the technical knowledge needed to build the models and user interfaces. The technical knowledge needed is vast - the components involved beside PerformancePoint Server are SQL Server along with its Analysis Services and Integration Services components, Excel and SharePoint. And so many Microsoft partners who have implemented infrastructure solutions or data-warehouses with a technical approach up to now, have started to embark on the PerformancePoint journey ramping up their technical skills.
Adrian Downs of B(iQ) asks the question about specific certifications on PerformancePoint for Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) which I think is a good idea. Given the mostly technical background of most Microsoft partners today I think there will have to be a hell of a lot of Controlling, Accounting and Business knowledge packed into those certifications.

A new day for BI - but also one for Microsoft. And an excellent opportunity for those Microsoft partners who talk the talk and walk the walk in Performance Management.
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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft

After some efforts to build its own MDM offering Microsoft has taken a buy decision now: Microsoft just announced the takeover of Stratature, a US based software vendor that is completely focused on Master Data Management. Another move to beef up the BI stack to enable enterprise wide CPM application architectures.
Jamie Thomson at Conchango has some more details.

Ten years ago, when Microsoft bought Panorama to enter the Business Intelligence market space, many thought that Microsoft would instantly dominate the arena. It has taken a little longer but here they are ten years later Microsoft is a long term player and Steve Ballmer has made it clear in his key note speech at the first ever Microsoft BI Conference in Seattle at the beginning of May. We are dead serious he said. Full Article

Young companies need to focus on strategy and on growing their business. That’s why it is important to properly investigate before you choose a new brand or company name and register it. But even if you do you can never be sure no one will dispute your right to use it. We decided not to use our money and energy on such a dispute when another company claimed its exlusive right to use the letters “cp”

Before:

After:

What’s really important though is that we are growing like hell and that we are having fun doing it.

cpOne AG - a new provider of Performance Management and Business Intelligence Solutions, announced its market debut the day before yesterday. The company, uniting Axus AG in Munich and Aveness GmbH in Vienna with many industry experts joining from other CPM vendors, plans to expand business activities into other European markets during 2007. Most of the management are ex MIS executives - including myself. So check it out: http://www.cpone.net (for now the site is in German only - but the English version will be available shortly)

For years it seemed specialist vendors of point solutions for planning, budgeting or statutory consolidation had found the ideal habitat to grow endlessly. Their strongest competitors were enormous Excel sheets that travelled the world via mail and none of the global software giants seemed able or willing to enter this market. Microsoft’s determination to change this fact for the business intelligence arena has shown in earlier developments around the BI platform of SQL Server and Analysis Services. Real corporate performance management however with all the bells and whistles such as feedback loops, process support for budgeting, forecasting or consolidation were really hard to implement on the Microsoft platform unless you chose a third party product based on SQL Server from vendors such as Outlooksoft, Panorama or Winterheller (strong in Germany and Austria). With PerformancePoint Server 2007, which should be available for public beta by November this year and is expected to be released in Q2 2007, Microsoft will once again change the shape of the whole marketplace in CPM. Microsoft Partners such as Outlooksoft, Panorama, MIS/Infor or Winterheller who have depended on Microsofts platform are now facing Microsoft as a powerful competitor.

Here are some reasons why I think PerformancePoint server will have such a big impact on the market:

• Microsoft Excel 2007 is tightly integrated as a front-end
• As is Sharepoint Portal
• SQL Server and Analysis Services serve as the backend infrastructure and thus become the core of the Microsoft CPM architecture

The business functionality covered include and can be expanded by VAR’s or MSP’s

• Budgeting
• Financial Planning
• Forecasing
• Management Consolidation
• Analysis (ProClarity product set)
• Scorecarding (Business Scorecard Manager)

The most important reason of all are the thousands of Microsoft Dynamics Partner globally who have lots of business and finance knowledge and sure are waiting to expand their business towards CPM. CPM is mainstream now!

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft

A recent quite non factual discussion at slashdot.org exaggerates what has been a problem since the invention of IT.

ZombieLine asks: “The IT department at my company (approximately some 500 people) is showing signs of incompetence, and has been ignoring knowledgeable user input for about a year. Additionally, they haven’t been able to sell needed changes to senior management. Unacceptable server down time, maxed network storage, and no backups systems have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice. We users are staging a revolt to make IT more responsive to users by creating a group from the company divisions and IT to discuss needs and solutions. What would you put in our charter?” What services and responsibilities would you demand out of your IT department?

ZombieMime asks: “The non-IT employees at my company (approximately some 5,000,000,000 people) are showing signs of incompetence, and have been ignoring knowledgeable technology input for about a year. Additionally, they haven’t been able to accept needed changes to senior management. Unacceptable computer usage, maxed bandwidth usage, and no common sense have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice. We geeks are staging a revolt to make users more responsable to IT by creating a group from the company divisions to discuss needs and solutions. What would you put in our meeting room to kill as many people as possible?”

And Christopher Koch thinks he knows why IT and users hate each other and also came up with some helpful solutions such as setting up structured relationships between IT and business and seperating IT operations from the help desk.

And also Rick Sherman at the Data Doghouse gives some very practical advice insinuating at the cited posts.

I believe however that in many companies the problem is far too big to be solved at this level. When a pattern like this one is visible it is likely that the organisational culture has led to a self-conception of people within a company that does not contain principles such as customer orientation, learning organisation, a collective will to win or teamwork.

When you walk into a company you will immedeately catch the spirit. It’s black or white and only management can induce a change. IT departements should be service departments to support the overall goal of an organisation. To gain and keep customers while keeping the costs low. IT should be equal partners to all other departments in the efforts to achieve the corporate goal. Here an example mission statement I like:

We will evaluate, integrate and support innovative technologies to help internal and external customers achieve their goals, while effectively maximizing return on resources and providing cost effective methods…

Sounds apparent - but reality only too often is different. Many IT departments are centres of power whose primary objective it is to maintain and expand their power. Purpose perverted. Management to blame.

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Organisational Learning
Corporate Performance Management
Management

Today Microsoft has announced the takeover of ProClarity…It has paid for ProClarity to focus their great dashboard and visualization suite exclusively on Microfoft BI technology. And Microsoft have proven once again, that they take their corporate performance management (CPM) mission seriously and complemented to their analytic offering. Now we are waiting to do business modelling, planning, forecasting and risk management with Microsoft Technology. Are the expectations for Biz# (Biz Sharp) too high? Or will Microsoft continue to acquire IPR - maybe Outlooksoft?

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft
Reporting

• Find out what strategic objectives the system will help to achieve
• Secure (constant) Top Management attention and support
• Define what success looks like
• Gain user acceptance for the chosen platform and approach and as early as possible
• Make sure the internal team is free to engage within the project
• Make sure you have an experienced project manager on board who understands both, technology and business issues
• Avoid having sales people drive your product, architecture and system integrator selection process - one way to achieve this, is to use an independent external consultant to drive this process - make him dependent on project success
• Gather functional requirements from users and management and shrink them to a level that makes sense
• Have process and functional specifications signed off by stakeholders while managing expectations - both are likely to evolve throughout the project
• Use the Project to simplify business processes
• Combine the above with an open technologically sound platform architecture that enables the end - user to interact flexibly with it
• Obey the finance end-users’ wish to use Excel as a front - end, but force them to work with centralised data and metadata
• Constantly review alignment of delivery with strategy and business processes
• Refine and change even structural and functional details within strategy and architecture throughout the project – Experience has shown many times: People, internal and external project members and sponsors gain crucial knowledge in the course of the project, which is important to utilise
• Follow a very stringent change management
• Work in incremental steps: Create many ‘Quick Wins’ and celebrate their completion
• Communicate, communicate, communicate: Plans, timelines, changes, successes, failures, challenges…- and make stakeholders contribute
• Exercise time, delivery and budget pressure on the project team

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Project Management

Microsoft is launching the long awaited SQL Server 2005 along with all the new schnick schnack BI components. The launch tour started on 7th November in San Francisco and goes around the world within the next two months. The fact that the product itself is not available yet is a minor imperfection considering that hundreds of “friendly customer implementations” worldwide have already taken place throughout 2005.
While everyone seems to recognise the new BI features, market experts seem to focus their contemplation around SQL Servers competitiveness versus the other OLTP/RDMBS players and the lethargy of SQL 2000 shops in replacing a working system (See Stephen Swoyer’s article on tdwi.org).
I believe the new BI components will have a far more changing effect on the market of established BI/CPM players such as Business Objects, Cognos or Hyperion than on the OLTP/RDBMS market.
The suite is quite complete and slashes the licence prices to a level where even the carpentry of the town with 25 employees can afford a proper Reporting System, Scorecard or Data Mining that until now was limited to very large organisations. The market gets bigger and the established players who can no longer hide in their cosy niche market are in urgent need of some creative brain stormings…

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Business Intelligence
Business Objects
Hyperion
Cognos
Microsoft
Reporting