Just read Lori MacVitie ’s great articele on bizintelligence pipeline via Ted Kemp on the bizintelligence blog. I’d like to suggest that Enterprise Planning/Budgeting and Forecasting processes should be integrated within any BPM environment. The disjointed processes and Excel brouhaha that result out of their exclusion can put the efforts of any BPM project in danger of being wasted…
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BPM
Performance Management
Via BBC:
A recent court case, which saw a West London man fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months’ conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection, has repercussions for almost every user of wi-fi networks.
Well. How does an honest user distinguish between a criminal offence and using a designated free hotspot?
Via infoworld:
Microsoft RFID (radio frequency identification device) package for postal services at a stamp exhibition in Taiwan, hoping to woo the government’s post office and potentially forge a new line of business for the software maker.
The technology Microsoft has on offer here allows a postal service, the package sender, and the receiver to view exactly where the package is at all times. It also notifies a receiver when the package will arrive and alerts senders via MSN Messenger or a mobile phone SMS (Short Message Service) after it has been signed for at its destination.
“Most postal services worldwide are trying to adopt this (type of) technology. Microsoft paid some sponsorship for this show because we’d like to provide this technology to Taiwan’s post office,” said Dragon Shyy, a senior consultant at the Microsoft Technology Center in Taipei.
With SAP and Microsoft in the game RFID seems a safe bet for the next business hype…
Jahrelang hat Hyperion mit seiner IBM Partnerschaft kräftig Kasse gemacht. IBM schloss Enterprise Level Agreements (ELA’s) ab, die vereinfacht gesprochen nur das Volumen und den groben Umfang der Geschäftsbeziehung mit dem Kunden festgelegt hat. Die Key Account Manager mussten dann Anwendungen finden, die sie dann im Rahmen dieser ELA’s den Kunden “reindrücken” konnten.
Im CW Notitzblog fand ich eben die (wohl schon ein paar Wochen alte) Meldung, dass IBM nun selbst auf den Geschmack kommt und eine eigene Business Intelligence Strategie fährt. Mindestens fünf Jahre zu spät. Interessanter Weise ist IBM laut Eigendefinition ja ohnehin schon : “The world’s leading business intelligence solution provider”.Bleibt zu hoffen, dass der Kundennutzen nun mehr in den Vordergrund rückt.
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Business Intelligence
Hyperion
IBM
Carsten Bange von BARC schreibt in der Computerwelt warum SAP BW Implementierungen oft nicht zum gewünschten Ergebins führen - Prädikat lesenswert:
Das “SAP Business Information Warehouse” (SAP BW) gehört zum Business-Intelligence-Portfolio der SAP und ist mittlerweile weit verbreitet. Viele Unternehmen berichten indes von hohen Projektkosten, langen Einführungszeiten und unzufriedenen Anwendern. Schuld daran ist nicht allein die Software, sondern oft liegen die Ursachen in der IT-Strategie, der Projektorganisation sowie in der Art der Implementierung und Nutzung von SAP BW. Im Einzelnen lassen sich elf grundsätzliche Probleme in der Praxis ausmachen, die zum Teil auch in anderen Data-Warehouse-Projekten auftreten können:
Cindi Howson praises the technical developments which are currently being driven by the software vendors in her article on intelligent enterprise. Convergence, i.e. interoperability of software from different vendors, within suites and across orginizational structures is the prevailing topic of her article.
In 2005, we’ve seen the following convergence efforts:
* Business Objects XI brought fuller integration of the Crystal Decisions products the company acquired in 2003.
* Cognos announced that it will bring OLAP and reporting into a common Web architecture with the release of Cognos 8 this fall.
* Hyperion’s Project Avalanche, due later this year, will pull its entire product line onto one platform.
* Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005, due in November, will provide tighter integration between the vendor’s Analysis and Reporting Services
Indeed technology advances have been tremendous over the last few years, even though many BI/CPM deployments fail to be successful. Also a lot of the “convergence” took place within the platforms of the respective vendors to bring together the different technologies following their acquisitions.
One of the main reasons for project failures I see in the fact that companies who endeavor to implement BI solutions are confronted with sales people who are only interested in one thing: Licence revenue. What Cindi Howson fails to emphasize is that the importance of software choice is far less than the industry leads us to believe. The real success factors lie much more in professional preparation, involvement of all stakeholders, proper project management and most of all the right technical architecture which usually involves software from different vendors.
To achieve all of this, the appointment of an experienced and independent external project manager early on in the project could prove supportive. Among other things would be someone who is interested in the success rather than in software revenue, he could act as an “advocatus diaboli” when it comes to usere requirements and he could balance the interest of the different stakeholders. Sometimes IT tend to see projects as a purely technical exercise that has nothing to do with Business requirements while Finance and other more business oriented departments have no idea how to translate their requirements into the language of technical people and do not understand arguements IT would use.
Another way to overcome the “software selection trap” is to find a Business Intelligence System Integrator who has expertise with different technologies, make them support the software selection process and take end to end responsibility for the project success. However a common problem with this approach could be that the SI is not focused enough to entertain a resource pool that is equally skilled in all areas. I would prefer Integrators who focus on two or three software packages who openly discuss strenghts, weaknesses and features versus the requirements and by doing so guide the buyer towards his decision over Integrators who emphasize their complete independence.
Sandy Kemsley also emphazises this point in her Column 2 blog with a slightly different spin and argumentative Gartner support: BPM softskills & BPM, BI and performance management
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BPM
Performance Management
Business Intelligence
DM Review published an interesting article/interview of Michael S. Shiff by William McKnight about the likely developments in Business Intelligence making use of the latest RFID technologies. To me one of the most interesting developments in RFID is the future capability of tags to process information and interact with other tags…Just imagine what that can do for you and your mating efforts 
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RFID