MS SQL Data Warehousing - Re: Relational to DW.?

Author

Re: Relational to DW.?

Peter Nolan

2005-08-05, 7:23 am

Hi Akinja,
I have now bundled my old 'newsletters' on my downloads page.......it
is just a zip file that says newsletters before 2004 or something...

Newsletter number 1 is 'Cost Benefit Anlaysis and Business Benefits
Realisation'.......cost benefit analysis used to be the number 1
question in the early 90s......when DWing was considered something of a
mystical art form and there were very few public examples of
success........

That paper lists a whole lot of successes...some of which I was
involved in, some of which I was not...

The benefit of BI?

Any senior managers that cannot see the benefit of BI today are not
worth the title 'senior manager'. I have not bothered to sell the
'Benefits of BI' for about 6 years now. I simply do not bother with any
account that is not totally committed to building the EDW. There's no
point. If the senior managers have not figured this out yet there are
way too many battles to fight to move the project forward and it will
probably fail anyway.....so why bother?

Unfortunately IT people have made something of a hash of BI and DW/BI
has 'got a bad name'. Not because there is no return, but because the
people building them have not had the slightest idea of how to get a
return.....every IT person (and his dog) wants to have BI on their
resume and they feel that if they read a book or two and build
something that passes for a DW they can then go out and sell themselves
as BI consultants.......this has been unfortunate as it has added to
the failure rate of projects.

You do not get any return just by building a DW. You only get a return
when you use it to drive the business forward. Most notably, you get
great returns when you make the DW the basis for all large decisions
made by the company.

Every survery in IT says that 'Understanding of the business and
communicating the business needs to IT' is the number one problem...and
it is more so in BI.

The fastest payback for a project I have done? We got our money back
for the entire project even before we finished the project. The project
went on to be the foundation of a 10x per annum return on investment.
The company was called 'the jewel in the corporate crown' and the
Managing Director of the company was promoted to CEO of the entire
group of companies....it does not get any more successful than that.

No other IT type projects have this capability. Few business projects
can return 10x on investment and few can return all the cash for the
project before the project goes live.....the second fastest I have
heard of is 2 weeks......which is also excellent....

Done properly the first iteration of a BI project should return the
full cost of the project in 3-6 months....I would consider 6 months
very slow......but sometimes the project is large and it takes a while
to get that money back.

As I said...just building the DW does not make the money...exploiting
it does....and I see very little understanding of this around the
world....I started a 'Business' focused DW discussion group and it has
gone no-where in 2 years....

So, by all means browse through that first newsletter, and the others.
But if your senior managers do not already know BI is one of THE palces
where HUGE value can be achieved I wouldn't bother trying to persuade
them if I were you....

Best Regards

Peter Nolan
www.peternolan.com

Akinja

2005-08-05, 8:23 pm

Thanks for the input. I will take a look at it.

Akinja

"Peter Nolan" <peter@peternolan.com> wrote in message
news:1123236226.565030.95250@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi Akinja,
> I have now bundled my old 'newsletters' on my downloads page.......it
> is just a zip file that says newsletters before 2004 or something...
>
> Newsletter number 1 is 'Cost Benefit Anlaysis and Business Benefits
> Realisation'.......cost benefit analysis used to be the number 1
> question in the early 90s......when DWing was considered something of a
> mystical art form and there were very few public examples of
> success........
>
> That paper lists a whole lot of successes...some of which I was
> involved in, some of which I was not...
>
> The benefit of BI?
>
> Any senior managers that cannot see the benefit of BI today are not
> worth the title 'senior manager'. I have not bothered to sell the
> 'Benefits of BI' for about 6 years now. I simply do not bother with any
> account that is not totally committed to building the EDW. There's no
> point. If the senior managers have not figured this out yet there are
> way too many battles to fight to move the project forward and it will
> probably fail anyway.....so why bother?
>
> Unfortunately IT people have made something of a hash of BI and DW/BI
> has 'got a bad name'. Not because there is no return, but because the
> people building them have not had the slightest idea of how to get a
> return.....every IT person (and his dog) wants to have BI on their
> resume and they feel that if they read a book or two and build
> something that passes for a DW they can then go out and sell themselves
> as BI consultants.......this has been unfortunate as it has added to
> the failure rate of projects.
>
> You do not get any return just by building a DW. You only get a return
> when you use it to drive the business forward. Most notably, you get
> great returns when you make the DW the basis for all large decisions
> made by the company.
>
> Every survery in IT says that 'Understanding of the business and
> communicating the business needs to IT' is the number one problem...and
> it is more so in BI.
>
> The fastest payback for a project I have done? We got our money back
> for the entire project even before we finished the project. The project
> went on to be the foundation of a 10x per annum return on investment.
> The company was called 'the jewel in the corporate crown' and the
> Managing Director of the company was promoted to CEO of the entire
> group of companies....it does not get any more successful than that.
>
> No other IT type projects have this capability. Few business projects
> can return 10x on investment and few can return all the cash for the
> project before the project goes live.....the second fastest I have
> heard of is 2 weeks......which is also excellent....
>
> Done properly the first iteration of a BI project should return the
> full cost of the project in 3-6 months....I would consider 6 months
> very slow......but sometimes the project is large and it takes a while
> to get that money back.
>
> As I said...just building the DW does not make the money...exploiting
> it does....and I see very little understanding of this around the
> world....I started a 'Business' focused DW discussion group and it has
> gone no-where in 2 years....
>
> So, by all means browse through that first newsletter, and the others.
> But if your senior managers do not already know BI is one of THE palces
> where HUGE value can be achieved I wouldn't bother trying to persuade
> them if I were you....
>
> Best Regards
>
> Peter Nolan
> www.peternolan.com
>

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