There have been significant shifts in the post 9/11 world - the "no" vote to the European Union constitution, the demise and effective non-arrival of globalisation, the strong rand, and numerous other factors. None of these was forecast or predicted by the mainstream market. The failure of the Zimbabwean government, too, has had a strong influence on local markets.
Doing business in this environment is challenging to say the least, but there are two key lessons here: the only constant about change is change itself, and all that will drive and support culture change is a belief in the reality of choice.
Self-service business intelligence (BI) is currently being debated:
* How much power should be placed in the hands of business users?
* Should business users be able to generate their own reports and have access to their own information, or should this be provided as a service by IT?
* On the one side, if business users are out of IT`s way, the IT team can carry on with what they should be doing. The downside is that business needs to be trained and feel confident enough to drive the solution, and the concerns are that they may start running all sorts of bizarre queries that consume all available resources.
Managing change - reporting cultures
Embedded reporting cultures are the single largest obstacle to change. They give business users a degree of comfort that things are under control when in fact they may not be; and they give IT the impression it is providing a service that has real business value. If the world is changing, delivering pre-defined formatted reports that allow a trained thought process to be followed will not help the business move forward or adapt to change.
A clear indicator of a reporting culture is the size of the reports. If the business users do not trust IT, or do not know what they are looking for, they simply ask for everything and the reports themselves become unusable. However, if they had an idea of where to start the resulting data set would always be manageable. If the business users are running reports that have 600 rows and 30 columns they have clearly not come to terms with BI in the true sense of the term. Surely business users have better things to do with their time than trawling through hundreds of lines of reports?
Shadow IT
The failure of delivery of the reporting culture is clearly shown by the activities of the "Shadow IT department". In a recent study it was shown that in large organisations up to 70% of the IT department`s activities are manually replicated by the business when they recapture the reporting information into Microsoft Excel. If the reports were delivering what the business users wanted, they would have no need to do this.
Analysis paralysis - over delivery
One of the concerns expressed is that delivering too much information will lead to users accessing information that is not directly relevant to their jobs, and that the resulting impact on the infrastructure could be significant. While BI has certainly come a long way in recent years and is beginning to succeed as a market sector, it is not at risk of over-delivery. There will be a transition phase where business users come to terms with the value of information. The pendulum will swing, but it will swing back when business users realise information is here to stay and they can get what they need, when they need it.
Finding the middle ground
Most organisations mired in a reporting culture aim for a full BI culture in one go and when this fails, they blame the tool. While enterprise BI goals are lofty, the migration must allow the business users time to change. The middle road is delivering change at the pace at which business users can and want to absorb it.
A good indicator of where the business is, is the amount of Shadow IT activity going on and the size of their reports. If there is little Shadow IT activity then the rate of change required may be slow, as most of the requirements may be being met within the current environment. This could also be a symptom of the low expectations of the business users.
If the reporting culture has led to "participation apathy", then the culture of participation will need to be re-cultivated. A high Shadow IT rate of activity is a clear indication of the need for a strong BI solution, as it highlights both a strong need for information and a high level of analytical skills in the business community.
Creating a culture for change
The single largest factor that will drive the change in culture is the belief in the reality of choices. This means that the business users believe the organisation values their time and their input. The business wants the business users to make decisions.
If the business allows users to trawl through hundreds of lines of reports or re-key data into Excel for several hours every month, then this is a clear indication that their time is not that valuable. If the data is delivered in huge reports this is also an indication that there are other things more important to the business.
No restrictions
Users should be given as much access to data as possible, allowing them to determine their own needs. IT is after all a service industry. Would you prefer a business user to be re-keying data into Excel, looking through hundreds of lines of reports, or investigating what is driving the business? People talk of analysis paralysis, but there is no better way for business users to be spending their time - actually thinking about the business and gaining an understanding of it.
Business users running very large reports will indicate that they have not embraced the BI culture. Perhaps every user who runs a large report should have their name automatically added to the training database!
Who will drive the change?
Change will be adopted by a few power users in the organisation, who will then set the pace. The faster they adopt the solution, the faster the other users will catch up and the faster the core of change merchants will grow until the tipping point is reached. Once this is reached, the sought-after transformation happens and the organisation becomes one of Peter Senge`s "learning organisations". Applying any restrictions or limitations to this process will be counterproductive.
Macro-economic drivers are the same for a business at every level, and change is now the main driver of the market. Business users need the tools to cope with and embrace it. They also want to feel that what they are doing actually makes a difference.
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Harvey Jones Systems (HJS) is a global award-winning company that was established in South Africa in 1997 and has grown to become the leading provider of BI, performance management and decision support solutions on the Microsoft platform in Africa. The solution set consists of global best-in-class solutions including ProClarity, Crystal Ball and Corda. The HJS team provides the market with best-practice implementation, training and support.
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