Marc Andrews Observations On Demand

Leveraging Information in Today's Challenging Economic Environment

So, given all of the challenges we are seeing companies face in today's economic environment, is now the right time to be making technology investments?  In a recent webcast, John Haggerty, from AMR Research, spoke about the challenges companies are facing in today's unique economic environment and what they are doing to address those.  He also specifically talks about "why investing in business intelligence and performance management makes sense...especially now."

The fact is, especially in challenging times, it becomes increasingly important for organizations to make better business decisions.  When times are good and companies are going through high growth, there is a lot more room for error.  However, when some companies are struggling just to survive, it is critical that you make the right business decisions across the enterprise - from strategic decisions around where to take the business, to everyday decisions, such as which loans to approve, how to pay out claims, and how to best respond to customer inquiries.  You cannot afford to make the wrong bets, and you cannot afford to alienate customers.

And the key to making better business decisions is to have the right information.  Have all the relevant information.  Have information that is accurate and can be trusted.  Have information available when and where it's needed.  This is the reason why it is important for companies to make the investments required to establish information as a strategic asset.  And the way to accomplish this is to begin creating an Information Agenda for your organization and focus on how you can better use information to address your key business challenges.

Information On Demand Goes To EMEA

This week, the first EMEA based Information On Demand (IOD) conference was held in The Hague (Den Haag) in the Netherlands.  There were around 2,000 people from across all of Europe, and even some countries in the Middle East and Africa, who made the trip to hear more about how companies are driving more value from their information.

One of the main messages heard at the event was the need for companies to start thinking about their Information Agenda - how they can better leverage information across their organization to drive more business value, the infrastructure they need in place to support this, and a roadmap for how to get there.  Ambuj Goyal, General Manager of the Information Management Software division at IBM, encouraged people to take information to the next level, and to use it as a strategic asset.  He indicated that organizations who establish trusted information will be able to unlock the business value of information for competitive advantage...and those who do not run the risk of being left behind.

René Carayol, international business guru and media personality, invited customers to the stage to share their experiences in implementing their own Information Agendas.  Jacqui Leggetter, from the Department for Work & Pensions in the UK, spearheaded an effort to integrate enterprise content management (ECM) with customer relationship management (CRM).  As a result, the Department reduced a five day paper-intensive process to one, enhancing the customer experience.

Markus Bayha, from Fiducia, the largest IT service provider to the financial services community in Germany, garnered C-level sponsorship to implement a solution that now effectively serves 800 banks.  With its new-found capabilities, Fiducia is able to help customers increase revenue through the sales of new banking products and services, and can now monitor, control and analyze information to drive its future sales and marketing strategy.

In addition, Nick Donofrio, IBM's Vice President of Innovation and Technology, spoke to the attendees, reminding them that harnessing information is an essential element of innovation that matters, which delivers client value, creates new business models, and spurs growth. He encouraged people to combine technology with business insight, and to lead change versus enduring or tolerating it - only with change comes innovation.

Overall, it was a great event that demonstrated the enthusiasm and interest of companies all over EMEA in driving increased business value from their information.  One of the biggest questions this leaves everyone to take away is, what's YOUR Information Agenda?  Do you have one?

Focusing on Business Optimization

Business optimization seems to be one of the latest buzz phrases out there.  But what does this really mean?  And how is this different from what companies have been doing in the past?

Well, for the past two decades, companies have primarily focused their IT investments on automating their business processes, with the objectives of driving faster processing and reduced costs.  This has been driven by an "application" agenda to implement ERP and Financial applications, supply chain management solutions, and call center and CRM applications.  However, these types of investments are no longer creating a sustainable competitive advantage for organizations.

As a result, over the past few years, we've seen new IT initiatives increasingly focused on optimizing business to drive a more sustainable competitive advantage.  Think about it like those old BSF advertisements - we don't make a lot of the things you use, we make a lot of the things you use BETTER!  Business optimization is about making your business processes, customer interactions and everyday operating decisions BETTER. This means moving from just leveraging ERP and financial applications to providing increased financial risk insight for better business decisions...moving from just managing your supply chain to enabling more dynamic demand planning...and moving from just managing your call center and customer relationships to providing increased insights to improve customer service and drive greater profitability from your customers.

These new initiatives are all dependent on information, and having an information agenda in place to ensure that your organization is leveraging all the information at its disposal to create a competitive advantage in the market.  So ultimately, information becomes the key to optimizing your business.

Dynamic Warehousing and the Next Generation of Business Intelligence

This past week, IBM announced a comprehensive strategy to enable dynamic warehousing, a new generation of business intelligence capabilities that enable organizations to gain real-time insight and value from their business information.  So what exactly is dynamic warehousing?  And what is this next generation of business intelligence?

Well, dynamic warehousing is about making information AND analysis available as needed to address ALL of the different demands organizations have for business intelligence.  This includes the traditional needs for historical reporting and analysis, but also extends to generate increased business insights from all information across the enterprise, and enables that knowledge to be delivered in real-time when needed - often referred to as operational intelligence.  Dan Everett, at Ventana Research has been talking about this concept and some of the challenges organizations face in achieving this lofty goal for over a year.  Let' s break it down by looking at what companies started out doing with BI tools to better understand what this next generation of cabilities is about.

Initial efforts at generating business insight were focused on query and reporting to understand what happened.  Police agencies reported on crime statistics to learn about frequent criminal activities, insurance companies reported on fraud to determine how much money to write off, and retailers reported on store sales to find out which locations were underperforming.  The second wave focused on technologies such as online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining for historical analysis to understand why things happened and recommend future action – strategic and tactical planning.  Police agencies began analyzing criminal activity to optimize deployment of personnel, insurance companies analyzed characteristics of fraud for better customer segmentation, and retailers analyzed customer purchases to improve merchandising and better manage inventory.

Dynamic Warehousing provides a new approach to companies who want the ability to rapidly analyze and act upon the hidden benefits of their business information.  This third generation approach is about making available and analyzing information on demand to optimize each transaction – in the call center, in the field, when helping customers, or when taking orders.  Dynamic Warehousing is helping the New York City Police Department (NYPD) identify related incidents upon receiving an emergency call and deliver a list of potential suspects in real-time to detectives before they arrive at the crime scene (see the video).  Likewise, insurance companies can identify potentially fraudulent claims prior to approval and payment, while retailers can rapidly leverage buying patterns and changes in consumer behavior to identify the most effective cross sell and up sell opportunities at the point of sale.

There are four key things required to enable dynamic warehousing:

1. Real-time access, in context - being able to access and work with aggregated, cleansed information in the context of the business process or activities being performed
2. Analytics, as part of the business process - going beyond just providing access to information and providing embedded analytics capabilities that can be leveraged as part of a real-time business process
3. Incorporating knowledge from unstructured information - leveraging all types of information, including the ability to extract additional insights buried in unstructured forms of content, such as free form text fields, documents, web pages, audio recordings, etc.
4. Extended capabilities, tightly integrated - providing a complete set of integrated capabilities that extend beyond the warehouse to enable use of information on demand.  This includes search and text analysis, information integration, business process management, enterprise data modeling, master data management and industry specific models to make these technologies more applicable to a particular business area.

These are the key tenets of dynamic warehousing.  And these are the things needed by organizations to further innovate their businesses and drive the next level of competitive differentiation.

How Information On Demand (IOD) Will Impact Our Daily Lives

Information On Demand (IOD) has already begun dramatically improving efficiencies within organizations across various industries.  Soon, these benefits will begin making an impact on our daily lives in the form of longer, healthier and safer lives, increased satisfaction from the companies that provide us with various services, a sense of security in our finances as we spend money in an increasingly digital world, and a safer environment in which to live.  All of this is squarely in support of one of IBM's core values: Innovation that Matters — for our company and the world.

Fighting disease...and a cure for cancer?
The availability of Information On Demand is reducing the time it takes to get new drugs to market while at the same time minimizing potential risks by enabling faster and deeper analysis of clinical trials data.  This is helping companies like Mayo Clinic, Sloan Kettering and several other healthcare and life sciences organizations save more lives and making it more likely that we may find a cure for cancer in our life time.

A new level of customer service
How much longer will we continue to be frustrated when we call our cable company, our cell phone provider, our bank, our insurance company or any of the other companies providing us with the various services we use in our daily lives?  The availability of Information On Demand will enable organizations to take customer service to unprecedented new levels and finally help companies treat us the way we would expect.

While customer service has been a target of technology in the past, most efforts have focused on reducing the costs of service and enabling self-service, so we, the customers, can service ourselves.  However, imagine if the company had a complete picture of you as soon as you called or started interacting with their website - knowing all of the different accounts and relationships you have with them, knowing all of the different products you own, knowing exactly how much money you have spent with them, and knowing what problems you've had in the past.  Information On Demand can enable companies to have all of this knowledge at their finger tips, plus the ability to know what problems customers are likely to have based on the products they own and interactions with other similar customers, how much potential revenue that customer represents, and how they are likely to respond to different actions.  Information On Demand can even be used to automate how each customer is handled to optimize the level of service and revenue from all interactions. 

Information On Demand can also be used to provide visibility into critical customer information outside of any single organization's control.  Today's extended supply chains mean that products and services are typically not provided by a single company.  Information On Demand enables organizations to still have access to all information related to your transaction, even if other companies are involved.  Instead of just being told that the product you ordered is on back order, they will be able to tell you exactly when they expect to have the next shippment from their supplier.  Instead of just being told that your product was shipped yesterday, and possibly being given a tracking number that requires you to go to another site, they will be able to tell you exactly where it currently is in the delivery process.

Combat fraud and identity theft to reduce consumer pain and fees
Most fraud is detected after the fact, largely due to the need to aggregate information from various sources before being able to apply intelligent analysis and detection techniques.  Not only does this post-fraud detection cause hassles for the consumer, it makes it difficult for companies to recoup the fraudulent payments, which must mostly be written off, reducing margins and leading to higher rates for the consumer.  The availability of Information On Demand is enabling organizations to start detecting potential fraud before it happens, and before any payments are made or proceeds lost.  This will dramatically reduce the risk for companies and lead to savings which can be passed on to the consumer in the form of lower insurance, credit and transaction processing rates.

Making us feel safer
Some police agencies are already using information on demand capabilities to enable detectives to more quickly identify potential suspects and track down criminals by sharing and aggregating information across districts and agencies, and making that information available on demand at the scene of the crime.  And social services agencies will be able to reduce abuse and prevent deaths by having the right information available on demand that will allow them to spot trends and potential risks more easily.

These are all just a few of the examples of how Information On Demand (IOD) could have an impact on our daily lives.  And they are just a few of the reasons why so many organizations are starting to invest in enabling Information On Demand within their own environments.

Is Microsoft Ready for Your People When it Comes to Content Management?

Microsoft is making a lot of noise to ask if your people are ready.  However, I'd like to know if they are really ready for your people!  Microsoft has long dominated in providing people with desktop tools and applications.  And while Google, Mozilla, RedHat and other parts of the open source community continue to try and challenge them in this space, they are far from making any significant impact in Microsoft's leadership around Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer or general ownership of the desktop.  It seems that anytime a company comes up with some new innovation, whether it is around desktop search, tabbed web browsing or providing web tools that remain active on your desktop, Microsoft quickly catches up and add those features to the next version of their operating system.

While this will continue to be sufficient for most home consumer usage, this does NOT address the needs of the business user.  An enterprise needs to do more than just provide your typical desktop tools to ensure the productivity of its employees.  It's about more than just people.  An enterprise needs to incorporate the organization's business processes and information into their user's daily lives.  Being "enterprise" ready means tight integration between people, processes and information.  All three are critical - and this is where Microsoft falls short.  They remain behind in understanding or being capable of integrating the vast array of enterprise information sources used across most organizations.  And they cannot tie into and provide access to all of the different processes driving an enterprise's business.  This requires more advanced enterprise integration capabilities and an open platform that enables companies to leverage heterogenous environments - neither of which you get from Microsoft.

A general collaboration platform is not sufficient.  Improving productivity and enabling better decision making requires the ability to deliver the right information directly to business users and enable collaboration within the context of their business processes and activities. This must hold true even if the information is coming from other systems or if the business process is driven by a separate application.  It is also important to have access to more advanced document management and content processing functionality.  Otherwise, organizations end up having to deploy separate systems to support specialized business applications and processes, leading to independent silos of information and requiring users to go to different places depending on what information they need. And organizations must have the ability to apply centralized policies and controls over distributed, departmental systems to address compliance and governance issues.

So as you look to deploy technologies and platforms to make your people more productive, make sure you are thinking about their complete set of needs.  Make sure your system can grow with you to protect your investment and prevent having to deploy siloed systems in the future.  Make sure you are thinking about your people, processes and information.

Fun Video on Information Server Launch

In October, IBM will be launching a new offering that will be the first solution to combine real-time, federated information integration capabilities with batch oriented movement of data and ETL functionality, including the ability to address metadata management and data quality.  The long awaited "Hawk" release, extended to incorporate IBM WebSphere Information Integration into the previously planned upgrades to the Ascential portfolio, will be made generally available as IBM Information Server in October, and launched at the upcoming IBM Information On Demand Conference on October 16.

Here is a fun and entertaining video, although admittedly, fairly silly...

Great Video on New Database Technology Enabling Information As A Service

In a previous entry, I posed the question Can a Database Help Drive Information as a Service?  Here is a great video I posted on YouTube that includes several companies talking about how the new DB2 Viper hybrid XML relational capabilities are transforming how they use their underlying database to drive innovation and business value.  It also includes the "What Makes You Special?" IBM television advertisement at the end, which is done to the catchy "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" song from the Kinks.  I thought the words to this are quite appropriate, given that Information On Demand is currently being used by companies to create competitive differentiators and stand out in the market place...and I love the part with all of the business executives lipsynching the lyrics from the Kinks!

Can a Database Help Drive Information as a Service?

I always thought of information as a service being enabled by an abstraction layer that sits on top of the underlying data sources, providing a veneer that hides the details of the underlying systems and gives developers or users a common and consistent view, typically delivered in the form of a business object, rather than as a set of fields and tables.  Something more akin to what Forrester talks about as an Information Fabric.  Eric Roch has a great post on the value of such data virtualization, with some good examples.

But on my recent trip to Asia, someone opened my eyes to another potential view.  They talked about how if companies could use a database to store their information as business objects in the first place, then that database could essentially enable access to information as a service, without even requiring an abstraction layer.  And of course, they were referring to the native XML capabilities of the new release of DB2, version 9 (code named DB2 Viper).

Now, I realize that most organizations have a lot of information stored in various different systems across their enterprise, and will still need some abstraction layer to federate across these systems and provide a consistent view.  However, I thought this comment was very interesting and could provide another significant value proposition for DB2 as the first hybrid data server with native support for both xml and relational data. If you can begin storing new information as native XML, to more closely represent actual business objects, but still support traditional SQL based storage and access, then your information will be that much easier to make available as a service.  The native XML support also provides much greater flexibility to support changes to how your business objects are defined - and let's face it, you are always changing the way you define a customer, a supplier, an order, a product, etc.  This could be quite compelling for organizations looking to streamline their IT efforts and get closer to true Information on Demand capabilities.

Thank you Dennis Liu (actually Jing Wei Liu) out in Beijing for your great insights.  While I don't believe a database alone can enable information as a service, I do now see how DB2 9's native XML capabilities can help organizations get there more quickly, and with less effort and greater flexibility.

Does Asia Need Information On Demand?

Many people talk about how Asia is further behind the rest of the world on the technology curve.  As a result, some have questioned whether or not they are ready to start thinking about investing in more flexible information architectures that would enable them to integrate data from across their organization and make all enterprise information more readily available.  My recent trip across Asia led me to some interesting insights.

Earlier this month, over a period of 12 days, I met with people in Malaysia, Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok and Singapore.  I talked about the concepts of Information On Demand to over 650 people, and was able to have separate conversations about this topic with over 100 of those people.  And as a fun fact, I travelled back and forth across 4 different time zones, logged over 67 hours of plane travel, with 3 overnight flights, and ate local cuisine in every country, which my stomach somehow survived until after I ate the airplane food on my way back to the United States.  And I can't tell you how much money I lost changing currencies every country I went to...they really need the equivalent of the Euro in Asia!

Anyway, back to the serious stuff.  One thing I found to be universal was the fact that companies everywhere have gotten into the habit of building out and deploying independent applications across their organization.  Asia is no different here.  In every country I visited, I heard about organizations that have developed or purchased different applications for their different lines of business.  And they are all using different data stores to manage their information, and have different data models to describe their business.

The difference in Asia is that they are just starting to realize this problem, but it has not yet become accute.  They are just now starting to think about how to look across their organizations, but are more concerned with historical reporting and analysis than real-time views across their enterprise information.  As a result, they are more focused on buidling out data warehouses to consolidate information after the fact.

However, there are a few forward thinking organizations that are starting to recognize that they can get more value out of their information by providing real-time access across the organization.  There are a few innovative companies that are learning that by using information spread across their organization more effectively, they can transform their business processes and create competitive differentiators.

I believe that Asia is indeed ready for Information On Demand.  They have the problems that Information On Demand can address. And investing in Information On Demand capabilities now would be a lot easier for them, since their IT environments have not reached the levels of complexity seen in the companies where this has already become a significant problem.  But many organizations don't know how to best address their information silos or begin putting in place more flexible information architectures.  More education is needed on how to deploy these capabilities, and the benefits/value of taking this approach.  Otherwise, they will just be postponing the inevitable, and will have more complex environments that will be more costly to deal with.

Asia, start focusing on information as a service now!  You will be much better prepared for the future and will be able to focus on innovating your business instead of dealing with information problems.