Quilogy Business Intelligence Blog

BSM is a verb... Exposing Easy to Find Data

Quilogist — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:12:00 GMT

While continuing to communicate with many customers, we are finding increasingly many data sources to place behind BSM. For instance - if you have MSCRM 3.0, using it as a data source can provide a very nice scorecard showing customer interaction, profiles, leads, opportunities, and customer service instances. Furthermore, adding it to your CRM interface as a 'menu option' allows you to seamlessly move around and get the overall view you are looking for while continuing to work on daily relationship management.

Consider this as well - using Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) as a backend data store for BSM. MOM typically tosses data into a reporting database and provides the ability to look at statistics of various servers in your organization - SQL, Exchange, etc. If you capture the appropriate statistics, you might as well create a cube, build out a scorecard and get VALUE from all of that data collection.

Project Server? Yep - it can push data to cubes. BSM that too! (Can we make 'BSM' into a verb?)

BizTalk - consider using BizTalk 2006's BAM features, pushing them into a cube, and even using SQL 2005 real-time caching to provide a dashboard with BSM giving very up to date statistics on data flowing through the BizTalk engine.

Shall I go on? Ok, I won't. But the point is this... You have data. Its everywhere. Some of it is structured, some is not. In general, much of it can come from many of the vendor-based applications you already have installed. Take a look - you might find some seriously cool dashboarding options right in front of you...

'BSM' it!

--Dean
dfurness@quilogy.com

Business Scorecard Manager Presentation

Quilogist — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:13:00 GMT

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/quilogy/view?id=BSM101

By clicking on the link above and after providing an email address and company, you can view my presentation on 'Measuring what Matters'. This demonstration discusses some business factors in designing a valued scorecard and dashboard solution, and then wraps up with a quick demo of some of the Business Scorecard Manager capabilities.

-Dean Furness
dfurness@quilogy.com

Predictable Scorecard?

Quilogist — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:52:00 GMT

I was doing some reading on SQL Server 2005 Data Mining over the past month and am considering putting a scorecard together in Business Scorecard Manager that would use a data mining model's output and predictability scores. Consider this - having a scorecard that was a bit in the 'rear view mirror' - with revenue and profit numbers. Then a scorecard closer to near time - with the daily elements that make up revenue and profit - the things you can measure and manage daily. And finally - a predictive scorecard - taking the elements that can predict outcomes - and put indicators on those - mananging things that allow you to get a jump start on even hourly outcomes. Imagine the power - to know if a light is looking to turn yellow before it even does so. Or to see a trend line moving in a direction prior to the movement even occuring. I haven't put scenarios in play yet, but thought the idea was fascinating.

Dean Furness
--dfurness@quilogy.com

Business Scorecard Manager, Reporting Services, or Both

Quilogist — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:15:00 GMT

Something that has come up quite a bit lately is the ability to get a scorecard to many people in the organization, but without the CALs that BSM may require. Its a pretty easy distinction - but with a cost: your ability to truly measure and manage performance is impacted based on the choice.

If you need a dashboard and the ability to get great detail and analysis in relation to a scorecard, then the BSM CALs are perfect for you, and the rest of the organization. This dashboard will provide you with not only business intellegence, but hopefully business knowledge that you can use to effectively manage performance each and every day. You can see the 'red light', click on it, and get the related contextual information presented to you in a cool SharePoint interface.
If all you need is to produce a scorecard for people in the organization to consume, without the dashboard and ability to drill from the scorecard, etc., then deploy the scorecard from the scorecard builder to a Reporting Services report. The report will show the scorecard, but not have the click and change aspects the dashboard provides in the scorecard and report view. Therefore, the consumer of the information will simply have a static view, with few analysis options.

Consider this - why not do both? Try starting out with the CALs in BSM on a subset of the organization - pick a department - and see how it dramatically changes how that department works. In the meantime, create a simple static scorecard by deploying the scorecard to Reporting Services - and watch how they use the tool. In the end, you may have the proof you need to justify the CALs.

--Dean Furness
dfurness@quilogy.com

KPI Tool

Quilogist — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:37:00 GMT

Found this on Microsoft's site - but have not tried it yet. Enjoy...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=556E01A4-49A2-4A61-BEC5-0260B42DCF1B&displaylang=en

Overview

KPIUtil.exe is a tool that allows users to connect to both a Microsoft® Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 server and a Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services server to do the following:

Generate SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services key performance indicators (KPIs) from Business Scorecard Manager KPIs.
Generate Business Scorecard Manager KPIs from SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services KPIs.
Save a configuration file that contains parameters (including the connection information to the SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services server and the Business Scorecard Manager server) that you entered by using KPIUtil.exe. You can use the saved configuration file either to generate KPIs from a command prompt or to open the configuration file in KPIUtil.exe at a later time.

--Dean

Is your Scorecard a Report?

Quilogist — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 14:49:00 GMT

As I continue to work with customers in the adoption and implementation of Microsoft's Business Scorecard Manager, SQL Server Reporting Services, and the larger Microsoft BI stack, a common theme exists in the discussions. There is a challenge to ensure that your scorecard does not become just another report in your stack of reports.

Through the various Balanced Scorecard studies available in print and online, you will see a continuous discussion on the effort to make scorecarding an active part of your organization. My interpretation of active is that the scorecard should be something that is viewed daily - and should become a normal part of an employee's day. Placing the scorecard on your corporate intranet (SharePoint Portal) - a place where employee's visits daily - is an ideal place to drive adoption. Make it visible and let it grab attention. Think of the scorecard you may be creating today - how often is the data updated? How long does it take to get the scorecard updated? Do your 'analysts' spend more time 'creating' the scorecard than 'analyzing' it and the outcomes that may be evident in your organization's performance? If your ability to create your scorecard takes a month, how can you actively make decisions on a daily basis with the data in the scorecard? Additionally - to maintain adoption of the scorecard, employees should see something different with each visit. In otherwords, if the scorecard doesn't change for 30 days (and becomes just another report), the adoption and use of the scorecard will dwindle, and performance measurement and management will lose its value.

To make it an active part of the day, the data on the scorecard must timely. Without the timeliness, the closer your scorecard is to becoming just another report. So here is the challenge - work to build out a strategy for daily KPI updates into the scorecard. Support that effort with the proper ETL and cube efforts (SQL Server 2005 Integration Services and Analysis Services) - and automate the load.

With this in place, the daily impact of the scorecard can take place, and the entire organization can focus on decision making rather than scorecard creation.

Dean Furness
Practice Manager - Quilogy's Business Intelligence and Integration National Practice
dfurness@quilogy.com

BSM getting started

Quilogist — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:40:00 GMT

Can you actually fall in love with an application? We hopefully not, unless your a robot. You can be smitten with one, and I am definitely with Business Scorecard Manager. The Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is the office teams foray into Business Intelligence outside of excel and pivot tables. The basic business under pinning is the Balanced Scorecard Approach, which all the rage in business schools.

You can read any number of books on balanced scorecard here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/102-8000659-9200169?url=index%3Dblended&field-keywords=balance+scorecard

There's also the Balanced Scorecard collaborative: http://www.bscol.com/

If you want to get started with BSM 2005, Ian Tien, Program Manager with Microsoft has a great blog.

http://spaces.msn.com/members/iantien/Blog/

Ian is always posting new content, so bookmark it, you'll be back...

Here's the official microsoft site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX012225041033.aspx

Here's some good training resources:

2-days worth of Airlift training available on video here: http://spaces.msn.com/members/iantien/Blog/cns!1p0VgVUcxDR_JdidQow4FyzA!202.entry

Deployment and scalability guidance here: http://spaces.msn.com/members/iantien/Blog/cns!1p0VgVUcxDR_JdidQow4FyzA!320.entry