Living outside of a city has its advantages in terms of space and silence, but you also lose a lot of the city facilities that you tend to take for granted; such as emergency services, sewer and  garbage disposal, which now become private subscription services that you must pay for individually.

Last week, I received my quarterly garbage removal services bill from a local company whose slogan is “100% satisfaction guaranteed or double your garbage back!”  When I looked at the bill, I found they had a sense of humor in more ways than one.  Three months ago they increased the fees by 10%, claiming their costs in all areas were going up, and added a second 10% on top as a “Fuel Surcharge” stating that diesel was almost $5 a gallon. So this quarter, with fuel prices being at a 5 year low, I expected the fuel surcharge to disappear.  And, low and behold, it did.   But not in the way I thought it would.  Instead the President of the company enclosed a letter saying that “Fuel Surcharge” was a misleading term which we should do away with and call it “Industry Fees” which more accurately describes their extra running costs.  So the 10% increase and the 10% surcharge stayed, and my bill remained the same.   Very clever – I told you they had a sense of humor!



In the last year, I have seen a lot of software companies looking to increase their revenues through maintenance fee increases and trying out some tactics that are not that different from my garbage disposal company.

Traditionally, Business Intelligence software companies have justified software maintenance fees to cover both software support (usually email and telephone) and software updates (if you stay current on maintenance, your updates are free).  The revenue collected is supposed to cover both the costs of Research & Development and Software Support.  If you go back a decade, the typical software maintenance fees were between 10 to 12% of the software selling price. About 5 years ago they were around 15% to 18% and today they are between 20% to 25%.  However, these percentages do not reflect the true increase in the price of maintenance since, during that same period, the cost of the software itself has increased in many cases by more than 100%. As a result, software maintenance fees have become a lucrative profit generator for most of the larger BI software companies.

In order to justify these maintenance fee increases, many BI software companies have been equally as creative as my garbage disposal company.  They created new categories like Standard, Corporate, Elite, Premium, Platinum and dozens of others with great marketing behind them to convince you of their value and essential need.  They explained how they are investing more resources in support and research, in addition to creating new escalation processes to improve service.

Yet, during this same period of time, we have seen most of these same BI software companies outsource and offshore both their support and development to countries like India and China where their labor costs have been dramatically reduced.  Also, in most cases, neither the quality nor the support of the software has significantly improved.
However, many companies have launched their own counter-offensive to the BI software companies. Most of those owning large amounts of software have negotiated discounted fees up front and added contractual clauses limiting the annual maintenance increases to under 5% of the previous year.  Others have figured out that it is cheaper sometimes to drop support of older, more expensive software and repurchase smaller and less costly replacements.

So, now, here we are at the beginning of 2009 in the worst global economic crisis in more than 50 years with almost all businesses looking for ways to contain and reduce costs. Software maintenance is no longer an insignificant cost and will no doubt come under a lot of scrutiny this year.  Many corporations and institutions will be going back to these software vendors this year and requesting reductions and special payment terms, or both. There will also be many who will make the decision to reduce the amount of product under maintenance. This may be both a symptom of reducing their own number of employees or because of reduced usage due to reduced business.  By the same token, there will be some that will completely terminate maintenance, not out of preference but out of need.

All of this would suggest that if BI software companies want to keep customers under maintenance, and have at least a reasonable maintenance revenue stream this year, they will need to get creative in ways other than increasing their fees and creating new surcharges.  I think we are likely to see a resurgence in “pay by the drink” support calls, fee-based software upgrades and first year maintenance included in the software purchase price.  We may also see more companies turn towards renting or leasing software or Software as a Service offerings in which maintenance is built in.

One thing is for sure, BI software companies will not be so quick to add those “fuel surcharges” in 2009. As for my garbage disposal, I will be switching to another company with better pricing next month.

Last night, I was taking the dog out in my front yard just before going to bed, and I noticed these amazing circular lights moving quickly through the clouds. There were four of them.  They moved in a circle a few times, merged together in the middle, shot out to four corners of a square and back in a few times and then repeated the pattern.  It was a clear night with a few scattered cloud masses, and these lights were darting around in one of the cloud masses that made the effect all the more stunning.

It was so beautiful that I felt that I had to share this with someone. The dog was oblivious so I rushed inside to call out the family who were getting ready for bed.  My 14 year-old son came out.  His first thought was that it was a UFO.  It took him a full minute to discount this theory.  His younger sister was simply scared at what she was seeing.  My wife loved it but then, like the good parent she is, explained they were probably spotlights from a store or mall trying to attract early shoppers for the infamous “Black Friday” which is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S.

I realized she was probably right since the pattern was continually repeated every minute and as my son so aptly explained, “they’re okay to look at for 30 seconds but they just don’t do anything!”

As Business Intelligence dashboards become increasingly popular, I see a lot of companies wrestling with the design and trying to strike a balance between ergonomics and functionality.  In order for a dashboard to be compelling, it needs to both look good and deliver key functionality. However, many I.T. people have been so used to static displays of data that when they see the animated flash components with smooth moving dials and sliders along with gently bouncing bar charts, they are so blown away that they just have to show this to their executives.  In their excitement, they will often put looks over functionality. They want sharp, crisp, three-dimensional objects in metallic colors on black backgrounds so it looks like something out of a science fiction movie.  Technical developers and managers suddenly become artists and want specific color palettes and combinations. They end up producing some nice looking dashboards, but they are often not very functional. It would be a mistake to put this type of dashboard in front of most executives because once the initial dazzling effect is over in the first 30 seconds, they are likely to have the same response as my son - namely that it doesn’t do anything!

When I came back inside after the light show that night and said goodnight to my daughter, she asked me what I thought the lights were. 

I answered, “they were dancing angels.”

Let’s face it; most people did not think it was possible six months ago that Barack Obama would be the next President of the USA. It does not matter what your political affiliation, the execution of his campaign can only be described as pure brilliance.

The core of his campaign was based around his web site my.barackobama.com  which took all the best features of web site functionality to create custom pages for each subscriber, calls to action with automated generated emails, links to local activities and gauges to measure your own activities.  In addition, it had this really neat system for subscribers to make personal calls to registered voters in key battleground States that served up names, phone numbers and simple scripts to do some very effective canvassing.

His message for “Change” was pretty potent too and there is no doubt, that despite the global financial recession, there is a positive momentum being carried forward in to 2009.
As many businesses and institutions face both major financial and survival issues in the coming months, there is a lot we can learn from what I am calling the “Obama Effect.”  Optimism and positive attitude are important but without an effective strategy, they may not be enough.  It does not matter whether you plan to reduce costs, increase income or both, the actions must be strategic and based on factual data. Business Intelligence tools and solutions have never been more important.

It does not matter if you are an airline trying to determine which routes are the least profitable, or will have the least impact if you should cancel them, or a retail outlet determining which product lines are consistently the most reliable as well as profitable, business intelligence is the key to making these strategic decisions. Not only can business intelligence provide the answers, but with visualization through animated dashboards, it can serve up the information in an exciting and engaging way that can motivate both your employees and your customers  in the same way the my.barackobama web site did.

I truly believe that 2009 will be a year of change for many companies and people, and by harnessing the power of business intelligence and employing the “Obama Effect,” you can make that a very positive change.

While in England earlier this week, there were two things that I got really excited about.  The first was this really cool toilet seat with a self-closing lid that my sister had installed at her house where I was staying.  It was so neat, you just touch the lid gently and it slowly and smoothly closed on its own.  My sister and brother-in-law thought I had digestive problems, because I kept disappearing to the toilet.  I just couldn’t get enough of this toilet seat!

The second thing that got me buzzing was this demonstration I saw of the Web Intelligence Integration Suite from Antivia.  Now I’ve seen some pretty neat dashboards and features with Xcelsius (and I get very excited about them, too) but just picture this: Take a Web Intelligence document with drill down built-in integrated as a component in an Xcelsius dashboard, so that you can interact with the document within the dashboard itself.  Now think about linking that document to other Xcelsius components so that, as you navigate through data in the report, these other components are changing dynamically and vice versa.  It could be linked to maps, gauges, pictures, internet content and tons of other stuff.  And that’s not all – the best is yet to come...  The suite also includes a Web Intelligence “Slice and Dice” panel component. You can actually drag and drop objects and create multiple iterations of reports within this component within Xcelsius. This just blew me away because it adds incredible new power and capabilities to Xcelsius that just takes dashboards to a whole new level.  With this suite, you can merge the power of Web Intelligence with Xcelsius in a single powerful user interface.

And the more I saw, the better it got.  You can publish the dashboards in to PowerPoint, PDF or Word with the embedded Web Intelligence components in there, so now you could be dragging and dropping objects in a Web Intelligence document, embedded in Xcelsius embedded in PowerPoint – this is mind blowing!

Another real gem about this suite is that the data for the Web Intelligence components do not feed through the Xcelsius model unless they are connected to other Xcelsius components in the dashboard. This means you could handle some sizable Web Intelligence reports embedded in the dashboard.

The framework that the suite uses also provides a collaboration component that allows you to instant message between other selected users looking at the dashboard.
When Donald McCormick, Business Objects CTO, showed the suite at the Business Objects User Conference in Dallas this week, people were literally wide-eyed at what they were seeing and broke out into spontaneous applause – something I have never witnessed before.

I have a feeling a lot more people will share my excitement over the Web Intelligence Integration Suite for Xcelsius than over the toilet seat with the self-closing lid. I think both products are destined for  great success!

So in the middle of the worst financial meltdown in my lifetime, I find myself on a plane to London, UK to visit some partners and customers.  I am on a British Airways flight and they hand out a British newspaper and I start reading about how they are dealing with the situation.

You must remember that it is the British that brought us “Monty Python” and the “Pink Panther” and they tend to look at the world and life a little differently.

I was therefore not surprised to find this big article about how the financial crisis and economic recession will actually be good for the British people because they will eat less, drink less, smoke less, drive less, conserve energy and help the environment. All this, according to the newspaper, will result in healthier Brits and a cleaner planet! So the conclusion of the piece was “Bring it on – we will not be depressed and keep our heads low through all this, we will embrace it and turn it into something positive”.

As I was pondering this intriguing British trait of both being eccentric and humorously optimistic, I looked up to see a passenger on the plane step out of his seat into the aisle and proceed to remove his pants. He very neatly folded them and took a pair of striped pajama bottoms from his bag which he put on. He did the same with his top and then sat back in his seat and closed his eyes to sleep. I was quite shocked at first but then it dawned on me, he must be British!

As  I visited companies in the UK, it was business as usual and both the need, plus impetus to implement Business Intelligence solutions, are as strong as ever. While budgets may be reduced, companies may cut back on hardware, software and contract staff but they will still look to move ahead with projects that can both strategically improve revenues and reduce costs. Business Intelligence becomes more important than ever in a depressed economy for analyzing what works and what does not. If something works, then we will be more inclined to continue to do it, just like I am sure that the man who put his pajamas on did so because he sleeps better when he is wearing them. Maybe it is not conventional to change in an aisle on a plane, but I am sure he was not thinking about that and was simply focused on his desired objective of sleeping.

Likewise, if your desired objective is to get accurate and strategic business intelligence out of your data, then use the tried and tested methods of designing and building a multi-dimensional data mart and using proper ETL tools and processes . I was pleased to see the customers I visited in the U.K. doing this and being successful at it.

The news last week of the British Government taking major financial stakes in the top UK banks had the U.S. and several  other Western Governments following their lead. Maybe we can also follow their lead in implementing  effective business intelligence solutions to help spur a financial recovery, but I think we should stop short on copying their methods of sleeping on planes!

I live north of Phoenix in the desert outside an old mining and cowboy town called Cave Creek which is famous for its Chili Beer – yes, a bottle of amber beer with a real hot chili pepper in it with a slogan that says “Lime is for Wimps!”

Anyway, living in the desert, we have plenty of desert wildlife around us including a fair number of snakes, many of which are poisonous rattlesnakes. I have encountered quite a few over the years but, fortunately, have never been bitten. More frequently, it is not humans but dogs that get bitten so it is quite common to have your dogs “snake proofed” out here. So, when we got a dog a couple of years ago, we were strongly advised to get it snake proofed at a local ranch.

We showed up with about 30 other dogs and their owners and observed this fascinating procedure. A cage with about four rattlesnakes inside was placed in the middle of an open space. The organizer in charge then placed a shock collar on the first dog and instructed the dog’s owner to attach a leash to the collar and casually walk the dog over to the cage of snakes. As soon as the dog was next to the cage and got a big whiff of those snakes, the organizer shocked the dog which yelped and ran away pulling the owner along. The owner then allowed the dog 30 seconds to recover and then started to walk back to the cage. As soon as dog was in sniffing distance of the snakes, it bolted dragging the owner headlong in the opposite direction. Obviously, the dog had learned to associate the smell of a rattlesnake with pain and was not going near one again.

Each dog went through the same routine and all instantly learned. Of course, for our dog, my wife and daughter refused to take her when they knew she was going to be shocked, so I got to do the honors. When the shock was applied, she not only yelped louder than the sound barrier (she was a real drama queen) but she jumped in the air and almost pulled my arm out of its joint socket!

However, this was only part 1 of the snake proofing. Part 2 was to come back a month later and test again, except this time the rattlesnakes were hidden under a turned over wheelbarrow. The first dog and its owner went straight up to the wheelbarrow and the dog just kept sniffing until the organizer had to shock the dog for it to remember again.
The next five dogs did exactly the same thing. The sixth dog was ours and my daughter was pleading with me not to take her, but I did. As she got to about 10 feet away from the wheelbarrow, she got a good whiff of those rattlesnakes and she took off dragging me behind. Everyone cheered and I had a new found respect for our dog who I now considered to be a very intelligent drama queen!

In the world of Business Intelligence, I see companies big and small try to implement business intelligence analysis and dashboard tools directly against their production data sources. Without understanding the structure or state of their data, this is equivalent to sticking their noses into a cage of rattlesnakes. They invariably get a sharp shock; usually applied from upper management for degrading the performance of the production systems in addition to producing incorrect results.

The lesson is painful and appears to have been learned. Some go back and seek advice and start to learn about the wisdom and value of data marts, data quality and data cleansing while others go chase the salesperson who sold them the BI tools and try to bite their legs off.

However, the one thing you would expect them all to have learned is not to do it again. But, unfortunately, just like some of those dogs, one shock does not appear to be enough because many of them do go back, do it again and, sadly, get shocked again.

I suppose the one consolation is that the I.T. Managers responsible do not actually have to wear shock collars, but we would not want to give upper management any ideas now – would we?

A few months ago, my two youngest kids received this Rock Band game for Xbox 360 from their aunt. It came with a drum kit, guitar and microphone and basically lets you play and sing along to famous songs by famous rock bands. It also allows you to create your own rock star characters which you can see prancing around the stage to a wild crowd of fans while you are belting out David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” or laying down some mean riffs from Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.” 

Of course, both my kids are really good at it, but their greatest enjoyment is getting their Dad to participate. They literally roll on the floor in hysterical laughter as I sing (sorry, attempt to sing) “I think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage. When my mother-in-law visited a few weeks back, they insisted I sang “Black Hole Sun” while they accompanied me on guitar and drums.  Apparently, she still cannot tell anyone about it without tears of laughter running down her face!

I think many of us have dreamed of being a Rock Star at some point in our lives and, if not a Rock Star, then some other type of Superstar. Unfortunately, only a few people ever “make it,” and the rest of us are left to dream and play Rock Band. However, I believe that desire to be a Superstar lies just under the surface in most of us, and we are always looking for an opportunity to shine and be famous even in our day-to-day “non Rock Star” jobs. I saw some of these unexpected Superstars at the recent IBIS 2008 conference in Lake Las Vegas receiving awards (very similar to the Grammy Awards!) for their amazing integrated Business Intelligence Dashboard solutions. Banner Health Systems won the Most Valuable Dashboard award for a sensational solution that allows monitoring of Glucose levels in patients and is being rolled out to over 4,000 health care professionals at multiple hospital locations. What makes this solution, and the team that created it, so incredible is the ingenious integration of multiple Business Intelligence technologies and tools to provide an application that will literally help to save people’s lives.

The intricate work using the BusinessObjects Data Integrator ETL tool to extract, transform and load all the necessary patient and clinical data into the Data Mart every 24 hours was a milestone accomplishment. Then there is the Xcelsius dashboard that allows clinicians to intuitively and interactively check the overall Glucose initiative compliance ratings at different facilities.  This, then, can trigger Web Intelligence drill down reports to look at the values by individual nursing unit, and even individual patient, and then monitor the trend in that patient over 24, 48 and 72 hours. But the coolest piece of all is the InfoBurst-XDS report and dashboard management tool that automatically refreshes the Xcelsius dashboard from a Web Intelligence report and creates data ranges in cache that allow this application to be used by thousands of people with excellent response times. So “hats off” to this remarkable team of people at Banner who are definitely Superstars in my book. All I can say is “You rock!”

A few weeks ago, I was on vacation in Southern California and decided to take my two teenage kids to Six Flags, Magic Mountain. Now this is definitely a place for those who like wild rides. After getting soaked on a log ride, my wife and I found ourselves being led to a monster construction called “Goliath”. This 26 story high roller coaster is considered an “Extreme” category ride that at one point plunges at a 60 degree angle, reaching a speed of 85 mph, into a dark tunnel. Definitely not a ride for the squeamish or for sensible Business Intelligence consultants!

I sat next to my wife, tightly locked in with shoulder protectors and wondered what would happen next. Just as we climbed to the top of the 26 story peak, my wife started screaming hysterically. I turned to her just at the point that we started to plunge. As I turned back to look down, we disappeared into a dark tunnel. When we emerged, my wife started screaming again and, sure enough, a second later we were looping upside down. This pattern continued throughout the ride and when we finally stopped, I turned to my wife to see her rigidly gripping her shoulder handles and looking as though she had seen a ghost! It took a little while to pry her loose from her seat and she was shaking for a good two minutes afterwards.  

While my wife certainly got her money’s worth out of Goliath, it also got me thinking about the state of the economy and Business Intelligence right now. I know, you must think I have a weirdly wired brain, but sometimes I honestly cannot control what comes into my head! So, here we are in this strange economy where one day we are diving into a recession and the next day we are emerging from a recession that never really was a recession. While the financial experts drive us crazy with their inconsistent predictions, businesses are desperately trying to adjust to both the current and future economic climate. The result is not that different to a ride on the Goliath roller coaster.

If we look too far ahead based on the predictions of the experts, we start screaming and panicking before anything has happened, just like my wife. If we base our business decisions and adjustments on solid fact then we can ride the ups and downs and twists on what we are actually experiencing. Business Intelligence takes on a whole new significance in a downward economic situation. It is more important than ever to have accurate analysis of current and historical data and a single view of the truth so that you can make informed decisions before deciding which path to take.

One example that jumps to mind is the major US airlines needing to increase passenger revenue, eliminate certain routes, ground inefficient planes all to cope with the unprecedented increase in fuel costs. A good Business Intelligence solution will help make the best decision that will impact the airline the least. Better still, it will monitor, measure and make further recommended adjustments based on the results as the new actions are put in place. I can only recommend that all businesses look to use Business Intelligence to help them ride out this current roller coaster economy and if you are still not convinced, then just take a ride on Goliath with a screamer!

I love going car shopping with my wife. It is so entertaining to watch her completely confound one car salesperson after another with her simple approach to selecting the vehicle that she wants.

To my wife, a car is a piece of metal, on four wheels, that gets you from point A to point B. This, of course, is sacrilege to all car lovers and completely baffling to most car salespeople. 

So, a few months ago, we were in a Mazda dealership, looking at SUV’s, and an eager salesperson pounced on us and immediately directed his questioning to me. I politely directed him to my wife, since she was the one buying the vehicle, and the fun began. 

“I want a vehicle with four wheels that gets me from point A to point B and is good on gas,” she said.

“Well, madam, all our vehicles have four wheels. What features are you looking for and what is your price range?”, he responded. 

Wrong answer. It was my wife’s turn to pounce now. 

“I told you, I want a vehicle that’s good on gas and why are you asking me how much I want to spend before you have even shown me anything? I want to spend as little as possible. What kind of a salesperson are you?” She retorted. 

The sales guy was stunned. He started to turn red and was completely lost for words. He finally blurted out, “Excuse me a moment,” and went scurrying off and returned a minute later with another sales person who he said was better able to handle my wife’s request. 

The new sales guy took a different approach. He asked her what she was currently driving and, when she said an SUV, immediately started to show her their newest SUV’s. He attempted to show her all the new features and functions like the keyless ignition which did not work. When she asked him about the gas consumption, he proudly told her 18 miles per gallon on the highway and 15 in town. She then turned to me and said: 

“They’re not listening to me, are they?”

I had to agree, so we left and headed off to a Honda dealership where the sales person not only listened, but understood what my wife wanted, and a few hours later she was the proud owner of a Honda Fit that boasted an impressive 38 miles per gallon. 

Many companies have expressed to me that their Business Intelligence software purchases have a lot of similarities to buying a car. They express frustration that the BI sales person tries to sell them more than they need and does not listen to them or properly understand the issue they are trying to address. 

Today, the majority of businesses are trying to get the best mileage possible out of their business intelligence software. That means the key functionality at the best possible price. And that price does not just mean the software; it also includes the services, education and on-going maintenance. The extra bells and whistles might look impressive in a demonstration (when they work), but most corporations are just looking for “four wheels that get them from point A to point B!” 

I attended a demonstration, by a BI software vendor, recently to a large transportation company who owned some old BI software from another vendor that they had not been able to put to a lot of use. The demonstration was very impressive with dashboards and complex reports with drill down functionality. After nearly 3 hours of presentations and demonstrations of a truck load of features and functions, the analysts and managers in the room filled out their evaluations and handed them to the CIO. Later the CIO told me that they would be selecting another vendor who had shown a lot less in terms of functionality and was about 25% of the price. Most of the evaluations had said that the software from the first vendor that pitched for 3 hours looked too complex to use and had too many features and all they wanted to do was basic ad-hoc reporting and query analysis. 

Companies just want that basic BI software that will give them the best mileage for the best price. I think that more BI software vendors are finally waking up to this reality and have started selling smaller packages that offer a lot more “bang for the buck”. The initial results of this are that although companies are spending less on BI software than they were a few years ago, there are more of them buying.

As we see $4 a gallon at the gas pump, we are all thinking about vehicles that give better mileage, along with trying to make sure our car trips are cost justifiable. In today’s tight business economy, companies are also looking to do the same with their BI software. 

My wife is available, for a reasonable fee, to apply her vehicle purchasing talents to assist you in your next BI software purchase!

People often ask me how I manage to keep on top of everything when I travel so much. Part of the answer is that I get a lot of work done on planes and, in the case of this recent trip to Europe, trains. So, on a 10.5 hour flight back from London to Phoenix, with an hour delay on the ground, I catch up with a lot of e-mail and manage to work on my “Introduction to Business Intelligence Seminar” that I will be delivering in Canada in three days time. I did watch one TV British comedy show about a group of middle class, suburban housewives who take settling scores to extremes. In this episode, they start a Fight Club to settle a few of their disputes with each other. Thirty minutes of “light entertainment” and back to thumping away on my keyboard (I’m a “two-fingered hammer” typist). The guy next to me wants to sleep and decides to move seats, as he can see I’m never going to stop.

After 8 days of rain and cold, it’s good to be back in the heat of Phoenix, Arizona.