Transcript Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence
Technology and Career Options
Paul Boal
Director - Data Management
Mercy (www.mercy.net)
March 12, 2012
Opening Questions
 What
kinds of jobs does someone do in the area of
business intelligence?
 What
does someone working in business intelligence
do?
 What
are common tools used in business intelligence?
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What do you do in Business Intelligence?
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What do you do in Business Intelligence?
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Data Governance
Data Architecture, Analysis, and Design
Database Management
Data Security
Data Quality
Master Data Management
Data Warehousing
Reporting
Metadata Management
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What do you do in Business Intelligence?
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Interview users
Understand business problems
Model the business
Analyze data
Integrate data
Write reports and interfaces
Drive data quality improvement
Build dashboards
Share insights
Make the organization smarter…
The (sometimes) thankless part…
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Data management isn’t important…
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First priority is delivering services/products…
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Reporting is easy…
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Mercy Data Warehousing / Mercy Insight
Here’s how easy it is…
COMMON CHALLENGES
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Getting access to source data
Working with application teams
Data quality and data stewardship
Master data management
User Expectations
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Challenge: Getting Access to Data
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Vendor Contract Obstacles
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Flexibility of vendor to allow access / support
 Cost of building extracts
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Technical Obstacles
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Legacy systems, programming/system skills
 Cloud solutions (the bad ones)
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Knowledge Gaps
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Knowledge of source system data
Cultural Obstacles
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Application team controls access too tightly
 Development teams are timid about database
access
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Challenge: Application Teams
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Development Style
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You tell me exactly what you want and I'll build it.
 Give me the business logic and I'll build it.
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Analytical Hubris
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This is the way it works; come to find out the data doesn't match.
 I assumed that you wanted it like that other extract.
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Fear of a down-stream dependency
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e.g.
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Kronos PR530
 The PICA code
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Challenge: Data Quality &
Master Data Management
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Not analyzing or profiling data contents
Using terms rather than ideas
Building in rules that are too strict
Missing formal data governance policies
Lack of clear data stewardship
Data seen only as operational
http://ocdqblog.com
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Challenge: User Expectations
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Sometimes, users expect computers to be able to
solve problems for them;
 Sometimes, users don't want the system to do
anything for them.
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Rationalize data integration / data warehousing
 80% gathering information together
 20% analyzing and decision making
 Web 2.0 versus Enterprise Applications
 Enterprise solutions versus departmental control
 System Performance
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Challenges in Getting Value from Data
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Data Usage Survey
 195 data users across Mercy (of 380 surveyed)
analysts, informaticists, statisticians, report writers
 Top Challenges
 Finding the data they need
 Performance of the systems they use to access data
 Integrity of the data they have access to
 Integrating data from multiple sources
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Target
 80%
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using data and %20 getting data1
Current Efficiency Gap
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STAYING FIT
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Organizations / Conferences
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TDWI
 B-Eye-Network
 TDAN
 Analysts: Gartner, Forrester
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Blogs
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Twitter
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I'll email you my Google Reader list: [email protected]
BI Twitter List
Open Source and Developer Tools
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Talend, Pentaho, Jaspersoft, BIRT, Infobright
 Oracle, Teradata, IBM
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Demonstrations
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Business Objects Universe
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Business Objects WebI
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Dashboard Example
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Tools / Resources
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Open Source BI
Pentaho – reporting, analytics, integration, dashboards, mining
 Talend – integration, data quality, master data
 Jaspersoft – reporting, analytics, integration, dashboards
 Actuate BIRT – reporting
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Open Source Stats/Mining
R – statistics
 Weka – machine learning
 ProM – process mining
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Databases
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MySQL, Oracle, Teradata, SQL Server, Infobright, Hadoop
 Teradata University Network
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Internships
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