Business Intelligence... the life saviour

London Fire Brigade, the UK's largest fire brigade uses BI Solution for identifying potential spots, making decisions in allocating and deploying resources. This way it has reduced the number of Fire incidents. And hence reduced the number of causalities.

Fall of financial giants has put the world markets into a tail spin. This has caused a stress on minds of investors. They may not be aware of this. Research says this kind stress can actually shorten lifespan of a human being. Some experts opined that the crisis and its aftermath would have been avoided had there been a sound BI solution in place. Which means a better life for investors. A sound BI solution will guarantee better future for a company. Better future of the company will ensure better future for its employees. It is good that, of late, companies started realizing it.

SaaS in Business Intelligence...

SaaS... Software as a Service. The moment we say this, the name that strikes everyone's mind is Salesforce.com. It has revolutionized the way solutions delivered to customer. It provides the necessary hardware and support of hardware. All a customer needs to do is pay for the volume of resources used. This will take the responsibility of maintaining the hardware and human resources for maintaining it and instead the customer can concentrate on his core business process. The same rational has fuelled outsourcing as well. Salesforce.com's services are mainly related to the field of CRM.
Of late importance and potential of BI is recognized increasingly. We see BI is used in many fields which we never thought will. For example, Police department is using it in observing the trend in crimes. Experts feel that had all all big financial institutions in US (Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, America International Group etc.) used a proper BI solution, they wouldn't have landed in the current quagmire. In the current scenario, an organization needs to set up its own infrastructure its users' needs. It would be a dream come true for many business users if BI is delivered as a service. We see that there a paradigm shift is happening. Tools like Cognos are now delivering reports over Web.
Ideally a Bi solution should be user friendly. It should very easy to navigate and should be less complex in filtering and getting required data. In general, people are more comfortable in using portals. It would be good if we can have a BI solution that is delivered through portals. Such a solution will truly empower the frontend sales folks and help them in making judicious decision, which will bring in lots or returns for the investment by a company.

Custom BI solution vs Package solution:

These days there is a lot of talk about use of package solution like Jaros as a BI solution. This will save lots of effort needed in the analysis and design phase. Jaros provides BI solution on top of Oracle ERP. It uses the metadata of Oracle ERP in creating the metadata for ETL. Currently it supports 14 modules in ERP. Normally, a big organization will have lot of customization on ERP. This requires good deal of efforts in customizing the package to business. Jaros is not a feasible solution that use more than 14 supported modules and also for large ERPs with heavy customization.
When we develop a BI solution we will have the liberty to choose the ingredients of our BI solution. We can have the state-of-the-art tools in each phase of the Data Warehousing. Every problem in this world is unique. Each requires a unique way of addressing it. Ideally it suggested to deal it specifically rather than generalizing it and using a general solution available in the market.

Proper Project Management:

Research shows that about 47- 49 % projects are over run either in terms of schedule or budget. This could be because of various reasons like dependency on an external events, occurrence of unforeseen events. Good delivery of project needs competency in many areas. Technical competency is the foremost. Other paraphernalia like preparing project plan and updating it at regular intervals and Communicating effectively among the team and to customer are necessary.

There are many technically competent people who are bad in communication. These people did not feel the necessity of effective communication. Proper communication is necessary in a project. Messages we communicate will provoke feelings and these feeling influence the reaction and decision of the other party.
Every Project will have dependency on external forces. These forces are out of our control. So we should give proper lead time while making our project plan. We should be more watchful as the planned date approaches. Proper alerts should be raised if any delay is suspected. customer should be notified and alternate arrangements should be made.

Team motto should be placed above personal motives. Lots of times, we see that a person with lesser experience will leading a person with grater experience. In such case, if the manager fails to win the confidence of his/her subordinate chances are good that team members do not show commitment. Commitment should start from the manager. So is the manager, so be a team member. I read a sentence about importance of employee management. Quoted here for your quick reading.
"Employee and management stress costs companies billions of dollars annually through increased absenteeism, lack of enthusiasm for the job, and poor performance. According to several industry surveys, the following factors cause the most stress in the workplace: unclear policies and direction, failure to show appreciation, lack of communication, and lack of control."

Proper project management is a vast subject. However i tried to give a bird’s eye view of it.

How to contain inflation?

Inflation is a common phenomenon experienced by every country in the world. This phenomenon is acceptable as long it is there in the limits. When it grows beyond the limits, it has serious implications on many things. Particularly millions of common people in developing countries are effected. Governments round the world should take proper measures to prevent this evil force from rising its ugly head.

Inflation in India is currently hovering around 12.5 %. Many times Government of India in unison with Reserve Bank of India has taken many measure to contain this. Even then, unfortunately it is growing. There are two types of indices in India used to measure inflation. They are Consumer Price Index (CPI) and wholesale Price Index (WPI).

Growth in inflation is attributed to availability of excess credit in the market. Government was under the impression that if the excess credit is removed from the market, Inflation will be contained. Increase of Reverse-Repo rate is one such measure to remove excess credit from the market (For definition of Reverse Repo rate, go to comments). There are many instances where RBI has increased this Reverse-Repo rate during its periodic review. In the name of this, every bank has increased the interest rates on the money lent by them. As a result of this, one thing that has happened for sure is the EMI of the loans (particularly housing loans) has increased by 50 to 70 %. Inflation continued to rise. Does this mean that government does not know the root cause for inflation? or the quantum of increase in Reverse-Repo rate is not sufficient to contain inflation?

Inflation the un-flattener...

Thomas Friedman said that 'The world is Flat' . He explained the ten flatteners in his book. One of the ten flatteners being the Outsourcing and offshoring. The prime motive that aided the growth of outsourcing and offshoring is cost cutting. The outsourcing has caused backlash in USA. Benefits of outsourcing are so strong that media rating agency Nielsen forgo the tax breaks provided by Florida state government.

Inflation - the Un-flattener...
The reason for cost difference is mainly because of the availability of cheap labor in countries like India, Philippines, Mexico, China etc. India is known to outsourcing destination. Inflation has increased the cost of living around the world. This increase in cost has narrowed the cost difference between US and outsourcing destinations.

The other day i read an article on how inflation has changed the business dynamics of furniture business-owner. He used to purchase raw material in one country and have it shipped to a different country, where the product is manufactured and shipped to United States. Of late, because of inflation the difference of the cost for producing it in United States and else where in the world. He now started producing it in United States.

Also, some of the major banks in Europe who outsourced their IT work to India and other countries are now toying with the idea of having work transferred to Europe. Is the world un-flattening?

Beauty of IT Industry… Prepares people to face change and not run away from it…

Every project that you deal is unique in its own way. Though every company has a broad strategy in place to deal with projects, they have to tweak their strategy while dealing projects individually to to cater unique requirements of each project. The topography of the industry is very rough because of competition from other service providers.

Previously projects use to last long. Vendor's job in that case was relatively easy. Once it bags a project it can guarantee revenue for good amount of time. In the present day, a big project is broken into pieces based on functionality, technology, phase of project etc. These pieces are awarded to vendors who are specialists in their domain. This way they will be getting the best product by combining the best of all.

In the current scenario, vendors should be more watchful and see the project does not over run in terms of budget or schedule. To ensure this, every company needs to develop competency in every aspect of delivering a project.

These days, because of fragmentation of big Projects, each project lasts for relatively short time. Bagging a project will only guarantee revenue for a short period. To sustain revenues for a long time, companies should constantly win projects and deliver projects successfully. Winning projects constantly demands changing the strategies frequently to meet the need of the hour.  If the strategies are not changed, then they are lost in the evolution. Because of the short-term projects, companies need to change their strategy very often. This makes people working in IT industry face any change. Change is always draconic.

Of late, every industry is experiencing this phenomenon of fast change. Every industry needs people who can face change and not who can run away from change. They definitely look for people who have deftly handled change. I am sure all other industries look for people with IT background in future.