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Seeing clearly into business operations is vital for long-term success. From watching sales performance and checking manufacturing yields to monitoring business unit activity and keeping an eye on portfolios, organizations need operational business intelligence (OBI) to track up-to-the-second key performance metrics, spot emerging trends, and make more rapid, fact-based decisions.

If you are like the majority of IT executives who have BI as a strategic objective for your organization, you might be wondering how to prepare for OBI success. What's different about OBI from traditional BI? Is it right for your organization? How do you build your business case and gather system requirements? What tools are available to support your OBI project? 

To find out the answer to these questions and more, you're invited to join Catherine Frye, Director of Product Marketing at IBM Cognos Now! and Brendan McGuire, Managing Director at Waypoint Consulting on Wednesday July 16, 2008 for a webinar discussing "Operational Business Intelligence: Trends, Considerations & Best Practices."

During this one-hour session, you will learn more about:

• Delivering actionable information to your executives and front line workers at the lowest TCO and with fast deployment options.
• Defining your business case and effectively gathering requirements for your Operational BI projects.
• Best practices from other organizations that have successfully deployed OBI.

Click here to register online

We look forward to you joining us July 16th at 2:00 PM EDT. 

The BI market has seen some changing dynamics, with three software giants, IBM, Oracle, & SAP acquiring the Business Intelligence market leaders, Cognos, Hyperion, & Business Objects.  The integration of these new products into their existing BI & Data Warehouse offering is not trivial.  It’s also further complicated by previous BI & Data Warehousing product acquisitions – both by the software giants and the BI market leaders.  Adding to the confusion is the likelihood of more acquisitions in the future.

Simultaneously the Business Intelligence market is maturing with the expectation of BI Applications that will deliver out-of-the box solutions.  The markets ability to meet this expectation varies by vendor and functional area.  Also the BI applications are often designed to work with specific ERP source systems.  While they can work with other systems that will certainly increase implementation complexity and possibly decreasing functionality whittle down the value proposition.  

As a result customers in the BI market today are faced with some significant challenges, not the least of which is navigating a path forward.  They want to be sure the technology they select will not be sunset or be a legacy technology and they want to prevent the wasted time and money of technology conversions they could have avoided.  Equally important is the need to minimize their development timeframes, workload, and cost by leveraging the pre-built solutions of BI applications and do so without introducing entirely new technology stacks.

Understanding how to do this is not a trivial task, so it’s important that companies searching for BI solutions engage a partner that can help establish a roadmap based on where they are today in terms of business and technology, and where their business needs to go. 

In a few more years the BI market will mature significantly and the risks will decrease accordingly.  However, current state of the BI marketplace indicates the glaring need for a BI roadmap.  Now more than ever. 

I am pleased to announce that a new book by Waypoint Consulting’s Practice Manager, Joe Kokinda, has been published. “Building the Information Asset”™ offers a visionary perspective on “information” as the circulatory and nervous system of business.  More importantly, Joe describes the process and formula for creating the Information Asset™ including the Data Flow Architecture, the role of technology and the “5 Why” method™ for requirements gathering.  I read Joe’s book this past weekend and believe it is a great foundation for any CIO in positioning the strategic value of Business Performance Management within his or her company.

If any of our partners, employees, subcontractors or clients would like a copy of this informative book, please let me know.  We plan to host an upcoming event to discuss the book’s theme.  Stay tuned.

Brendan McGuire

484-472-8611

I am pleased to share that we have formally kicked off our Executive Roundtable Discussion series.  On November 20, 2007 Waypoint Consulting hosted the event with representation from clients and prospective clients to discuss their specific experience and challenges in Business Intelligence.  I would like to thank our host, Oracle, for providing the facilities and breakfast. 

Our next Executive Roundtable Discussion is planned for January.  This event is filled; however, we may add a second session due to the high level of interest.

These events are unique in that they enable senior people to interact with their peers.  We initiated the events based on the feedback from clients who found that product user groups have become too product focused and therefore rarely discuss Business Intelligence strategy (people & process first, then technology). 

The topics and agenda will change for each session; they are never set in stone.  Instead we want each group to steer the discussion to the specific focus and needs of participants.

In order to keep these sessions interactive, we are limiting attendance to seven customers per event.  If you are interested in joining a future Executive Roundtable Discussion, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Brendan McGuire

484-472-8611

There certainly are no dull moments in the Business Performance Management (BPM) space these days.  Over the past three months we have witnessed three of the leading BPM products involved in non-organic growth activity:  Oracle purchased Hyperion, Business Objects purchased Cartesis, and yesterday’s announcement of SAP acquiring Outlooksoft. 

What does this mean to organizations planning their next iteration of BPM?  I talked to some of my clients, partners and peers in the space recently and found the following insights:

1)      The recent transactions will take the BPM product decision out of the hands of those that will be responsible for delivering BPM in their organization.  Future product decisions will be made at the highest level of an organization (CEO or CFO) as the financial commitment will be much higher.  There will be less focus on functionality and fit and more on the range of products and total-cost-of-ownership advantage a vendor can provide.  In the past, companies were hesitant to use their transactional system vendor for BPM. However, this will likely change.

2)      The activity will “change the game” in current vendor evaluations.  For example, think of an organization that was leaning toward Business Objects for their BI solution four months ago.  Now consider this organization is an Oracle shop and has standardized on the Oracle product suite.  This same organization will have to consider Hyperion for total-cost-of-ownership and support reasons, not to mention the Oracle relationship at a senior level.

3)      In the short term some of the independent vendors, namely Cognos, could gain from the acquisitions. Cognos is a quality product that will position itself as a known commodity against the uncertainty of an acquisition.  However, it is said that they may be the next BPM vendor acquired.

4)      There is a genuine concern from some that their existing vendor will take focus off product enhancement as integration activity takes precedence.  In some cases these acquisitions come at a time when customers need their product partner to address “new version” problem areas.

In summary, the market is changing. Therefore, the need to plan and set up internal processes are more important than ever.  Ideally this will help the BPM space to continue to grow by providing business people with the information they need to improve their business.

What do you think?   I welcome your feedback.

Brendan McGuire

Please join us tomorrow, January 30^th, at the Wachovia Center for an Executive Breakfast and roundtable.  William Crowell, Waypoint Managing Director of Delivery Services, will participate in a panel discussion on opportunities presented through better Business Intelligence. 

Many Oracle clients own the Oracle BI tools however few are effectively leveraging these tools to provide strategic insight.  Most organizations simply use Oracle BI tools for transactional and operational reporting.  The panel will discuss how clients can leverage their investment in Oracle to more effectively provide real value ($) through better business intelligence.

The breakfast is hosted by another local Oracle Partner, BizTech.              

Every January I attempt to assess trends, market conditions and current client goals to understand how consulting services can strategically help current and potential clients. 

In January 2006, I firmly believed that new BI product releases such as Hyperion System 9, Cognos Series 8 and MS SQL Server 2005 would change the way companies create and deliver their decision support services.  Although these products are forward  thinking and will have a big impact for their clients, 2006 was ripe with “new product” challenges.  These challenges were both product and process related.    

As we move into 2007, Waypoint’s goal remains the same  to improve Adoption of Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing for our clients as the leading provider of these solutions in the region.  Many of our areas-of-focus in 2007 will be to improve Adoption of these technologies including:

1. Center of Excellence – Although it is not a new concept, COEs are even more important as companies move to a more centralized reporting environment as is available through these new products.
2. Education – Too many companies are buying enterprise BI licenses while only educating a handful of key power users.  BI knowledge goes far beyond the ability to create a query.
3. Development Best Practices – New releases will require new “best practices” for development.  As a certified partner, Waypoint has the ability to work with new releases to understand how the environment for existing clients will change.
4. Support – According to the leading market research providers, the business intelligence audience in companies can grow 50-200 percent  in 2007.  This increase in new business intelligence users will impact the infrastructure and process currently in place.
5. Software as a Service (SaaS) – Formerly referred to as ASP model.  The technology space is evolving more and more to a SaaS model and I do believe the Business Intelligence space is not immune to this change.  In a perfect world, most CIOs, CFOs, and CEOs would prefer to pay only for the products they use and not have to worry about supporting infrastructure.  That being said, the market still appears to have reservations with regard  to privacy and security.  There are some leading SaaS providers in the BI space.  Waypoint will continue to look at these providers throughout the year to gauge their progress in the market and their impact.

Finally, I would like to echo Bill Crowell’s comments from his blog below as it relates to our growth in Q4 2006.  Our success is the result of having experienced consultants working in partnership with great clients.  Our consultants went above and beyond to make sure these clients were successful, including some long hours over the holidays.  Thanks for all your hard work and commitment to Waypoint’s success.

Brendan McGuire

484.472.8611

This past year was filled with strategic changes and great progress for Waypoint Consulting. Waypoint has always been known for high quality consulting with a regional presence. In September 2006 we restructured the company to add a business development function and named a new Managing Partner, Brendan McGuire, to lead this function. Our last three months have brought record growth in providing high quality data warehouse and business intelligence consulting to regional clients.

I would like to welcome and thank Waypoint’s new clients with whom we partnered during the fourth Quarter of 2006. This list of new clients includes: Commerce Bank, IT Evolution, Ardmore Banking Advisors, BBR Wireless Management, New Enterprise Associates, Accenture, and HCI Direct.

I look forward to continue to do great things with our clients; I am especially enthusiastic about opportunities in our pipeline for future clients.

I wish all our clients, employees, contractors and partners a wonderful holiday season and best wishes for 2007. We could not be here without you. Thanks!

William Crowell
484.716.8866

Please join me this Thursday, September 21, at the Park Central Hotel in New York City as I present “The Impact of System 9 – Lessons Learned”.  This presentation will be part of the Metropolitan New York Hyperion User Group’s quarterly meeting. (http://www.metronyhug.com)

Hyperion System 9 was launched in 2005.  Many of Hyperion’s clients are planning the move from previous versions to System 9 in 2007.  Hyperion System 9 is one of the markets most comprehensive BPM solutions because  it combines the traditional applications with the  robust reporting functionality of Essbase and Performance Suite (formerly known as Brio and SQR).  The core component of System 9 is the unified workspace and shared foundation.  It provides users with one, simple interface for financial, interactive and production reporting, as well as analytics, enterprise metrics, scorecards, dashboards and master data management.  This new architecture provides opportunities for Hyperion clients to improve the total cost of initial investment in Hyperion. 

Organizations planning to move from previous versions of Hyperion to System 9 in 2007 will profit from this session.  

Please feel free to call me (484.472.8611) with specific questions about the presentation.

Brendan McGuire