3/15/2018 Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering – Start with a discussion of "capabilities"

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 Aneal Roney  January 10, 2013  BI & Analytics  No Comments

Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering

– Start with a discussion of “capabilities” JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

When I begin discussing capabilities of a business intelligence platform with my

clients, there are two words I hear from those clients more than any others.  The Email Address (Privacy Policy): *

two words I hear most often are “reports” and “data”.  It occurred to me
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sometime back, that if you work for an organization, in a specific industry, and
you have a specific job role – then while it sounds overly simplified, business
intelligence (or BI as we like to call it) is really about the data (the data you care
CATEGORIES
about) presented in the way you want to consume it (a report).  Anyone who has
worked on a business intelligence solution, either from a business analyst
Security
perspective or a technology implementation perspective would be quick to tell
you BI is much more complex than that.  Why?  Well it starts with understanding
the main capabilities of a Business Intelligence Platform (regardless of vendor General
or technology), and then drilling into “sub capabilities”.  I start at the top with
three overarching capabilities of a BI Platform.  They are:
Applications
 

Top Level Business Intelligence Platform Capabilities BI & Analytics

1)  Data Management – All processes and technologies related to gaining

Cloud
insight from existing organizational data.

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2)  Reporting and Analytics – All formats (or BI Assets) for users to view and/or
interact with data to gain business insight. Events

3)  Performance Management – All formats that allow users to monitor key
Infrastructure
metrics (or goals) that drive business success.

 
Subscription Services

Sounds pretty simple – only three categories.  But let’s start with Data
Management and the key “sub-capabilities”: Digital Business

Business Intelligence “Sub Capabilities”

Web Solutions/Intranets
1) Data Management

OUR BLOGGERS
 a)  Data Integration – All processes and technologies
related to integrating data from disparate systems in the Apollo Gonzalez (1)
enterprise into a “single version of the truth” (See Data Azhavee Grajeda
Warehousing). Adam Sills (22)

b)  Data Warehousing/Data Marts – Central data Adrian Tillett

repository (or repositories) that provides consistent and Alex Useche (1)
accurate data across several business domains (e.g. Brad Barry (1)
Accounting, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Sales,
Brian Rea
Marketing etc.)
Bobby Watt
c)  Data Quality – All processes and technologies related Blake Wilson (24)
to the quality control of data coming in from source Cameron Fuller (860)
systems into Data Warehouse/Data Marts.  May include
Chad Simmons (40)
exception reporting, fixing data quality issues, auditing,
Clay Moore (18)
and logging.
Chris Rasmussen
d)  Master Data Management – All processes, governance,
Catapult Systems (3)
and standards required to ensure consistent Master Data. 
David Baur (1)
Master data can be defined as an authoritative source for
David Broussard (96)
the products, accounts, and parties for which business
David Rowe (33)
transactions are completed.
Edwin Blake (1)
e)  Big Data – This is a new one that has moved onto the
Ed Higgins (10)
scene.  This may not be a capability per se, but the logical
Eric Russell (4)
place to discuss the storage and management of “Big
Data” is under the BI Capability of Data Management. Eric Skaggs (36)

Garry Fenimore (3)

  Greg Tate (14)

Heather Masters (4)

“Everything is a report”.  This is often how I begin requirements discussions with
a client or project team.  But there are subtle nuances that draw a line between John Balod (1)

Reports, Analytic Views, and Dashboards (as well as help you pick the right tool Jonathan Cowan (71)
for the right sub-capability of the BI Platform).  Reporting and Analytics (and
JC Warner (9)
associated sub-capabilities) are described side by side below.
Jeff Dalton (3)

  Jim Falgout (7)

Josh Handel (2)

2)  Reporting and Analytics
Jenu Jose

 a)  Operational Reporting – An operational report Joe Kuster (24)

presumes to answer a question that is already known by Jeff Oliver (1)

“the business”.  A classic example is a Profit and Loss Joel Palmer (3)

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statement.  It answers the question, “What is my revenue, Jason Sandys (78)

my expense, and my bottom line profit or loss?”.  Jeff Wilkin (4)
Operational reports tend to be relatively static in nature – Kyle Davis (5)
meaning a user may select a couple  parameters (A
Kevin Rutkowski (32)
department and a date range for example), but the
Ketan Shah
resulting format is generally consistent, and only the
Kranthi Tupakula
underlying data is changing.
Larry Clark (8)
b) Self-Service Reporting – Self-Service Reporting
Larry Rayl (16)
describes the empowerment of a user to build their own
Larry Swonke (3)
report, in the format they need and like.  Often self-service
Lance Wilson (1)
reporting is described as ad-hoc access to pre-defined
data sources (or data models), the ability for a user to Martin Schoombee (1)

“drag and drop” data elements onto a design surface, and Matthew Dowst (72)

format the report to their specific purpose (presentation, Mike Harris (5)
data exploration, reference etc.). Marc Jellinek (1)

  Matt Knight (2)

Michael Leach (5)

2)  Reporting and Analytics Melinda McBride

Matt Panzano (7)

 a)  Analytics – Different from Operational Reporting,
Melonie Poole (43)
analytics describes an activity where the question isn’t
Misty Rodriguez
fully identified.  Often I describe this as “research on why
Mick Talbott
something is happening", drilling in and out of data to
further clarify the question that the user should be asking Noah Benedict (1)

(e.g. Profits are down –>  Why?  –> When I drill into the Nick Patterson (7)

data it looks like one product category isn’t performing –>  Nathan Stricker (3)
Why is that?  –>  When I drill further, it appears a specific Paul Felix (4)
product sub-category is under performing in a specific Paul Miner
geographical region  –> POTENTIAL RESOLUTION:  Let’s
Pontus Strindlund (1)
create an operational report that provides sales detail by
Rodney Eten (3)
region, by product category, and by product sub-category
Robyn Cerda (84)
so we can further research on an on-going basis)
Rick Skalitzky (1)
b)  Self-Service Analytics – Similar to Self Service
Randy Zellner
Reporting, Self Service Analytics empowers the user to
Sidney Atkinson (72)
build their own analysis.  Self Service Analytics goes a step
Sara Calderon (1)
further by empowering users to not only create their own
analytical view, but also to model the data to answer Sean Tompkins (1)

specific business questions. Taz Diaz (2)

Tim Ehlen
c)  Data Exploration –  This sub-capability is relatively new
Teddy Gonzalez (6)
to my list, but has been added as a distinction to draw
based on some of the new products out there that allow Tino Hernandez (6)

rapid visualization of large data sets (Microsoft SQL Server Troy Lanphier (3)

Reporting Services PowerView is a great example of this).  William Girotti (5)

In the activity of data exploration, the question may not
even be conceived.  The user is simply exploring known
data for any key outliers or notable trends.  Let’s say we
were exploring historical data on patient outcomes at a
fertility clinic over a period of 3 years.  Think of an
animated bubble chart mapping favorable fertility

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outcomes at this fertility clinic.  If there was a period of

time where a specific doctor was having great success
with a specific in vitro fertilization technique, data
exploration would be able to spot it, and allow the clinic to
inquire about the best practice that doctor was employing
during that time period.  Also see the screenshot of data
exploration on pollution below.

d)  Predictive Analytics – I like to introduce the concept of

predictive analytics to clients and project teams by asking
the question, “If you had a crystal ball, and could ask any
question about the future of your business, what would
you ask?”.  Predictive analytics (often termed data mining)
applies statistical models to known data (historical data,
populations of data etc.) to provide insight into “what may
happen?”.  Determining the odds of who will win the super
bowl at the beginning of a season is a form of predictive
analytics.

Data Exploration:  Below is an example of visually

exploring trends and outliers related to the source of air
pollution in the United States over a 10 year period (source
of data:  data.gov)

3)  Performance Management

 a)  Monitoring – The activity of monitoring helps you

answer the question of, “What is happening right now in
my business?”.  A help desk, for example is constantly
monitoring the number of outstanding tickets in the
queue.  The help desk may have a “Target Time To
Resolution” metric with a stated goal of resolving priority 1
tickets in under 3 hours.  If this goal supports the help
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desk’s mission of providing accurate response time, the

team will want to monitor this metric (maybe in an
aggregated scorecard with other metrics), and instantly
know if the team is missing or exceeding this mark.

b)  Analytics – The same definition above applies here, but

it is called out again because if you are monitoring a key
metric, and it is not performing as expected, the natural
analytical question is, “Why is this metric not performing
as expected?”.  See Analytics described above under
“Reporting and Analytics”.

c) Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting (PBF) – PBF closes

the loop of performance management.  Planning is the
activity of communicating what you would like to happen
in the future (e.g. you set a personal financial plan (or
goal) for how much money you may need for your kids’
college tuition).  Budgeting is the activity of agreeing to
(or interlocking) on what needs to happen to support your
overall plan.  (e.g. so much money needs to be put in a
bank account each month to ensure you meet the savings
goals of your financial plan for your kids’ college tuition). 
Forecasting is an ongoing activity of “course correcting”
based on actual outcomes that are happening (e.g. you get
a bonus in a given month that you add to your bank
account that changes your forecast on how much money
you need to set aside each month (budget for) to achieve
your plan for college tuition).  Financial PBF is an easy one
to get your head around, but PBF can apply to anything –
inventory, scrap, employee or customer churn etc.

Once you gain a collective understanding among the BI project team on the
capabilities of an overall BI Platform, you’ll be honed in on which requirements
can be supported by which platform capability.  Once the requirement and
capability is matched, this makes the tool selection and technical aspects of the
solution to be delivered more clear.  It is also important to note that some
vendor tools focus squarely on one single “sub capability”.  Caution should be
taken to ensure the vendor technologies and overall solution can support
existing requirements as well as future requirements that will bleed into other
“sub capabilities”.

BI Platform Capabilities – Cheat Sheet

Capability Sub Capability

Data Management Data Integration

  Data Warehousing/Data Marts

  Data Quality

  Master Data Management

  Big Data

Reporting and Analytics Operational Reporting

  Self Service Reporting

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  Analytics

  Self Service Analytics

  Data Exploration

  Predictive Analytics

Performance Monitoring
Management

  Analytics

  Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting

(PBF)

Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence,Requirements,Data

Management,Performance
Management,Reporting,Analytics,Dashboards,Planning,Budgeting,Forecasting,Mo
Warehouse,Data Mart,Data Integration

Tags: Business Intelligence

About The Author

Aneal Roney
Aneal Roney is the Director of Technology Strategy & Planning
for Catapult Systems. A Data and Cloud Evangelist, Aneal blogs
about topics including data architecture, data visualization,
reporting, analytics, and cloud infrastructure. Aneal is a MCTS for
SQL Server Business Intelligence and an AWS Certified Solution Architect.

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