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Often in the business world, things come along that drive change. Sometimes, the change could be subtle. Sometimes the change is dramatic. In a lot of cases, there are those that are early adopters, as well as those that one can count on to wait until the change is deemed mature by the industry experts. It is important also to put forth a value proposition to adopt the change; to change for change’s sake generally doesn’t help the bottom line. In some cases, this change crosses industries and technology, but sometimes the change is among clusters of business that gives one a competitive advantage over another.
Consider some of the transformations that have happened over the past few decades:
- The computer
- The internet
- Mobile technology
- Laws (SOX, etc.)
- Hybrid vehicles
- Global economics
- Social networks
Companies that were able to see these changes coming were able to prepare. Companies that didn’t see it coming were forced to adapt. It is obvious to see that being prepared is arguably the best alternative, but in many cases and for many reasons, this may not be financially, socially, or logistically possible during the early adoption period. Eventually, over time, more and more companies adapt the change into the culture or technology as it becomes more and more pervasive and valuable. Those that take the lead and the initiative generally experience growing pains, but also gain advantages of working out the kinks of emerging technology or change. Those that wait may need to face consequences for the delay but prolong the disruption to critical process for as long as possible.
So what would we say are some changes that are on the way if not already here that will help shape the next decade of business activity? One would argue that “Big Data” is a great candidate for the next major change we are beginning to feel the effects of as its existence begins to transform the business landscape.
So what is “Big Data”? According to Gartner[1] Big Data is defined as:
Big data is the term adopted by the market to describe extreme information management and processing issues which exceed the capability of traditional information technology along one or multiple dimensions to support the use of the information assets. Throughout 2010 and into 2011, big data has focused primarily on the volume issues of extremely large datasets generated from technology practices such as social media, operational technology, Internet logging and streaming sources. A wide array of hardware and software solutions has emerged to address the partial issue of volume. At this point, big data, or extreme information processing and management, is essentially a practice that presents new business opportunities.
The definition leaves the reader with a lot questions. What is “extreme information management”? What are the “hardware and software solutions” that attempt to address the issues? What are the “new business opportunities”? Let’s take a look some of these questions in more detail.
Extreme Information Management
When we look at the sheer volume or magnitude of some of the datasets that would make up a Big Data solution, it is clear the traditional processes of data management will be challenged. The normal ways of loading, storing, processing, evaluating, and analyzing this information has to change in order to reap the benefits inside the datasets. This means the normal way a technologist would write a query needs to change. The usual backup and recovery process has to be re-considered. In addition, how this “extreme” information is combined with the “traditional” information is the new conundrum businesses that are going down this path are facing. In a practical sense, a company that has a traditional data warehouse in place will be faced with the challenge of aligning existing dimensions with the new “dimensions” from the big data arena. If this challenge can be solved for an enterprise, then the competitive advantage discussed earlier can be realized because the power of leveraging changes. If a company can at least begin evaluating the contents of big data as it relates to their enterprise, they will still gain valuable insights and correlations that are eluding the competitors that will wait out the change until it is mature.
Hardware and Software Solutions
When a company is considering a big data solution, immediately the existing infrastructure stack will be impacted. There are a lot of vendors that are stepping up into the technology gap to help customers move forward with initiatives. In a lot of cases, storage and processing power will become immediate needs. Deep in the internals of big data solutions is the idea of multiple worker servers that take on distributed work to break down the processing into smaller chunks. This can be achieved with potentially low cost servers, but a lot of them depending on the scale desired. The open source community has been a leader in this arena of solutions that help address the big data problem with low cost entry into public offerings. For the technologist, this means learning new ways of addressing data access using environments like Hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org/) or HPCC (http://hpccsystems.com/). The traditional ETL tool vendors like Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.com/) are also attempting to get in the game by extending their products to work in a big data environment. In the long run, we expect the vendors to all address “Big Data” in some form or fashion, suggesting the change is here to stay. Therefore, it would be wise to do some research in the current vendor offering or begin to experiment with some of the solution options that are available, in order to begin to reap some of the benefits of a big data solution.
New Business Opportunities
When considering what new business opportunities will be presented as a result of engaging in a Big Data environment, the potential is alluring. When dealing with datasets in the terabyte and petabyte range, the scope and makeup of the results go from specifics to generalities in rapid order. It is currently feasible to look at things in a dimensional model like perspective. It is difficult and in some cases no longer possible to calculate results as you would normally do in traditional database environments because the sheer physics have changed. But there are opportunities for businesses to integrate this new landscape into their current Business Intelligence environments. Some companies are finding ways to use sources from public web sites to private applications to drive value and competitive advantage. The government is even seeing the opportunity and critical need to get involved[2]. With this much activity related to a single discipline, we would recommend actively seeking out the opportunities in your own business environment. More than likely, your competitors already are.
What are the challenges?
Some of the challenges will be related to identifying sources, because sometimes these are external to a business and require creative thought to see the big picture and the analytical opportunities. Additional challenges will be related to bringing a technical staff up to speed on new technology and new ways of thinking related to size and scale of Big Data environments. Furthermore, there will be changes to “normal” data acquisition and storage policies. In addition to all this, there still is the integration issue. This issue can be more complex for companies that already have a mature data warehouse environment, and wish to navigate from a specific dimensional model to a less specific Big Data analysis. The bridge between the two can be daunting, physically and philosophically.
What does this mean for you?
Although Big Data is still an emerging technology and concept, there is enough momentum in the marketplace that warrants serious consideration for customers and clients. There are still significant challenges in bringing it all together in a comprehensive Business Intelligence environment. The ability for systems to collect more and more data points going forward is inevitable, and systems that can evaluate the large data sets will become more and more ingrained in the normal technical environment. The traditional systems and big data systems will become more seamless over time. The more companies can leverage the information investment on all the data points as they come available or affects their business, the more effective they will become.
If you would like to learn more about Big Data and what impact it may have in your environment or are just curious about how to approach the challenges in this new arena, we would love to help work through it with you.
More information on BIG DATA can be found online at www.lucruminc.com. Or to see how LÛCRUM can help your business with its BIG DATA needs, contact us.
[1] (http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/big-data/),
[2] (see article here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/big_data_press_release_final_2.pdf)
A great list of big data sources is found here: http://www.zdnet.com/top-10-categories-for-big-data-sources-and-mining-technologies-7000000926/
January 2010 Cover
Have you heard of Technology First? Technology First is a Dayton, Ohio based industry-led, industry-driven trade association dedicated to:
- Proactively Representing IT in the Region
- Increasing understanding of Technology First and its value
- Recognizing and promoting our membership
- Highlighting niche technology companies
Technology First looks to strengthen technology thought leadership by inspiring innovation, focusing on new ideas and best practices, presenting leading edge industry information that is both strategic to business and technical folks. They also look to inspire volunteer leadership by encouraging stronger member participation which involves more working committees and develops programming to best meet industry needs. Additionally, they look to engage in conversations with technology community by leveraging interactive social media.
I was asked to prepare an article on the Future of Business Intelligence. Imagine my surprise when that article was selected as their cover story this month! Click here to read. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Have a great week!
- Jodie
Companies invest large amounts of money, time, and other resources acquiring and implementing reporting and analysis software. I’ve seen organizations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in projects and fail to realize a decent return on their investments. The point of this series of posts is to educate you about the reporting and analysis capabilities of a tool your organization probably already owns: Microsoft Excel.
In this series of posts, I will discuss a number of these capabilities and will give some concrete examples of how to utilize them.
I will be using Excel 2007 for these examples. Much of this functionality is also available in Excel 2005, it’s just not as easy to use and does not have some of the more advanced features.
Getting the Data
The first step in any effort is to get some data into Excel. We’ll start out using a simple static list. You probably already use lists like this regularly. If you don’t utilize Excel in this way today, think of the reports that you work with from the various systems that you run your organization with. In most cases, you could probably either copy andhttp://thefuturevalueofbusiness.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=745&message=6 paste or import these reports into Excel to get some data to work with.
In future posts, we’ll cover a much more powerful method of acquiring data by connecting to external databases from within Excel. For now though, we’ll stick with this simple example.
I’ll be working with the sample database that comes with Microsoft’s SQL Server database software. This sample database contains information about a fictitious company called Adventure Works. Below, you can see that I have an extract of order information that I’ve pasted into Excel.
This is the most common manner in which people utilize Excel for reporting purposes: simple lists of data pasted or imported from other sources. In most situations, this data comes from existing reports or queries. My example above is a very simple query…you can see that we don’t even have names or descriptions for most of the data. For example, Column F is showing us the Product ID instead of the Product Name.
The best way to solve this problem is to have the author of the report or query modify it to include the Product Name in addition to the Product ID. Let’s imagine that this is not a realistic option though; there is a way that we can solve this problem using an extremely powerful Excel formula called VLOOKUP.
Using VLOOKUP
To expand on our situation above, let’s imagine that I have a second worksheet in my Excel workbook. I have an image of this second sheet below.
The Product ID in column A corresponds to the Product ID in column F on the Orders List. We are going to use VLOOKUP to take the Product ID in the orders list and lookup the Product Name in the product list.
To make the formulas a little more understandable, I am going to rename the Sheet with the order list “Orders” and I am going to rename the Sheet with the products list “Products”.
On the “Orders” sheet, let’s insert a column immediately to the right of the Product ID. We’ll label it “Product Desc” in Row 1. In Row 2, we’ll enter the VLOOKUP formula:
| =VLOOKUP(F2,Products!A:B,2,FALSE) |
The parameters (the information between the parentheses) tell Excel how to lookup the value we want:
- The first parameter, “F2”, tells Excel what value we are performing the lookup for. In this case, we are looking up the Product ID.
- The second parameter, “Products!A:B”, tells Excel where to go to do the lookup. Here I selected the first 2 entire columns on the “Products” sheet.
- The third parameter, “2”, tells Excel to bring back the data in column 2 from the lookup list when it finds a match for the value from cell F2. I know that’s a confusing sentence at best, but it will make sense in a moment.
- The last parameter, “FALSE”, tells Excel that we want it to return only an exact match for the value we are looking for. If Excel cannot find an exact match for the Product ID, it will return an error indicator.
The Results
Now, let’s take a look at the results of our formula. The screenshot below shows what I have now.
This screenshot shows a few rows from the “Products” sheet:
Hopefully you can see how VLOOKUP works now. Excel took the value in F2 in the “Orders” sheet, 776. It went to the first column of the range we gave it; that range was Columns A and B of the “Products” sheet. It scanned through that range until it found a match for 776. It then took the value in the 2nd column of the range, column B, in the same row and returned the value in that cell (“Mountain-100 Black, 42”).
One thing I didn’t make clear before that I want to point out now. VLOOKUP is always going to look in the first column of the lookup range for the matching value. In our example, the lookup range was columns A and B of the “Products” sheet, so Excel looked in column A for the matching value. There is no way to tell the formula to look anywhere other than the first column; so you either need to cut and paste the columns to get the right one first, or just change the reference so the lookup column is first.
To complete our list, we can just fill down the VLOOKUP formula in column G to the bottom of our orders list. Now we can analyze our order data with actual Product Names instead of just Product IDs.
Summary
VLOOKUP is useful in many other situations…you can probably imagine a few other uses for it yourself. It is very handy to use it as we did in this example though. Even though we could have accomplished the same goal by having someone in IT modify the query or report, now you can be a little more self sufficient with your reporting needs.
In my next post, I’ll cover a few more features like filtering and date manipulation. Ultimately, we’ll move on to Pivot Tables and External Queries which provide very powerful mechanisms for analyzing data and can compete with some features offered in expensive reporting software.
The New York Times recently ran an excellent article by John Markoff about the changing concept of individual privacy in the digital age. The article discusses some of the implications associated with being increasingly connected. GPS enabled devices, online activity, social networks, credit card purchases, and other technologies can paint a vivid profile of an individual, which could be used by numerous sources for activites both good and bad.
How could such data be used for good? Suppose a company possessed information about where you are, what you are doing, and why; they could offer you real time incentives to purchase specific products. It would be analogous to virtual haggling to get consumers to behave a certain way. Need a pair of dress shoes? Are you at the mall? You wear a size 11 right? Well suppose a retailer within the mall knew you were there looking for a size 11 dress shoe, which they just so happen to have an abundance of in stock. They could text you a message stating that for the next 3 hours you could redeem the text on a new set of black loafers – size 11. Not only that, they also know that your spouse has a birthday coming up, and will offer you buy one get one 1/2 off to incent you to purchase more footwear. They know the correct size, and have the ability to make suggestions based on past purchases and the purchases of similar consumers.
Now suppose that this offer is passed up repeatedly by consumers within a period of time. Just like that, the deal could be modified until the desired consumer behavior occurs. Hyperefficient capitalism at its best.
How could such data be used for not so good? Well, that retailer or perhaps the credit card company, may note that you are buying special shoes designed for people with circulatory issues as well as special clothing to help improve circulation in extremities. They may also note that you are purchasing sugar free candy at the counter, and that you bought a sugar-free latte. Later, their video might capture footage of you sitting on a bench eating a cookie and drinking juice you bought in the store. Now suppose an insurance company is concerned about the cost of covering people with diabetes, and wanted to obtain data regarding consumers of specific items that those with diabetes might purchase. They could follow your activities thorough data purchased from the retailer and make judgements about your risk profile. This data could then be used to deny coverage to consumers. Hyperefficient capitalism at its worst.
Both of these scenarios are hypothetical in nature and admittedly oversimplified. One involves the use of data to help a consumer get something they desire. The other involves the use of similar data to deny a consumer from something they desire. Both involve the elimination of privacy as more and more data is collected about us – sometimes knowingly and sometimes not.
Still, it seems that people overall are not particularly concerned with the collection of personal data. The attitude toward the loss of privacy in exchange for convenience is overwhelmingly laissez faire. As Markoff ponders, in an age of Google, iphones, GPS, and Facebook, has privacy “become an anomaly?”
The question becomes what is your company doing with its data? For most, the reality of today is likely nothing, or at best very little. For all of the hype surrounding the potential use of data, much of this valuable information sits fallow within the servers, computers, and files of firms. The big ideas are out there, and now it is a question of who will capitalize on them – good, bad, or otherwise.
Is your company formally gathering, processing and utilizing data to influence consumer behavior? Could you? Are you adequately protecting the privacy of your Clients? Should you be? Are individuals within your firm potentially accessing sensitive information for their own interests? Is your competition doing a better job of mining the collective intelligence provided by data than you are?
The reality of today is that you have an amazing opportunity to impact the lives of those whom you serve through data. How you do so is largely up to you. For the record, I am a huge fan of size 10 Adidas Gazelles, and I would love a red pair. The next time I am near your store, text me and let me know if you have a great deal for me.
You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy? – NYTimes.com
It is no secret that people are different. My wife loves process and order. She is disciplined and pays attention to detail. I, on the other hand, love chaos and new things. I like to create and invent.
Then there are those accountant/analyst folks who love details and facts. Finally, there are those who are people people – the ones who pay careful attention to others and their feelings. True, these are simply attributes that we all have in varying degrees. But, it is no secret that we have some in big doses while others are very small.
So, what happens when governance groups are out of balance? What if we have a data governance group that is made up of ten people like me…loving new things and big visions with little to no attention to detail? Or, there are ten folks like my wife – loving processes and steps to implement. Not a whole lot of new out of the box thinking – but truly skilled in the art of process.
Also, imagine ten folks sitting on the data governance group that are those people people – they think of relationships and peoples feelings. Are these people going to be ‘enforcers’ of the rules and standards? Finally, how about those factual lovers? Can they implement?
We need to have a well balanced governance team that has the right amount of visionary ability plus the people needed to validate those ideas against facts and figures plus those important people people who can tell you how to craft that message and how to reach people plus those implementers, those who can frame the plan in all its glory!
Well, if you have been around governance groups at all, you have seen cases where the team is not well-rounded. There are just too many of the same type of people in the group – or one ‘attribute’ exists in a dominate individual which infects the entire team.
Consider the following:
Where the yellow are the folks who are visionaries, always thinking up new things, but don’t have much skill at details, working with people or process.
Where the blue are the folks who are based in facts and figures.
Where the red are the folks who are those people people.
Where the green are the folks who are highly skilled in the art of process.
I was thinking about these different attributes and what happens when we have an imbalanced group. What are the warning signs, what can we expect when we are unbalanced. In the above diagram, I list the three roles of governance at the top and the different attributes in the color bands. Crossing them are the things that seem to happen when that group is out of balance.
For example, I have seen this many times…a team that is unbalanced and mostly blue (based in facts and figures) spends lots of time to produce the “10 Commandments”, then they post them on the world for all to see. These are the folks who develop principles and standards with complete definitions and taxonomies. These become artifacts or works of art to hang up and be proud. But nothing happens after this? Why, because they needed the greenies!
Or take the unbalanced team in the yellow zone… lots of big ideas come from this team. We often see a tremendous amount of momentum out of the gate because they sold senior leadership who moved mountains to take advantage of these ‘game changing’ ideas. But, very soon their progress stops, more than stops – we simply never hear from those folks again. Why, because those ideas were not tested by the blue folks!
Another example is an unbalanced green team… they spend tons of time to put together standard operating procedures which stream line operations. But this group misses the mark because they didn’t have that spark that a yellow brings!
Finally, when those red folks who are so needed in the group are in the majority – we have to be careful that we don’t approach the governance from the touchy feeling perspective, where we may be more interested who’s feet we may step on.
I have only touched on four cells – there are twelve to consider. Think it through. We need all these attributes and need to have them in a balanced manner. Look for those warning signs and think about who is in your group. Do you need to bring about change? Start by knowing where you are, looking at where you have been, so that you can make those adjustments to take you where you want to go!
Happy Balancing!
~Scott Felten
This morning I attended the Cincinnati AMA’s Digital Marketing Summit – entitled “Is Your Marketing Disco or Digital?” The event focused on innovative ways to utilize “New Media” to improve your business – specifically as it pertains to Marketing.
There were a wide range of speakers present, and overall I was very pleased with my decision to attend the event. Here are some of the highlights from my day:
- Met Pete Blackshaw – This guy is a Rock Star in the world of modern marketing, yet he was as polite and friendly, if not more so, than anyone else I met at the event. More later on Pete.
- Made some new friends with interesting people like Brandon Ferris from zoneCG.
- Saw old friends like Alan See from Seapine, and John Atkinson from PimpMyNews.com
- Learned about some interesting web 2.0 tools and ways to use them from Izea’s founder, Ted Murphy.
- Watched a presentation by RIM on the marketing of Blackberry – past, present, and future.
- Heard about some exciting new projects that Cincinnati Bell is developing.
- Attended sessions led by John Atkinson from PimpMyNews and Chris Heile from hyperQUAKE
- Closed the session with an outstanding keynote from Pete Blackshaw – which was outstanding.
My favorite part of the event was without a doubt Pete’s presentation entitled Consumers, Credibility, and Cincinnati. His speech hit on many of the topics that he wrote about in his book, Satisfied Customers Tell 3 Friends, Angry Ones Tell 3,000 . If you haven’t picked up the book yet, it is a must read. We have actually given it to several of our Clients as a gift. It’s really that good. Anyway…
In his presentation, Pete outlined 6 Drivers of Brand Credibility:
- Trust
- Authenticity
- Transparency
- Affirmation
- Listening
- Responsiveness
He then went on to explain the implications of these factors in the digital world in which we live and do business. Bottom line – Do right by people or suffer the consequences. The consumer is in charge, and you need to make sure that you are in touch with what is happening in the consumer marketplace relative to you, your brands, your products, and your reputation. Word of Mouth is on steroids in the digital age, and negative word of mouth can be a company killer.
At the end of his presentation, Pete shifted gears and brought it back to Cincinnati. He spoke of an idea he has formulated regarding the creation of an advertising museum in Cincinnati. This would serve to re-establish Cincinnati as a central hub for advertising in the digital age by showcasing the immense heritage of the craft in the city, creating a connected community of current marketing professionals, and developing something uniquely aligned with the city and its business heritage. I personally think the idea is great, and I hope that I can find some way to be a part of making it happen.
Overall the event was fun. It could have been improved with some signage outside of Great American Ballpark to indicate where to go to get in. (I walked around that stadium twice this morning at 6:45 looking for the entrance to the Crossley Room.) I was also slightly disappointed when they asked me to stop filming the event on my Flip cam 1/2 way through the 2nd speaker of the day. I was informed that “there were arrangements made and I was not permitted to film at the event.” I found it an odd policy for a summit focused on web 2.0, but complied none the less. I managed to capture some great interview footage of people stating why they had come to the event – sort of a man on the street thing – that will sadly never make it to the web. It is a shame because it would have been great to highlight my takes on the event, which I did enjoy. I would have gladly posted the video on YouTube and other sites, providing free publicity to any and all included. Alas, I know that some just are not ready for that yet. In the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal.
Thanks to all of the speakers, all the cool people I met, and the Cincinnati AMA for putting it all together.
Now I must get to work on implementing some of the great ideas I picked up today.
Is Your Marketing “Disco” or Digital? | AMA Cincinnati Chapter
Today I read in the Wall Street Journal Online that Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld to star in a series of advertisements for the firm. Seinfeld will reportedly be paid $10 million for the spots, which are part of a 300 million dollar campaign aspiring to reposition Microsoft as forward thinking, customer friendly, people savvy technology company. The campaign is being launched in large part as a response to the growing popularity of Apple and the increased adoption of open source operating systems like Ubuntu Linux.
While I think Seinfeld is hilarious, I question the wisdom of this decision. Certainly there are plenty of exceptionally bright people at Microsoft. I am quite sure they have good reason to believe that Jerry can help to change people’s perceptions of the company. I do believe that whatever he does will probably be entertaining. For $10 million it should be. The problem is that people don’t need Microsoft to entertain them, they need Microsoft to care about them – or at least appear to care.
Microsoft should have invested that 300 million in making their products more reliable and useful, and in offering unparalleled service to its customers. With the resources at its disposal, surely the company could offer support services so remarkable that no one in the world could compete with them. “Vista not working right? – We’re on it.” “Spreadsheet locked up? – No worries because you are with Microsoft.” “Need help with that flyer? – we’ll create a portal for you and walk you through it.” “We are Microsoft.” “We are here to help you do more.” “We know that you have choices when it comes to software, and we want you to choose us.” “That is why we work to earn your trust and keep your business.” Can you imagine the buzz this would generate? It would be huge.
Microsoft could create a community of users supporting one another and leveraging technology to do it. They could tap into the collective wisdom of the crowd to make improvements and to drive innovation. They could build loyalty and trust. They could exploit the weakness of other providers which is the perception of risk by removing risk from their own products. If Microsoft was the safe, secure, trusted choice in the mind of the consumer, then the consumer would be willing to pay a premium.
They could have stores, mobile help, seminars, online support, help lines, surveys, blogs, and more… instead they will have very funny commercials.
Apple has had success because of innovative products, beautiful design, and smart campaigns geared to exploit the perceived weaknesses of Microsoft. It is not that Apple is without flaw. They have a very closed system. They don’t always play nice with consumers. They are expensive. Recently they have had some high profile mistakes with the iPhone and Me.com. They are not perfect, but they are smart.
It is my opinion that the smart thing for Microsoft to do would be to invest in the consumer and not the endorsement of a celebrity – even if it is Seinfeld. Maybe they will get Lloyd Braun to sell some software from Mr. Costanza’s garage. SERENITY NOW!
What do you think? Is hiring Seinfeld a brilliant idea or big waste of time?
[poll id="10"]
If you’ve read any of my previous postings, you know that I put a lot of thought and detail into each of my blogs. I have to say sorry that I’ve missed you all lately, but life has started to get in the way. I have several partially complete. But then…
This week – Urgent priorities with my new client, Ipsos, and other major client needs are driving my time. I also have a member of my team in town from Newfoundland.
Last week – I started to come up to speed with Ipsos and had meetings all day each day.
Prior week – I was finishing my Data Strategy/Architecture role with Kroger which required me to max out each day.
But, at night… Had lots of family things going on…you know what it’s like trying to balance work/home life. 
!
I’ve got one finishing high school, one just finished her first year of college. Two proms. One 8th grade formal. One child going to Orlando for two weeks, another going to Destin for a week. Three awards ceremonies. One child with recent medical issues and blah blah blah and so on….
So, I am trying to get back in to balance and expect to reach a proper rhythm again soon. Or my head will explode! I miss you all and hope to post some great content soon.
- LÛCRUM is an information, intelligence and analytics consulting firm comprised of business and technology professionals focused on making data meaningful.
