E-Fusion 2008
a little longer term future – is now being process-centric. could have. And when we talk to companies we’ll literally
We talk about imbedded business intelligence. Business see hundreds and often thousands of metrics. You can’t
intelligence being imbedded in the analytics in the actual possibly manage your business, each individual manag-
workflow and it’s also being collaborative. From Business ing their portion of what they have to do by looking at all
Objects’ perspective we also talk to our customers from of those metrics. There’s too much noise – metric noise.
strategy to execution and I’ll talk more to that on the next Of all those possible metrics, which are the ones that are
slide. most important? The litmus test that I use when I talk to a
customer is when you start out at the beginning of the day
Now we’ve talked about how the business is looking at
tell me what are the five to ten metrics that you want to see
analytics. We talked about the evolution and develop-
every day that you need to get a pulse on your business.
ment of tools available to help get there, and now is really
And, of course, that’s very role based, so it’s who needs
applying them effectively. We talked about getting the right
to see what? If I’m a business unit head I need to see
metrics to the right user at the right time and in the right
something different than if I’m a regional VP or if I own a
format. So, going from strategy management, the strategic
profit center for a particular branch, etc. And then, how do
planning that we do this time of year or a little earlier, get-
they want to see it? Some people want to see things more
ting to our operational planning, how do we take that, how
graphically, some more tabular, somebody might want
do we roll that out, by our business units or our support
to see a dashboard; someone else may be travelling for
units, making sure that everyone is aligned, that everyone
business all the time and wants to see something on their
understands that they’ve got objectives that are linked to
Blackberry, etc. Other people who are in the home office
those corporate strategies, all those initiatives are aligned
all the time are not going to want that. They’ll want to be
– and then how do we actually execute on them and make
able to see something different or they’ll want to be able to
sure that we’re actually achieving those goals, we’re modi-
drill down.
fying them as the case may need to be. And the underlying
support and platform for that is an integrated metric frame- That leads us into looking at what the visualization is.
work and I’ll talk more about why that’s important and how What does it look like? It also has to be something that is
companies have developed dashboards. It also includes repeatable. So we don’t try to boil the ocean. When we
the data warehouse that we talked about, and it’s also their talk about that metric framework – yes, ultimately we want
BI architecture and their data architecture. So, it’s the soft- and overall metric framework. But frequently we’ll start out
ware, the tools and the technology – all three of those. with one particular area of business and begin there and
let people chew on that, understand it, circulate that suc-
When we start to talk about the dashboards typically we
cess. Everyone understands the process of how you get
look at a triangle views – and this is familiar to everybody
there. One thing that’s very important is to build a sustain-
in business intelligence, who’s working with business
able framework so that that methodology is repeatable. So
intelligence and analytics – starting out with an executive
that your environment is something that can sustain and
view and typically that’s where the strategic and maybe
support additional functional areas as you bring them on.
capital planning and scorecards, if you will, and dash-
So, the question that we ask is can we actually build what
boards, whether they be risk or other, for the organization.
we’re designing and looking at the time involved and, of
So those are metrics for the few they’re higher level. And
course, the money. And then the data – and this is Mark’s
then as we go down a little bit maybe going into business
and my favorite part since we’re both very passionate
unit or functional area management where we would be
about data and both on the board of the Insurance Data
looking at specific dashboards, maybe around their bud-
Management Association. So, look at what data is needed
geting and forecasting, they’re a bit more tactical, they’re
to support that. Is it feasible for the dashboard? Where can
still higher level but certainly they have more metrics than
we get it? Is it credible, etc.?
a top level dashboard. And then ultimately getting down
to the frontline employees or down to maybe some of the So, there are tools as part of that methodology and I’m
true operational line management, if you will, where there just going to go through this very briefly but one of them
are still some dashboards involved but now we’re starting is we use metrics trees and we start to decompose those
to get into more reports and a lot more detail on the data metrics and we as people what metrics they want to see.
and drilling through on the data. Of course, that’s a con- There are metrics that are drivers for those. We start to
tinual process of that data, those results, and ultimately as prioritize them in terms of which of the metrics that you’re
we achieve that, pushing that back up and going back to talking about are most important. What drives what?
management, so we revise our goals. What’s the relationship of the metric? We also build use
cases and when we say we do this by role, what we’re
How do companies get here and what are the biggest
looking at is – OK, say our overall goal is to improve claims
challenges? The biggest challenges for most companies
performance. If I’m in this role, if I see this aberration, what
is defining the right metrics. From that, what we’re talk-
do I do about it? Is it actionable? Once we’ve built out
ing about is, they start out with all the possible metrics we
those use cases and we’ve got those metrics then we map