About Success and Failure: Continued

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Almost every day I hear of cases where Business Intelligence (BI) initiatives in companies are achieving tremendous results (3,623% ROI in 1 case) or are dismal failures and are wasting money.  In my experience, there are two very key elements which are present in every successful BI project, and without them the initiatives are almost guaranteed to underwhelm.

In last month’s newsletter I described the first of two major factors which have a major impact on the success or failure of Business Intelligence initiatives – having the correct metrics. And to paraphrase Mark Twain – The difference between almost the right metric and the right metric is the difference between the lightning bug and lightning. This month’s article focuses on the second of the two success factors – Executive Sponsorship. Read more

Ironside Group Presented at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 Boston with client Timberland

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Gregory Bonnette, Senior Technical Consultant of the Ironside Group presented alongside longtime client  ”The Timberland Company” at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 in Boston on November 20, 2009.

Here is the Session Abstract describing this presentation:

Lessons Learned: Building a New Enterprise Platform for Business Intelligence

The Timberland Company maintains a rich IBM Cognos Series 7 environment with hundreds of deployed PowerPlay cubes and a strong and mature user population. The compartmentalized nature of these applications has always inhibited analysis across all Global Regions and/or Operational Areas. To address this, the company launched a strategic initiative to create an enterprise data warehouse that would consolidate and conform upwards of 20 disparate source systems, and would utilize IBM Cognos 8 as the new standardized platform for BI.  Read more

Ironside Group Presented at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 New York with client MassMutual

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Tim Kreytak CEO/Principal Consultant of the Ironside Group had the pleasure of presenting alongside of longtime client MassMutual Life Insurance Company at IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 in New York on November 13, 2009.

The discussion was mainly focused on MassMutual’s experience in building and operating a technical Business Intelligence Competency Center.  Jeremy Massimino, the director of Business Intelligence for MassMutual, highlighted some of the efforts that are necessary to build and operate an internal team of technology and project experts. Tim Kreytak reviewed the process and methodology Ironside reccomends for projects of this nature. Ironside has defined this process to handle the technical and organizational challenges often encountered on these type of projects. The presentation is available attached here and can also be found on the IBM-Cognos Performance 2009 site here .